Feels good to have finally finished this after wanting to play it for years. I remember back when I was in middle school trying to emulate this right when gba cartridges became harder to find and I had no credit card to order one for myself off of eBay, that because of the graphical limits pushed it was impossibly buggy and laggy, so it was really good to be able to play this on original hardware. The game also has one of the strongest and most gripping openings to a handheld RPG. Unfortunately, the scale and stakes of the game feel cut short as the rest of the game is made of brief visits to towns that rarely get returned to, and the 4 playable characters themselves mostly fall flat. The protagonist you play as is blank even more a blank slate, and besides the tragedy that he and Garet experienced in the village, background and development doesn't really exist. The game also ends on what by all means feels like a midpoint in every other jrpg. They literally tease you with a vessel that you think would open up the world to more exploration and perhaps revisiting the other towns, but I guess I'll just have to play the Lost Age someday. I can't imagine being a fan and just having to wait until that game came out and paying full price for what all means is a 2nd part to an unfinished story. Still, as a kid I can see that I would've gotten lost in the graphics, world, and combat of this game which still holds up as tremendously fun.