While I can tell that a lot of work went into the game, which is a feast for the eyes, there are some things that I find annoying:
- Not only does the "Poison" status carry over at the end of a battle (unless it's cleared by a level-up), it isn't shown in the main menu unless you click on the sub-menu "Status" (there's an indication when moving around, but that doesn't apply to the world map). Antidotes can't be bought (for now?), monsters don't drop any, and it's probably better to save the few ones found in treasure chests for boss battles. As a consequence, each time a party member is poisoned, I'm more or less forced to return to an inn. Edit: At least Jacob learns "Heal1" at level 15, and cure items can be bought after completing the "Sand Palace", so from now on status conditions shouldn't give me as much trouble as before.
- One tile wide passages and moving NPCs are a bad combination, since NPCs (because of their random movement) can block these passages anytime. I lost count how many times the NPC in Hollow Town's inn blocked the way not only into the bed room, but also the way leading to the bed inside the bed room.
- I learned it the hard way that I should always check if a new party member is available nearby before tackling the battlefields on the world map. Maybe it would have been better to prevent the player from fighting on these battlefields with only a single party member.
- Enemies are almost always faster than the player's party members, even when "Haste" is applied. There's no real sense of getting stronger, and I suspect that some form of level-scaling is applied, which is normally enough for me to abandon a game for this reason alone.
- Attacks miss way too often. If the Axe, for example, has an accuracy of 95%, that means missing two attacks subsequently should statistically or on average occur in 1/400 (1/20 x 1/20) instances (0,25%), yet it happens in every second or third battle. Maybe the enemy's evasion is factored in, since there doesn't seem to be an "Evade" prompt.
- Enemy attack patterns seem to rely completely on "A.I. roulette", which means enemies can, in theory, spam their strongest attacks nonstop. Success in battles becomes more difficult to achieve and more reliant on "RNG" this way.
Since I have fond childhood memories of playing "Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest/Mystic Quest Legend" (Super Nintendo) and "Final Fantasy Adventure/Mystic Quest (Game Boy), I'll probably continue my playthrough despite these issues, but I thought I should at least make you aware of them. It's perfectly possible, of course, that other players won't be bothered (as much) by these issues.