I've been making a real effort recently to stick to one one game at at a time, or at least one game per major genre.
So I've been playing the GBA game Sword of Mana on the RG35XX+ and enjoying it, mostly.
The pixel art is pretty nice, though it leans into an overly-cute JRPG aesthetic for my liking. The real-time combat is clunky at the best of times and hampered with some incredibly bad choices: you have to constantly change weapons to select one that's effective against a current enemy, but your character automatically faces down every time you switch, which is inevitably not the direction you next want to swing in.
I had to consult walk-thoughs early and often to make any progress because it's in no way obvious how to progress or defeat a given boss. But you know, I was giving it the old-school try.
I have, however, just officially quit after an absolutely infuriating battle on a spinning platform against a stupid nautius man (Devius) who appears to be impervious to more or less every combination of weapon and magic I have.
I can't say anything very meaningful about this because I'm completely livid that the game would allow me to just have no options at all. As far as I can see I'd need to leave the level and go and do some kind of weapon upgrade business using online guides because there's no actual logic to the elemental hierarchy that I can see, and TBH I just can't be arsed.
FUCK YOU DEVIUS.
END