The Final Fantasy Legend

spoiler free
The Final Fantasy Legend is actually a SaGa game, it was re-titled for North American release because they thought more Americans would play it that way.
Whether or not that is true, I am now playing it, I'm pretty far into it & when it is over I will edit this review with an update.
Normally I would wait to post a review until after I have completed a game once or twice but since there are no reviews for this game yet I thought I ought to take the initiative & invite other gaming enthusiasts to give this seminal work a whirl.
After scrubbing through a few videos on youtube comparing Final Fantasy Legend & Final Fantasy Adventure I decided to opt for Adventure, not Legend, but since I couldn't find it initially I contented myself with Legend. I was attracted to Adventure because of its Zelda-esqe style of character navigation & combat, with the promise of some nice backstory a la Square, & I thought the 4-character team situation of Legend might become clumsy.
It isn't.
You can pick between 3 classes for each of your 4 teammates - human, mutant & monster.
Humans are the most customizable, offering 8 slots for weapons, items & armor.
Mutants have 4 customizable slots, the first 4 are continuously auto-assigned through the game.
Monsters aren't customizable at all.
Human pros are they can hold the most objects & can be intentionally powered up with enough money, the cons are that they can only be leveled up by spending money on any attribute with the exception of mana (strength of magic casting), which cannot be leveled up at all.
Mutant pros are that they level up automatically & cast magic but their con is that they only have 4 spaces within which to assign armor or spells (...or weapons or items). Their stats increase randomly after winning some fights so making them stronger saves money but costs time, which is the opposite of humans.
Monster pros are that the cost nothing, level up by eating defeated monster meat (or level down if you're unlucky) & their cons are that they probably won't be as strong as your human(s) or mutant(s).
Contrasted with other jrpgs I am having a blast because spells work. Unlike many other rpgs & jrpgs where magic only works a fraction of the time, in this game you can blind, bind, stone & death enemies immediately without a delay timer or some other in-the-way-obstacle to magic.
You swing a sword, it almost always hits.
You cast a spell, it almost always lands.
Combine that satisfaction with a cute world, your own 4 characters (you can swap them out if you don't like any,) cute dialogue & an obvious mission & you have yourself a recipe for a really nice time.