Gonna make an effort to play every game that comes up in these!
I’ve been playing this game on original hardware using an Everdrive. I noticed there are a few ROM hacks available, including quality of life improvements and a retranslation of the original Japanese text.. but I decided to just go for the straight US release.
I have played the game for a few hours. Trying to do this completely blind, and I’ve been pleased with how much progress I have made! I feel like I have been a bit lucky so far, as I’ve stumbled upon a couple things that could have easily eluded me. Almost as if it’s a continuing theme in this game club - I just recently (not sure if this really counts as a spoiler but I’ll tag it anyways) used a new ability to unlock a path to an earlier area.
The menu system is a bit confusing. You can equip items, magic, weapons, things which improve your weapons. It seems like magic and items are used in the same way (pressing A) so if you have a magic equipped, you won’t be able to use items. I’ve got to a point in the game where I am having to switch up items frequently and I can see it getting a bit irritating, but actually the menu opens fairly quickly and is quite responsive so it’s not too bad.
Lots to like about the game so far, the music is great and the combat system has a really nice deliberate pace to it. NPC dialog is entertaining and actually quite useful for the most part. I have managed to muddle my way through the game just by following the various nuggets of wisdom I have obtained from them. It’s fairly light on story but I’m still enjoying it nonetheless, it has kinda early Ys game energy in that regard.