awesome art of Bo/Gilliam :D

Just beat this game on the Switch SNES library. I had fun, it was really great in a lot of areas but the storywriting was awful.

Bo / Gilliam I became very attached to, so much that I refused to simply use him as 'fusion fodder' for Karn.

I think it's because they still weren't sure how much they could get away with in text at the time, as it wasn't an early SNES game, but it was one of those middle ones, so without an expansion chip, putting in more dialogue came at the cost of the game design.

And for all that, I still like the writing myself. Each area has a reason you can only get at most one helper. That alone adds something to the narrative, as each area is literally given why they can't, or won't in a few cases, help you oppose the Dark Dragons, but every time you win against them, you're still chipping away at their forces, and I think that's something to be praised.

Also, that ending. Not only because the True Final Boss is the hardest in the game, but because to get it, you have to have an ultimate fusion form, so if you want to just win, you can fuse and kill it easy, but if you want to challenge yourself, don't, and instead fight it with your party of mortals, and oh gods is it a challenge, but so satisfying to pull off.

And then you get that epilogue, each character returning home, their stories finished for now, as they move into their places in the world, all told with just the places and characters, no dialogue. I think that alone is a fantastic bit of story telling I would love to see accomplished more often.