First off, the game does more or less do what it says it does: its a retro styled difficulty rpg that tends to imitate the classics. If you think that's good or bad depends on if you really remember the classics and can compare (and this is probably going to be the main thing that determines if you are interested in completing the game or not, so I'm going to be pretty thorough, I did play the game for nearly a hundred hours after all trying a bunch of stuff)
So, gameplay. First off, if you go to the forests right away you will get killed by hard encounters: Check. Then, you have to worry about a relatively high encounter rate: Check. And then you get dangerous encounters that can often wipe your party if you get unlucky right out the gate. Check. However, you also get the ability to save in the overworld anywhere, and you get a few items that can reduce the encounter rate (or a few rarer ones, at least till endgame, that turn off encounters completely for awhile), so you can actually route your way around. So, while the encounter rate is high and some random encounters are deadly, you can manage your way around with either a little bit of grinding or routing, so theres at least a bit of strategy there. The bosses, for the most part, are typically only moderately difficult with only a few exceptions (notably one thats due to a certain status effect later, which you can grind for an accessory to circumvent). Theres one part where you have to do a mandatory solo fight against a "hero" with a newly acquired character, and I did it twice to test: one with a character that hadn't been upgraded (max level of first class) and then an upgraded class with a few extra levels and best equipment at that point in the game- It was doable both times, with just barely eeking out a victory the first time, and a normalish challenge the second. A second optional solo fight later in the game however, that was brutal and it required some class changes and strategy to do. And the final optional boss was very brutal/rng heavy, but the last boss not so much with some proper prep.
So with the encounters and difficulty there is actually some potential strategy on how you build your party as well: most of your characters get an option to class change to either a physical branch or magical branch of development, and you can potentially make a very unbalanced party or a pretty good one (and you get more picks of class change later for some as well). I picked all the "weird" picks whenever I could and did ok, when I went back to previous classes at the end of the game to compare I could see where certain parts of the game might have been easier with those choices, but I think you can probably beat it with any combination, at least with enough grinding or proper strategy. At the very end of the game you can also do class abandonment/swaps if you really want to try a different path and grind up. The one complaint I have on these is some of these classes active abilities don't seem to work very well, and there was one issue with a capstone ability (drain) being sort of broken that might get a patch later, but other than that they seem all mostly workable. However speaking of party makeup... the game also does the classic retro "party member leaves and takes all their stuff" several times throughout the game, so you can be set back by that several times, but you don't lose anything truly important that way that you would miss out other than an accessory since characters usually don't share gear.
Last thing to note about the gameplay is the actual grinding and dungeons themselves. In reality, theres only a few really "good" places to grind in this game, and the game also really suffers from not having a great place to grind money late in the game too (theres a ye olde golden slime midway thru the game but its rare enough and in a place that doesn't give much experience so its better to just grind normally late in the game). Dungeons where you might need to grind a bit do have a restore fountain so you aren't constantly making trips back to town, which is certainly an upgrade from some old school classics. There is one huge complaint here though: theres a "save point" at the end of many of these before bosses that restore mp as well... but if you use them too much they PERMANENTLY REMOVE MAX HP. Yep, you can actually accidentally lose several precious hitpoints if you aren't paying attention. This is really my biggest complaint with the game right here. The good news is a few hitpoint loss won't hurt too bad unless you do it right at the beginning of the game, but after I realized that was happening I started just smoking thru the dungeons and scouting everything out first, and then reloading the save and coming in prepared. Actual dungeon designs themselves other than this however: theres a little bit of variety and they seem decently constructed for the most part. A handful of puzzles to break up the monotony here and there.
With gameplay down, lets go to the story: Overall, its an okish, very anime adjacent story. And I do mean that - you have a serious story with occasional comic relief and, well, fanservice. Thats probably the best way to actually describe it. I did at least somewhat enjoy it. Some areas have side stories that advance as the game goes on, which can lead to quests later in the game, which is nice. A few minor options on how you complete some quests.
Audio: some decent track choices and effects, no major complaints here.
UI and Controls: RPGMaker standards mostly, with one caveat being you cannot run everywhere, which is somewhat... odd. It makes it a bit weird not knowing if you are going to be able to run or not in different places. Cursor memory controls make some of the later grinding more tolerable.
Replayability: Minor - you can try some different class choices and maybe hunt down starpieces earlier in the game you may have missed. However, without a new game plus and xp bonus options it seems hardly worth it to go thru the grinding again unless you just mod your save file.
So, overall: You more or less have to be a fan of old retro games to enjoy this one, and I would recommend it for those people specifically. However, I do think the game would have been better with a few changes:
1: Rebalanced xp curves and encounter exp - theres only a few decent grinding spots and certain levels, especially immediately after first class upgrade, seem overly long. Throw in a better gold grinding spot late in the game in this one too. It could use additional xp grind items later as well after the game opens up a bit / you get the last party member / you use the class abandonment feature.
2: About a 15-20% encounter reduction overall: I still think just having slightly less encounters overall would make it play better, since in the end I was just grinding to buy Smokes and skipping all the encounters in a dungeon. As a caveat, some areas could actually get their own, higher encounter rates as a special challenge instead.
3: Ability fixes - steal doesn't seem really worthwhile (other than maybe 2 items) and could use a big rebalance, some class abilities seem a bit weird, some odd spells don't really work well and you end up just relying on some classic damage abilities.
4: There really needs to be something akin to what the Dragon Quest games got with treasure hunting to find hints on items left in an area (sniffing out treasure): hunting down all the star pieces got very tedious (and I only got to high 80s before I decided to just mod the rest in to check out the optional boss for completion sake, since I was afraid I might have permanently missed the rest in areas you cannot go back to)
I will say I did enjoy the class options and how each were drawn differently and had their own style. I kind of wish that part was leaned into more, would have loved to swap between classes more easily somewhat similar to DQ.
