Tengai Makyou: Ziria

Now you may have a better time with it than me cause I kept save state uses to a bare minimum which means I died and walked back from the last town I saved at multiple times. I dont know how rng manip in this works so no advice. Now let's get into the meat of this game.

On the surface it seems like a very typical jrpg about feudal japan. It's very much not! it is the first jrpg with voice acting !! And it's full of flavor from the dialogue to the little mechanics and gameplay implementations! The way the game steers you around is fantastic imo. I never felt lost and you never will (probably) as long as you talk to most npcs. The way it implements new mechanics in battles by giving you a spell to deal with a boss after he kicks your ass once is awesome!! It gives you so many tools and introduces them so well its neat!!

The thing is, a lot and I mean a LOT of the mechanics, while help in setting the tone of the game are just fucking. awful. If any of your party members die you get booted back to the last town you saved at and lose half your money. I have no idea why do this aside from not wanting to implement a revival mechanic. Really stupid. Buffs and debuffs' turn length is completely random. Sometimes a debuff can last 5 turns on you sometimes a buff can wear off on the turn you cast it. Enemies can surprise attack you (including bosses) but you can't surprise attack them. The encounter rate is insane. It takes half the game to get the third party member and honestly the time before it felt miserable with how much dmg enemies do vs how much you can do with only 2 people. The game is also 30+ hrs which is crazy for 1989!! It also gives you way too many fucking items for the limited space you have imo.

One good mechanic I can say is debuffs and status ailments affect almost all bosses (cant verify if it works on all) I put the final boss to sleep and muted a few bosses. My final verdict is this game is more of an experience than a fun game and I don't recommend it unless you have a lot of patience. But I highly respect it for how ambitious it is for a 1989 game. Looking forward to there being a tl patch for manjimaru someday because my japanese isn't good enough to play something with old timey japanese.