Has this game aged well?

[*Peter*]

Either that, or they were going by D&D rules at the time. They lifted a lot from that whole sale. The only balancing reason I could see why Knight would be so limited would simply be so Red Wizard and White Wizard would still have better utility, especially since buff/debuff magic becomes more important later on than offensive spells.

I guess that is it.
Of course, it doesn't really matter from a pure gameplay perspective;
I just felt it was slightly awkward how the Knight was limited in a lot of ways like that, but I almost only use him for CURE and CUR2 spells anyway, and maybe FOG and RUSE a couple times, if physical defense becomes super-important and should be maximised as much as possible.
Actually I probably don't even really use the actual RUSE spell that much, since you get that spell for free in an infinite amount from the Defense sword, which is cool;
but I would probably give the Defense sword to someone who cannot normally use RUSE spells, at least once Knight has some better weapon to play around with
(such as the Sun sword or the Xcalber, or the Masmune of course).

[vivec]

Is it worth playing if I missed this game on release? I only played the last parts. I'm not so sure that I can fully master it. Although I mostly like pixel art games. But this game is very old.

[*Peter*]

Is it worth playing if I missed this game on release? I only played the last parts. I'm not so sure that I can fully master it. Although I mostly like pixel art games. But this game is very old.

It has certainly aged, and it has a few annoying mechanics that wouldn't be very acceptable today;
for example, you cannot buy items in stock (and this makes buying 99 Heal potions very annoying), and if several characters target the same enemy during a battle, and the first attacker kills that enemy, then the other attackers will try to attack that dead enemy instead of automatically picking a new target for that attack, which results in the infamous "Ineffective" message, which is basically a wasted turn.

That said though, it was a really outstanding game back in 1987, and it still has a lot of charm;
the graphics are very nice and colourful, the controls work fine, and the music is excellent.
I still genuinely enjoy playing it every now and then, and it has a very special atmosphere.