For reasons I don't know, when I started playing, the input for capturing a screen was the same for the fast forward button. I didn't realize this until ten minutes into the game, whereupon I removed the capture button and found one hundred and thirty .pngs in my gba folder. That's really the harshest thing I could say about this game, so if you really want to know more, follow me into a magical, ill-defined world.
You start the game off as some dude in a bed. You wake up because there is a fire, and the DARK DRAGONS are attacking your town! There's an old guy who says some stuff I don't remember, and a girl with magic powers that the DARK DRAGONS are after. She proceeds to petrify you, then go out to face her ill-defined destiny by fighting some evil general in a 16-bit confrontation so epic I'm just going to rely on the YOUTUBE DUBBLAH once again. (note: as a 14-year-old I loved that fucking song, and also note how the let's player tries to defend this hackneyed plot opening by pointing out WELL THIS WAS ONLY THE SUPER NINTENDO PLOTS WERE ONLY SOMEWHAT DEVELOPED BACK THEN). Of course, she's captured, leading to this thrilling background:
THE LEGEND BEGINS AGAIN, FUCK YOU SLIMES
It's hard to really define what happens for awhile. You go a nearby town, where the castle is being attacked by monsters. You beat up the monsters, with the first boss being a frog that turns into a bigger, MUTANT frog. At this point you begin to realize that unless you want problems, you're probably going to have to grind for awhile and that grinding consisted of hitting the A button a million times because you literally have no choices besides hitting stuff with a sword.
At any rate, oh wait the castle is safe but now someone is making earthquakes with an earthquake machine! You go underground and across lava and there is a earthquake machine by god, with a DARK DRAGON GENERAL, who changes forms into some monster thing. You beat him in a pitched battle of hitting A and eating herbs whenever your life goes beyond a certain point. As your reward, you get the EARTH KEY. Eventually, since no one gives even a hint of your next destination, you will wander around and find a kingdom of bird people. But oh fuck, the bird king is sick because a wizard from some DOOMASSIA has sent him a poison letter. Your hero goes to sleep in the castle after getting a runaround, and you take the role of the heroic princess Nina, who somehow gets all of your items. But that's okay, for a very special reason.
Nina is the game's official healer/buffer, and as such her damage is piss-poor. But wait, remember that Earth Key, the thing that is never explained anywhere and looks just like a random quest item. Well, it's actually an inexhaustible attack item that at this stage in the game, does double the damage of your hero to all foes. Again, the game does nothing to point out that HEY THIS KEY IS ACTUALLY A FUCKING FIST GOING INTO THE BUTTS OF EVIL.
At any rate, Nina goes into some dungeon/evil tower exactly like the previous dungeon (for reference, this is the dungeon that I had the first youtube mashup with) with some random soldiers that provide shitty damage. Eventually you meet the evil wizard at the top of the tower, who wants immortality or something and uses a gas to capture the princess while one of the bird guards turns into a giant bird and flies away and no it is never explained why they didn't fly to the top of the tower in the first place. Hero is recruited to save princess, proceed to use Earth Key (which has again teleported back into the original bag) to kill everything and kill wizard, who goes "aw shit you're a dragon maaaaaaaaan."
So, now you get Nina in your party, and ACTION REALLY HEATS UP. Hero continues to mash attack, but now Nina gets to fumble through your items to find the Earth Key to brutally murder everything! Also in some random cave there's a piece of ore that will be traded for an item that you need to advance, and no you are given no clues where the item is. Note, this situation of a random obscure chest containing a plot-critical item has so far repeated itself three times again. BEHOLD OLD-SCHOOL RPGS, YOU DUMB SHITS.
Next stop is the Beast Village, which is plagued by a water shortage and that this shortage is preventing a marriage between a beastman and a human woman from a neighboring village. Of course, behind all these problems are the motherfucking DARK DRAGONS, so you attack their fort. There you're tricked by an evil double of some village elder, but are saved by BO, the beastman hunter. Beat up the bad, and now you have a not really useful attacker who could use magic except that offensive magic is ridiculously expensive and contains no clear advantages to regular attacks. DOUBLE POUND THAT A BUTTON, THIS IS SUCH A GOOD GAME.
Coming up is the only amusing thing in the game, that being that you now have to visit (again, this is never actually stated in the game, I literally cannot imagine playing this without some sort of guide) a town waaaay in the north called ROMERO, which is infested by zombies. I giggled, whatever. You have to get some magic water in another fucking dungeon to lay the zombies to rest, and somehow this leads you to getting another magic key, this one doing absolutely shit. OH WAIT it lets you enter the giant robot golem that is the source of the water blockage. Beat up the DARK DRAGON GENERAL in the Golem, use Golem to blow up rock blocking water, witness unholy marriage, find out that golem is once again being controlled by the DARK DRAGONS and has just blown up a town thanks to your apparent incompetence, go back and defeat the DARK DRAGON general (who...surprise, turns into another weird monster thing). In one of those moments of pure irony, the golem robot exhibits more character than any character in the game, committing suicide in a nearby volcano in contrition for its action.
I don't think I have to say this anymore, but without any guidance from the game, you go to some random blotch of sprites representing a temple, where the hero has to beat a dragon, SOLO STYLE, by carefully pacing himself and using his sword judiciously. As a reward for this show of skill that totally doesn't involved smashing the action button, the hero gains the power to transform into a dragon for a fairly large magic charge. As the change takes a turn to occur, it is largely useless for regular battles, but so far has made every boss battle a complete null challenge as being a dragon means that you can murder everything in one turn.
OKAY WE'RE ALMOST AT THE END HERE.
Our party finds themselves between two towns. Get ready for some great writing: one town is made entirely out of gold and is always day thanks to magic, and one is full of dirty thieves and is always night (magically)! The drill is basically the same: do some random tangential task to gain access to cave that has the keys which are controlling the day and night. The one to gain the night key is completely forgettable, except you gain this party member, who is described as a master thief:
OH COME ON
Anyway, to wrap this up, to get the KEY OF LIGHT (and a boat to sail away I don't know why I need a boat but hey cool a boat), I find a magic mirror that allows the old mayor of the golden town to talk to his dead wife, which convinces him to give me the key rather than give it to the DARK DRAGONS. The key is gained, but when I go to get my boat, the DARK DRAGONS blow it up for some reason. Now I've got some dynamite, and shit is going to get wrecked.
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