English localization was so bad back then that they change, “Lennus: Memories of an Ancient Machine” into a generic title like Paladin’s Quest, this title doesn’t tell you anything about the game, there is no “Paladin” in this game, you are just a kid (Chezni) and tasked with saving the world that you yourself doomed and then be called the saviour of humanity.

So the story starts with you in a magical school, then your friend dared you to go into this forbidden tower that is conveniently enough not locked and without any guards even though it was sealing a world ending machine. Of course, you activated the machine by accident and now the world is miserable. The teacher literally punishes you to find a way to save the world.

In your journey you go into various towns and get into some substories that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. You only have 2 permanent party members, which is you and one other girl called Midia that you meet along the way. The other 2 party members are mercenaries that you can hire, sometimes with money, sometimes for free. These mercenaries have fixed equipment and magic so you really just have to worry about the 2 permanent party members which saves up a lot of time, because menuing in this game sucks.

About the menuing, doing anything with the menu in this game is super tedious. You want to use item to heal your party members? You have to press the menu button, navigate to ITEM, then to USE, then to whoever has the item, then to the item, then to the user, standard enough so far. But after you use the item, the menu closes automatically and you have to do the whole process all over again. Now imagine you have to heal 4 times after every encounter. This same thing happens with using magic too.

Next thing is checking your character stat, you press the menu button, go to STR, then press the character you want to check, if you want to check another character, too bad the menu will close automatically if you are done checking one character. Lastly, equipping item is the most tolerable among all of this, you just have to pick every single equipment for your character even if you just want to change one equipment. The good thing is that the menu doesn’t close automatically if you are done with one character.

The shop isn’t better, in true SNES fashion, you don’t get to know the stat of the equipment and how it compares to your current equipment until you bought it, but most of the time it doesn’t matter because the new equipment is almost always stronger than the previous one.

As for the combat, it’s your standard turn-based in that era, except that you will mainly use magic but there’s no MP. Your magic costs you your HP instead, and there’s no healing spell, only healing item. The levelling is your standard RPG, but the magic system has their own levelling system, it’s basically like FF2 where if you use certain magic that magic will be leveled up after a while. What they don’t tell you is that you absolutely have to level up some magic, because if you don’t you will have to grind a lot for the final boss.

Speaking of the final boss, the difficulty curve here is so stupid. The game has been easy from the start, I never need to grind (maybe I sometimes need to go back to town after getting injured), but once you get to the final boss, you have to grind at least 10 levels and max some if not all of your magic to even stand a chance.

Lastly, there’s no run button, so you’re stuck with slow walking speed the whole game.

Weird game.

The tone is all over the place, I thought it was a serious "horror" at first, then there's a leveling system and pixelated flashback scenes. But then, there's the somewhat serious religious questioning too.

Not to mention the puzzle that is more akin to fantasy horror like Little Nightmares, or the bizarre environment that you have to traverse. Even though there are normal, everyday people going around you.

Heck, one of the puzzle requires you to destroy a work in progress construction, while the worker watch in dismay on the side, just to be able to go inside a church through it's window.

Though by the end, after I thought more about the story. I quite like it. It's about the main character, Inidka questioning her belief and religion, if it's real or not, if the devil insider her is real or not, then she meet an escaped convict who claims he can hear the voice of God.

Not sure how much I can say about the ending without spoilering it, but it is an interesting ending (if somewhat boring).

I do not understand the point of this game.

The gameplay is repetitive beyond believe, it's a 3D beat 'em where you only have the same combo from beginning to end, even if the combo name is different or you control different character.
The Hamon system is pretty interesting, where you have to attack Vampire enemies with Hamon first before you can actually kill them. Though for some reason Speedwagon can do it too in one of the chapter.

There are 2 hardest enemy in this game, the camera and the lack of lock on. I did get used to the jank at some point, but damn it is unpleasant. Especially in the stupid water level, whoever have that fight idea is a sadist.

Now the thing I don't understand.
This game is probably aimed mostly at Jojo fans, which means you already know the story. And if you already know the story, what's the point watching it in a downgraded version when you can just read the manga or watch the anime.

And if a non-Jojo fans play this? They'll probably run away from the franchise after playing this game.

Weird game.

The tone is all over the place, I thought it was a serious "horror" at first, then there's a leveling system and pixelated flashback scenes. But then, there's the somewhat serious religious questioning too.

Not to mention the puzzle that is more akin to fantasy horror like Little Nightmares, or the bizarre environment that you have to traverse. Even though there are normal, everyday people going around you.

Heck, one of the puzzle requires you to destroy a work in progress construction, while the worker watch in dismay on the side, just to be able to go inside a church through it's window.

Though by the end, after I thought more about the story. I quite like it. It's about the main character, Inidka questioning her belief and religion, if it's real or not, if the devil insider her is real or not, then she meet an escaped convict who claims he can hear the voice of God.

Not sure how much I can say about the ending without spoilering it, but it is an interesting ending (if somewhat boring).