A little variety in the gameplay is enough to make it go a long way and make it feel a bit more fresh. And it's quite odd too, considering that Mystic Ark is tied to the game Brain Lord as well as The 7th Saga in some ways. In any case, this is a fairly quaint SNES RPG that is probably worth looking at. Weird settings, figurines to collect and revive, and characters that are allusions to stuff. All this makes for a really weird game overall. Much, much easier than the 7th Saga too, although there's a bit of early game hell where you only have one character for the entire first chapter.
Characters in-game really do resemble the ones from 7th Saga in mechanics, except for Tokio who's unique ninja class is hard to compare with other characters from that game. One problem with this game is that there's no revival spell, and reviving party members involves walking back to the shrine, the main hub of the map, and retrieving their figurines again. Even worse it's a game over if the main character falls in battle and I never like those types of game over conditions. This is particularly bad considering this game has a few instakill spells (luckily the Blackout spell which two party members get is very accurate against enemies too). For some cases I'd have to put up Deathguard or the reusable Cross item right away. Magic and physicals tend to be different overall, and the Powerwave skill is probably the most useful of all as long as the character's HP remains at full.
One complaint I have is overall movement, it's so clunky and doesn't work well with the SNES-generated environments. You can easily get stuck on things even when you shouldn't and it's a hassle to go around. The encounter system is similar to 7th Saga, the best thing about that game for the record, and I'm glad it was returned for this game. Go ahead and try this, it's an interesting adventure.
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