I'm probably a rarity on here to have actually beat it maybe a year or so ago on the original cartridge. It's pretty fun if you watch hcbailly's tutorial on youtube about the battle mechanics and understand how to level up in the game and realise you can toad/mini almost everything. I'm not sure about the encounter rate, but I'm pretty sure it's similar to FF1 where when you turn on your game it's predetermined how many steps and what encounter you run into. Maybe the encounter rate went up? It does go up in those traps, though. That's fine, just don't go in there next time if you die. Berserk (which I think raises your hit rate) and curse and mini and toad are very useful compared to other FF's. Compared to the original version of FF1, FF1 had a lot of broken spells. The villain is underrated, as stated in another thread, and the soundtrack is underrated as well. The Rebel Theme, world map theme, and mysiddia tower themes are very beautiful. Pandemonium also is a good song. I also like how even the original version had boss music.