This still stands today as the only game I've played that I would call perfect, well, besides its sequel.
This game is a traditional JRPG at heart, but seems as if it was made especially for the SNES with its look. The story is breathtaking and starts you off in a small village known as Vale with incredibly cute chibi characters. Yeah, I did kind of have to say that.
Probably the first thing you'll notice about this game is its unique art style and way of conveying speech. The graphics contain very detailed sprites and great looking environments, pertaining a look that kind of reminds me a bit of a Chrono Trigger-Final Fantasy 6 mix. The character designs are impressive and like I said, very detailed for a GBA game. Speech is conveyed with of test and then an icon of the speaking character, however, accompanying that is something similar to voice acting, somewhat like Sim talk, but instead of 'Uba dinka da!' or some subliminal messages, you get a nice little stream of somewhat high pitched voices which do nothing at all against the game. Emotions are usually given off by light bulbs or such things popping above a character's head, embarrassment is accompanied by a glowing red face and it all adds up to something you could probably invision as an anime accompanied by a great soundtrack.
This game's story is a great way of portraying a journey, I don't want to call it an adventure or anything, because it really is a journey. Characters are memorable and develop a lot, character relationships are strong and the story is fantastic all together, its ending doesn't really make you say "ARGH, WHAT A CLIFF HANGER!" its more like the ending of Star Wars Episode 5 and, there's also a sequel out too ya know.
The combat and gameplay are also standout great parts of the game. Combat is as I said your traditional RPG but they throw in these things called Djinns that add tons of originality to the game. Djinns pretty much determine your character, what spells they can use, what class they are, summons, stats and are pretty much are the game. Djinn are little elementals that you can 'equip' to your character. Characters are specific adepts (People who use magic, or Psyenergy in this case) and the four main characters you'll control Isaac, Garet, Ivan and Mia are Earth, Fire, Wind and Water adepts respectively. Because of such, you'll mostly want to match earth Djinn with Isaac, Fire Djinn with Garet and so on because what type of Adept you are also factors in on your class, so it is usually best to make characters of their meant archetypes; Isaac (or the Earth Adept) is a balanced character who can heal, Garet is Melee focused damage dealer, Ivan is the spell focused Damage Dealer and Mia is the main healer. In battle, Djinn also have effects. Depending on what Djinn you use a different effect will occur (Deal damage, heal your party, protect your characters, raise stats etc) however, then the Djinn will be on set, meaning it won't be counted towards your character anymore which means less spells, lower stats and such. Once you have enough Djinn on Set you can use summons, which range from low damage dealing ones using one Set Djinn to winged judges with a lion canon that explodes your enemies using four set djinn. After this, the Djinn go on Standby until they are counted for your character again. The system for some people might seem a little confusing, but in practice, it really isn't. Djinn are collected in many different ways: Random encounters in specific areas, puzzles, given to you by story characters.
Another part of the game that you do while you're not reading the great story or fighting the fantastic battles is do puzzles. These are very enjoyable and require you to use spells to move objects, lift them up or use whirlwinds to blow away leaves from a pillar to hop onto, the puzzles are fun and are much better than just wandering around a dungeon aimlessly and random encounters aren't too frequent.
The game is around 25 hours to complete the first time but if you tried to get every single Djinn, weapon and deck your characters out, it could probably take you another 5 or so hours, however, the game has great replayability and multiplayer. Even if you don't have any friends with the game, the multiplayer can still be used as a great gauntlet of sorts to try out characters and play around with Djinn combinations.
All in all, this game ranks as my favorite game of all time, tied with its equally phoenominal sequel.
In short: if I haven't convinced you to buy this game, just buy it for your own sake, you cannot consider yourself an RPG fan or heck a true GAME fan if you haven't checked this masterpiece out.