>>11825739
And I'm saying they rarely did shine for that point in the game for most RPGs at the time, including some of the ones you listed. Secret of Mana especially is a fucking slog until around when you get the sprite, the beginning was a bunch of pointless backtracking and it took ages to get some orbs/elementals to start leveling up weapons and getting spells. It was carried mostly on its ambitious take on real time rpg gameplay, music, multiplayer, etc.. By comparison, a team known primarily for SRPGs where the world building is told in long dialogue/event scenes between battles took their first stab at adapting that to a more traditional jrpg format. They did a pretty good job considering the past and present trends in the genre. The significance of the intro actually does get bigger as you play through the game (and the sequel) which is why most people's issues about it are with just pacing and needing condensation more than anything. IIRC there's even a romhack that basically just skips to when Isaac and Garret leave town.
Gonna prepare you now in case you play the sequel, transferring data between the games via the password was before its time, and not in a good way. Later games that went from GBA to DS got that system right, but for GS you need to either link two systems together or take down an absurdly long password, then type it back in on the other game. It was a fucking mess. There's gotta be ways around that shitshow by now while emulating at least.
