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It's 10 years old and despite the the sprites and the game play holds up.
I just got past the most infamous part of the game, the place where many had to start their games all over again because they couldn't beat the bosses but couldn't go back and train. Worse part being that it's only mid way through the game.
ANd I just got past it so no worries haha.

The set up is that you have to storm a castle to save your sister. As soon as you enter you get a cut scene. After it, you can save.
Then there's a regular battle and another cut scene, which you can save after again.

THEN there's the SUPER EVIL one on one fight which unless you're prepared for you will die because even though the guys a knight he can attack from far away with super attacks.... and after you weaken him enough he turns into a demon. THEN! If you're lucky to get through that, there's ANOTHER cut scene which gives you the chance to save.

And then there's another battle in which you have to protect a super weak character from dieing against one of the big bads of the game, who doesn't pull punches, and his two hench-woman who have attacks that can kill you in one hit. If the person you're protecting dies, you arn't allowed to revive her like anybody else and you fail. And unless you're prepared and at high levels she and the bad guys will move first and she'll probably die before you get a turn.

The main problem is the dueling boss in both his human and regular form. Luckily the gameplay can be tweaked enough, if you know what you're doing, to boost your speed and movement abilitys before the protection missions.
And generally, if you can get through those, you can survive ANYTHING.

Unless they have a back up save before the whole castle thing they have to start ALL over at the begining again. And once more, this part is in the middle of the game.
Since I already beat the game I kinda saw it coming and was over twice the level of everybody else there.

It's a stratagy game, so you control a party of 1 to 5 people. Troop placement, actions, and who you take to a battle require more thought then "go here and kill"

Oh this is FAR worse then chess.
Some attacks require a charge time, and the longer it takes the more powerful it is, problem is that the longer it takes the more likely the person will move away, in case of charged melee attacks, or move to a place away from other/close to you/kill you in the case of magic caster.

Of course the computer never has to worry about that. Everything works according to plan for the computer. Because it cheats.

Then you get into spells and moves the pretent actions and movements, or speed them up, or slow them down, best way to NOT get attacked is to drop spells right on top of yourself, at the risk of forgetting and hitting yourself with your spell. Long distance attacks.

And I havn't even gotten into what you have to put up with if you want to Steal equipment from somebody, or poach animals for specail equipment... which you may or may not get depending on how many you kill.

Haha, that would probably work most of the time.

I wanted to play this game again because I got to talking about it and how I beat it the first and only time. What's sad is that I'll never be able to top how I did it.

I mean, how can you top beating the final boss's final form with a berskering frog?