I recently went back and played these great games again and I decided to write my opinion on them. I will not give away any spoilers or go into much detail into the story so no need to worry if you have not played these. Also, this will only be for the first two games in the series. There is a third and it was made much later. I did not find it near as great as the original two (but that is a whole nother discussion). I was nine or ten when I first got my hands on these wonderful games. I remember at first I had a difficult time understanding what to do but that's probably because I had never played anything like this before and I was still young. I grew up on Mario and other simple games. This game is not complicated by any means, in fact, it's pretty simple compared to most RPG's out there. It is a turned based RPG that is also a puzzle game. The puzzles were done very well, not to simple but also not overly complicated either. I love puzzles and that's probably one of the reasons I loved this game so much. You get to level your characters and there is a good amount of customization on how you would like to set them up. The game, characters, and progression was all very balanced. You can grind for high levels and stats if you want, which can be very helpful but you don't have to spend the majority of your time grinding if you're not into that.
My favorite part about this game was the story. Honestly, I'm not sure I would have loved it as much as I do if I had not first played this when I was young. I don't know why but there was something about it that really grabbed my imagination. I was always wanting to figure out the mysteries and the lore. To learn more about the characters and NPCs that are in the world. The story is broken into two games. Originally it was going to be one game but the story was too long to fit on one Gameboy Advanced cartridge. This worked out great though, In the first game you have your 4 main characters who are the "good guys" trying to save their world and in the second game you finish the story as the "bad guys". I put quotations because this style of storytelling allows you to see other perspectives on what is going on and why everyone is doing what they are doing. There are definitely good and bad guys but get an understanding of why everyone is doing what they are doing and some characters are not quite who you thought they were. It all worked together very well. You were also able to transfer your data from the first game to the second game as well which had some neat effects on small parts of the story.
The music in this game is absolutely amazing. It sets the mood for each area or battle you may be in. The music itself tells so much of the story. Maybe it's because I was so young when I first played this but every time I hear the music it brings back so many great memories. All of the music was composed by Motoi Sakuraba and the amazing thing is that when he composed this music to the first game, the Gameboy Advanced was brand new and the first version only had one speaker in the game system yet the quality was really great. If your interested here is a remastered soundtrack on youtube that is really good too. If you have not played the game though I would totally play it first and experience it.
I have very few negatives for these games but one thing that can be annoying is the number of random encounters. You will be non stop running into monsters and battles. If you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry it can get old. Personally, it does not bother me too much though. I love to grind my levels up so I welcome any battle but I can see how it could be bothersome to some people.
All in all, I absolutely love this game! If you want to go on an adventure with a great story I highly recommend it. It is an older game but worth every moment. Have you played this game before? If so I would love to know what your thoughts were on it. Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed. Feel free to upvote, follow and resteem.