I recently discovered the game "Emerald Dragon" for the SNES. I had never heard of it before, so I assumed that Japan was, once again, being a greedy little child and keeping to from the rest of us. What this game has are a lot of the great, time-less elements that make old rpgs so memorable. What it also has are the frustrating flaws of classic rpgs.

Things that I like: character interactions, the "chat" option and the red-dot on the map to help with locating plot points when things get confusing. I like the general storyline (I'm about 5 hours in, so I'll update this later) and the AI on the NPCs is surprisingly good (as opposed to, say... Lufia I, which makes me shudder). I also LOVE the fairness of getting back the weapons/armor when a character leaves your party.

Things I don't like: I don't like that "non-main" characters don't level up. I don't like that there are so many non-playable characters (really? You can only control the main character?) -- but that's not as big of a deal as characters who just don't DO anything when they could attack (I know he's a healer, but if he doesn't have to heal that turn.... and he has a crossbow... FIGURE IT OUT).

I don't love the battle system. I feel that, it should either be traditional turn-based (FFIVs ATB was cool as well) or more programmable (again, I know this was an SNES game, but c'mon your rock star hackers, make it happen, please!).

Addons/Improvements I recommend if the game is worked on by a programmer:
1) Give items in-game descriptions so that we know what everything does.
2) Have weapon and armor upgrades SHOW HOW MUCH something is improved (not just and up or down arrow).
3) Add an in-game fighting tutorial -- seriously, I almost quit the game until I went somewhere online to figure out that I actually had to walk into the enemy and keep hitting up (or the arrow that aimed at the enemy). This needs to be better explained in-game. I'm sure the translators (thank you translators, btw, the translation is AMAZING) could easily add some text.


That's it for now, let me know your thoughts!