Probably one of the best games in this genre any criminally underrated and played.

I wrote this as a comment on Reddit but I feel like I might as well convert it to a review. As such it might not be a super complete review but I wanna give the game an extra 1.

I'm in my early 30s, and my whole life I've had this "problem" where I try to never use consumables "just in case I need it later" or something, try to explore every inch of the area before moving on to the next one, and oh ♥♥♥♥ did I just trigger a cutscene before I finished exploring? Good thing I saved 5 minutes ago so I can restart. Spending more time on equipment windows trying to min-max than actually playing the game, etc. I've been gaming in a this manner for years, but I stumbled upon this game recently, and it has enabled me to both explore to my content and min-max my equipment, progress, consumables, etc, while at the same time allowing me to "give up" exploration and move on, as well as become flexible with combat-related elements.

It does this by having hardly any "quests" per se, rather the main "quest" of the game is: Explore and figure out how to progress to new areas, and find crystals. While doing this you'll unlock new classes, mounts, waypoints, shop inventory, etc. You're not "punished" by cutscenes from entering areas you shouldn't be in, and it's honestly fun to try to find sneaky ways to get into these areas. Of course, it often leads to ending up in an encounter and losing to enemies at a much higher level, but it's easy to make up the loss penalty (and if you stumble upon a boss you aren't equipped to defeat, there is no loss penalty at all for bosses). I haven't looked up a single thing but still managed to explore basically the entire map, grand as it is, and there are still a few small areas I'm figuring out. I think I reverted back to an older save maybe once, because I triggered an achievement for "teleporting to a new place" or something when actually I had jump-quested my way up a cliffside that probably wasn't intended to be done without a certain mount.

Speaking of which, the game does a great job with consumables in my opinion; they're pretty darn cheap. Until a certain point in the game, you aren't even able to use them in battle, so you can choose to try to battle and heal by minimizing their use after battles by healing with magic, or you can just go into battle and top up afterwards. It takes a while before the latter is really sustainable, but once you get enough waypoints it's often not too cumbersome to make a quick save in a dungeon, tp out and top up on consumables, and port back. You're able to respec your stats to some degree, and you can eventually max out all classes for all characters by playing enough, so what you really end up min-maxing is your time, if you choose to. Equipment is easy to come by, and there are no permanent missables; you can choose to steal items from bosses "properly" or buy them later for a cost.

It's not so much the game is holding your hand, but rather allowing you a framework to really play the game how you want to, with low stress. Honestly it's been an extremely freeing experience for me. And for those who do want to adjust the game, there are difficulty settings and then some at the base level, and it also has mod support. You can pretty much make the game as hard or easy as you want for yourself. I'm certainly not doing the game enough justice but I love playing this.

I can't speak for the structure of the battles throughout the vanilla game as I played the entirety on the Final Fantasy Overhaul mod BUT

The battle systems and the rest of the game at play here are an extremely pleasant experience. I was never really one for JRPGs through my adolescence, barely so in my childhood. But I've been on a bit of a JRPG kick in my adult years and this one has been extremely enjoyable. Of course, it's a little light on the story and some aesthetic regards, but the overall experience is pleasant. The world is 100% explorable from what I could tell. There's barely a block in existence that you can't touch the top of. The world is charming and well thought out, there's clearly been a lot of care put into the development of this game. Its weakest point is definitely the music, but I can forgive that as this seems like a very low-budget passion project. Using royalty free work can be excused, and they didn't even pick bad tracks in that regard anyway.

Definitely worth the $14 and then some.

Quintar breeding is wack though how the hell...