Legend of Oasis is an interesting sequel. It was apparently turned around very quickly after Beyond Oasis on the Genesis, which explains the game's major shortcoming: the overworld is very, very small. It's essentially just a hub to branch off to the various shrines, which are the main areas of play.

Tiny overworld aside, I love this game. It takes all the ideas that worked so well in Beyond Oasis and expands on them. The combat and weapon systems are refined and improved, with a better and deeper combo system (and permanent weapons, thank goodness). The spirits have even more uses, and with six of them the way we use them to progress in the shrines is even more complex. The hand drawn art is gorgeous, with fluid animation and vivid use of colors. Boss battles are highlights. There's a TON of secrets and large secret areas to find. And there's a lot of off-kilter humor throughout, such as the pitifully moaning zombies.

If the overworld had been fully developed and the controls refined just a touch more - less clunky than Beyond Oasis, but still not perfect - this would be a masterpiece. Still, it's one of my favorite Saturn games, and a really unique take on the top-down action--RPG. There's nothing else that's quite like this unfortunately truncated series.