The Saga series in general -- in my opinion -- has one of the deepest turn based battle systems ever. I also find it to be one of the most widely mis-understood RPG's out there. Basically you have Life Points (LP), Hit Points (HP), Weapon Points (WP), and Durability Points (DP). Your characters can equip multiple weapons at the same time and your characters never level up (in the traditional sense). HP acts like a shield for LP; once LP is 0 your character is dead; HP is regenerated after every battle and all status ailments are removed. Weapon points are like skill points -- per weapon. Also, your weapons 'learn' new, more powerful skills as you use them more and more, but at the same time the loose DP and eventually break if you over use them before you have them repaired. So when you go into a (lengthy) dungeon, it is important to have at least 2 or 3 weapons with a good amount of skills built up so that if one weapon's DP or WP gets low, you can just use the others. Your characters never level up like they do in FF or something similar, but their attributes get raised by doing an appropriate action -- i.e. swinging a sword over time will raise strength, casting magic will raise intelligence and or willpower, etc.. The Saga series as a whole really isn't about the story or the characters, it's primarily about old school character growth (attribute growth, not their part in the story lines) and battles. It seems to me that this series is/always has been Square's attempt at bring the mechanics of games like Wizardry to a console friendly format. I think they have succeeded, but the non-linearity of the series and the minimal story seem to be the things that prevent most people from enjoying it. Here is a link to the RPGfan.com review that persuaded me to buy it: http://rpgfan.com/reviews/romancingsagaminstrel/index.html Allrpg.com liked it a good deal, too. I really like this series (including Unlimited Saga *gasp*!) and think it is one of the most mis-understood RPG's out there. As a caveat, though, RPGamer.com's review is aimed more at the mainstream RPG'er, so you might want to read that, too. Hope that helps.