This game isn't, by any reasonable measure, actually good, I think in general JRPGs didn't really find their stride until the SNES. But I find it useful to return to from time to time as a reminder of what the Default JRPG Experience is. Pokemon, Final Fantasy, SMT/Persona, all of it has its roots in the time that a visual novel writer and the Dragon Ball guy decided to adapt the role-playing game for a home console.
You spend 90% of the game mindlessly grinding, the combat has almost no room for strategy thanks to a single party member, the game's writing has been totally neutered in translation by getting rid of all the humor and heart for some bizarre Old English thing Nintendo of America was going for.
But all of this is on some level useful, it makes it the Default JRPG Experience, every interesting thing a JRPG does can be judged in reference to the formula this laid down, which makes this I think worth playing (with heavy use of emulator speed-up) for people who have Thoughts on the genre.
You spend 90% of the game mindlessly grinding, the combat has almost no room for strategy thanks to a single party member, the game's writing has been totally neutered in translation by getting rid of all the humor and heart for some bizarre Old English thing Nintendo of America was going for.
But all of this is on some level useful, it makes it the Default JRPG Experience, every interesting thing a JRPG does can be judged in reference to the formula this laid down, which makes this I think worth playing (with heavy use of emulator speed-up) for people who have Thoughts on the genre.