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I've always been fascinated by this game. Even as I was warned by the not exactly ringing endorsement from Clint:

This was nonetheless a game that I'd had since I could remember anything and had only really tried to play a few times since I was little.

Because it was fucking scary. You have this starting area that enemies can't go into and won't spawn at, but if you step outside of it they almost immediately spawn. And the music abruptly changes from a cheerful, uplifting ditty:

To this fucking insanely intense, harsh battle theme:

With skeletons and wraiths attacking you usually.

So young me thought I was so fucking clever that I would kite enemies into the town and kill them, which worked for a while. Except this open world RPG with the massive Skyrim-sized world (in1987) also had a day night cycle. And as the world turned nearly pitch black, this kinda haunting song would begin to play:

And at night, those fuckers would comerightinto the town and go after you. They didn't give a fuck. And the first time it happened when I was like 6 years old it scared me so much that I didn't touch the game again for 8 years.

But enough of that. This game is known for it's massive open world. How massive?

Pretty fucking big. Here's the starting town, on the map:

And here's how it looks in practice:

Now to be fair the manual for all versions of the game, including the Genesis one, came with a map with some obvious landmarks to seek out:

To take some of that praise away, you have situations like this, where you walk for like 10 minutes in real life to come across a guard outpost:

To add to some praise back, the game does have an in-game map that does give you a good lay of the land:

But it is through single-use items (that granted you get a shitload of). And you can't use it in caves. The game essentially seems to want you to wander around aimlessly to just explore shit, but even that is handcuffed by the fact that it has a hunger and sleep system and isconstantlyspawning enemies at you; but more importantly:

You could be wandering around and find some interesting place and then you're fucked if you don't have a (single use) specific color (of 6) key for the door (that relocks as soon as you leave). I was cheesing this with a walkthrough, but even I was growing frustrated with just hownastythe game was with this stuff even as it didn't affect me at all.

To the game's final credit, itdoeshave a fast travel system:

And even though they are single-use items to activate those items are common as shit. To take that praise away, they aren't signposted or really anywhere near where they should be:

Iguessif you had your eyes glued to the supplied map you'd be able to find them kinda easily by making your own reference points but the normal view is a bit too zoomed in to make even that easy. And to wit, if you wanted tojustspeedrun this, the in-game map is basically just this in terms of critical path:

I power-leveled the shit out of this and effectively couldn't be harmed by anyone but archers and boss characters, but the lack of any direction and basically telling you to fuck off for exploring without being prepared (without you knowing you could be) was making me mad anyway. Like it's funny that you can basically just stand in place and get attacked from all sides:

And the only way you'd be killed is if you literally starved to death.

Like it's Disgaea broken. Bravery also influences the attack range of your sword, so when you max it out:

You can attack shit through walls.

The other thing though, is how horrendous the mazes are to traverse. Likelookat this shit:

If you started in the bottom left:

Congratulations. If you don't have the bird totem you could wander around for 20 minutes before you realize that even entering on that side is a dead end. But that's not the worst one. It's honestly not even that bad if you're using the in-game map, nevermind if your face is glued to a really good walkthrough like mine was (because the game expects you to explore the whole ass world and talk to random NPCs to find out what you need to do through cryptic hints; and to be frank I only had a week to play this and this game is no Skyrim). The solution is just this:

Its not cereal box maze easy, but it's not terrible. Even though you have to retrace your steps out, that's whatever. It's not great but I can deal.

Nah, the bad one isthis one:

Which is located here:

Like holyfuckthis is the worst dungeon I've ever seen in a game. You need one time use-keys to traverse each room, all of them gold. When you get to a certain point the game starts re-locking the ones you opened on you (luckily at least it starts doing so with a door that you can see it close again). This itself is terrible because the fact you have to backtrack through the maze to leave and now you don't know what rooms you came through; but moreso because you needover 30 fucking gold keysto get all the way through the maze and get back out; and that'sifyou know exactly what doors to open and no more. On top of that, one of the doors you need to open is hidden, and you either need to use another single-use item (the orb) to make it visible or you need to wall hump until the game told you that the door (that you can't see) is locked.You know how many keys the inventory screen shows you?

Only 16. So you haveno wayof knowing how many keys you have because the inventory screen only shows you half the amount you need. So at this point the question I was asking myself was (even though I know I wouldn't since I knew I had a fuckton of keys) could you softlock yourself in this dungeonaftergetting the two Macguffins located inside it? I decided no, since the game is constantly spawning enemies in the crypt while you're in it so you could technicallyeventuallyget enough keys to get back out. Maybe even before you die in real life of old age.

Am I done with issues with it? Of course not. The game also is lousy with moon logic puzzles.

"Walk all the way to this point on the map"

"Kill these three snakes attacking these eggs."

"And the turtle will thank you and give you an item to summon her at any time."

Unless the turtle doesn't do that and you need to walk all the way the fuck to the lighthouse over here:

To actually summon the turtle again after the first encounter.

Or maybe:

"Go to this graveyard, and go into the crypt."

"Wait until midnight for this ghost to spawn and talk to him to know what to do. Don't worry about finding this out, because a homeless guy on theother side of the fucking mapwill tell you this in a hint."

At one point you fight a witch (she's in the castle in the fucking forest) and at some point I picked up something that made it so she "is defenseless":

Except I get near her and she starts hurting me anyway, so you hear this riveting combat dialog:

Whatever. Hit her with the sword and she explodes:

And you get the lasso. The lasso is important, because once you get the lasso and travel to literally the opposite corner of the map (which is why I needed to get the other turtle shell since it bugged out and didn't give it to me the first time), you find this:

Now you can fly.Nowtraversing the massive open world is fun. And fast. Now you can go rescue the princess:

Now you can get laid:

And you get paid:

Really, wow:

You can land the swan almost anywhere, and enemies won't spawn anymore if you're flying on it. It's amazing, and fully opens the game up to be more easily traveled without any hassle whatsoever.It sure would befucking ridiculousif you (at least following this walkthrough but I'm not sure how many shortcuts can be taken) basically just had the final boss to deal with after spending ton of hours traversing this unnecessarily huge game world on slow ass foot, huh?

Anyway, let's go fuck up the final boss!

I've got all the items. I've got 999 Bravery points. This should be fine to fuck him up.

With a brief respite where I'm attacked by the old Electronic Arts logo:

Sentences you can hear.

ANTA BAKA

Yeah, that's great for him and all, but...

Why risk it.