Not a bad game for Capcom's first venture into the genre. Here are some of its main redeemable qualities (with their caveats):
+ Character design: Unique and memorable characters, some of them will see future iterations in the following games and remain loved to this day for their design and personalities.
- Con: There isn't much character development.
+ Music: A very cool soundtrack. The main theme is awesome and you'll hear it a lot (it's in the overwold), it's a staple of the series. Unlike other RPGs, the best songs here are in towns, which is where you'll spend a big part of your time as well.
- Con: Dungeon songs are boring, and become annoying quickly. And you'll also spend a lot of time in these.
+ Abilities: Each character has their own unique abilities they can use either in the overworld or in dungeons/towns. Like fishing, hitting trees, and so on. Some of them allow you to find secrets hidden around the world, allowing for some interesting exploration.
- Con: Sadly, the exploration part isn't used to the fullest. Sometimes you're just forced to use a particular ability. And some abilities are used once or twice and then completely forgotten for the rest of the game (I'm looking at you big fish underwater ability)
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Other problems with this game are:
- Story: Really poor and basic "stop the main villain from conquering the world" kind of story. There is some world building to what will become a bigger story later in the series though.
- THE GAME IS GRINDY: If you're gonna play on emulator I strongly recommend using a 2x experience patch. Otherwise you'll meet an extremely unbalanced grind factor where you'll have to circle around the dungeons for hours to be able to beat the bosses.
- Translation: I think Ted Woolsy just did the best he could with some horrible limitations. A lot of weird dialogue, mistakes and shortened text. Specially annoying are the shortened item names, you can't really tell what anything does in this game. For this I recommend the "War of the Goddess" sort-of-retranslation patch (it's based on Woolsy's script but improved).
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I recommend playing this game first if you wanna get into the series. It'll be hard to go back to this game after you've played the 2nd one, which improves upon basically everything, and fixes most of these cons. It'll also make that experience so much better after you've already seen some of the characters and the world built in this first game.
+ Character design: Unique and memorable characters, some of them will see future iterations in the following games and remain loved to this day for their design and personalities.
- Con: There isn't much character development.
+ Music: A very cool soundtrack. The main theme is awesome and you'll hear it a lot (it's in the overwold), it's a staple of the series. Unlike other RPGs, the best songs here are in towns, which is where you'll spend a big part of your time as well.
- Con: Dungeon songs are boring, and become annoying quickly. And you'll also spend a lot of time in these.
+ Abilities: Each character has their own unique abilities they can use either in the overworld or in dungeons/towns. Like fishing, hitting trees, and so on. Some of them allow you to find secrets hidden around the world, allowing for some interesting exploration.
- Con: Sadly, the exploration part isn't used to the fullest. Sometimes you're just forced to use a particular ability. And some abilities are used once or twice and then completely forgotten for the rest of the game (I'm looking at you big fish underwater ability)
---
Other problems with this game are:
- Story: Really poor and basic "stop the main villain from conquering the world" kind of story. There is some world building to what will become a bigger story later in the series though.
- THE GAME IS GRINDY: If you're gonna play on emulator I strongly recommend using a 2x experience patch. Otherwise you'll meet an extremely unbalanced grind factor where you'll have to circle around the dungeons for hours to be able to beat the bosses.
- Translation: I think Ted Woolsy just did the best he could with some horrible limitations. A lot of weird dialogue, mistakes and shortened text. Specially annoying are the shortened item names, you can't really tell what anything does in this game. For this I recommend the "War of the Goddess" sort-of-retranslation patch (it's based on Woolsy's script but improved).
---
I recommend playing this game first if you wanna get into the series. It'll be hard to go back to this game after you've played the 2nd one, which improves upon basically everything, and fixes most of these cons. It'll also make that experience so much better after you've already seen some of the characters and the world built in this first game.