Final Fantasy Legend was my first real RPG on the Game Boy, and man, what a trip. It's actually the first SaGa game (they just slapped the Final Fantasy name on it for the West). You pick a ragtag crew—humans, mutants, monsters—and start climbing this weird tower that supposedly leads to paradise.

The combat's simple but brutal—your weapons break, stats grow randomly, and sometimes you just get wrecked by a random encounter. Mutants learn spells out of nowhere, and monsters evolve by eating meat drops. It's janky, but there's something weirdly charming about how unpredictable it all is.

That chiptune battle theme still lives in my head rent-free. The whole thing feels like a rough sketch of what RPGs could be, and I mean that in the best way possible.