I'm currently listening to Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh and I had some pretentious monologue revved up about appreciating the simple things, but honestly, this game is garbage. It is the most braindead simple JRPG you'll ever play, punctuated by a host of frustrating mechanical decisions that twist the game from repetitive into frustrating. I hate that the player character is too weak to ever one-shot monsters the second party member always can. The overworld is a tedious, lifeless TRPG-esque map, so the meat of the game is a one-dimensional dungeon slog with sporadic villages and the most meaningless story beats woven through.

But man, I love that overworld. The artistic direction makes progressing through the game feel like more than it is.

Gameplay and story is shifted every time we move to a new primary location by a rotating cast of characters meant to lead you through new locales, and that establishes this weird sense of camaraderie and excitement that "something new" is around every corner. It makes me wonder that maybe a problem with modern JRPGs is distance, spending too much time with characters I once loved means I grow tired of them and take them for granted.

It's just cozy. I have frankly returned to this game more than any other Final Fantasy title. Yeah, it's so stupidly simple it should only appeal to people who don't play video games, but it's so chill it has a character all its own. Fun as hell to pick back up and binge for 4 or 5 hours while watching a new show -- or just to enjoy one of the best OSTs on the Super Nintendo and in the Final Fantasy franchise -- and shelve for another few years. There's an inexplicable charm to these simple, streamlined JRPGs -- the uncovered block.