This game...this game is something special. It doesn't sound like much. It's a fairly basic plot, and the characters are thin sketches of themselves, more archetypes than actual fleshed out people.
And yet, that helps them to design something great. This is the standard to which I hold Action RPGs in my life, and very few have ever measured up to it.
To set the stage quickly, since I have limited character count, this is an RPG, with a party going on an adventure, while you play the side character who constantly shows up to hand off important items and things to help them get going, though here, you eventually turn into the real hero.
Simple plot...but the mechanical complexities? There's 8 weapon types in the game, some weapons having several copies, some only one, but they all hit differently. There's...I think 12 magic spells, all of which do something differently, some are even used for the mind bending puzzles in the game, and that's awesome design, as they're still useful in combat.
And then there's the fairies. Introduced early if you go looking, they are the only thing that can level up in the game, there's about 10 types(some have duplicates), that you can find in the world, with the ability to have two out at a time. Some attack. Some boost stats. Some heal. One even serves as a resurrection item by giving up a level.
This is ENIX design at its finest, and they drag out every drop they can from it. From the Tower of Light where the Dragon Lives, to the Arena under a bar where you have to unalive(they say he'll recover...but he exploded so probably not) one of the other fighters to get a spot, to just a dozen other things.
It's a treat, and I hope to play it again sometime...except for that one puzzle in the ice palace that seems to have no solution where you have to walk up to the door and press Y, which otherwise is never used on your SNES controller. That puzzle stank. But still, fun times.