spoilers for a game as old as i am, don't you know
can't believe how ancient "ruins of tokyo" is as a japanese dungeon crawler tradition. actually i'm really surprised they kept japanese names for so many things? i feel like that was pretty uncommon in localization for at least another decade. in fact until sayaka was like "i'm going to be so-cho now" i thought that was just his name, oops. even if i didn't know/remember the word i really could've realized the cho was 長...
anyway, that part of the game was by far the most annoying overall, and even harder than the beginning, surprisingly...but it was also really cool and i learned a bunch about how to play the game. kind of wild there's only like one spot you can buy cure books?? fortunately i eventually landed on a monster who knew teleport and i was able to make a quick detour without much trouble to grab way too many of them. cycling a frontline monster around for free heals seems like a good way to conserve resources in general...they feel really good in this game after the beginning. i had two humans bc frontier made me think they'd be really strong. and they are, but also annoying as hell to manage lmao. my main character is espergirl. kind of hilarious the game doesn't show growths like the later games do so at one point in the second world i looked over and she had twice as much hp as the other characters and nearly maxed out strength...lol. unfortunately the only nonequippable battle skills i've been able to get this whole time are ESP and barrier. kind of sad :/
the fake ending of this game is incredible. i met the man in the hat again and he says "ashura is above". i looked all around the floor for stairs. the stairs were directly above where he was standing. i've heard what the last boss actually is, but a trap door right in front of the last door is such a great gag, hahaha.
cool game. got some really naive jank (getting like 4 encounters on consecutive steps is a real trip and the balance is wonky as hell, peak "random encounters can be way more dangerous than bosses" old-school style) but it's pretty creative and really ambitious. i kinda can't imagine what 2 and 3 are like? it'll be cool to see
