Square Enix is a dud developer for me: Chrono Trigger is my favourite game made in house by them, and frankly, it barely scrapes past the margin of mediocre to worthwhile in my estimation. Final Fantasy VII is the only FF game I've played all the way through thus far, and the experience was dreadfully dull, carried only, weakly, by the modicum of flavour that exists in the game contrasting typical sword and sorcery with it's cyberpunk/arcane mystic-machinism.

Hearing that they'd developed a game, for SNES no less, that ditches the terrible turn-based combat that renders many of their games into sagas of woodenly written corn mash in favour of real-time action hack and slash combat genuinely excited me. I thought that if the gameplay was more minute to minute engaging, in ways that even just slashing your sword while running in many games can feel good, would invest me more into the narrative and world via a bypass of the inherent lack of inhabitable gestalt that turn based action creates. Unfortunately, while the combat is significantly better, the narrative is hackneyed and sparse, carrying the combat only so far as connecting back of the box quotes with opening text scrawl. If Chrono Trigger had this combat system, switching between characters like Trine or The Forgotten in Isaac, it would be legitimately worthy of being called a masterpiece. As it stands, Terranigma is the stand out Square game that put play first, a task which was too monumental for the team, proving that their games must always be limpid in half of the experience.