We have Might and Magic-style navigation, Might & Magic-style character creation, standard dialogue that isn't too different from those games, but the main draw is the nonlinear quests you can do and the battle system. The main quest is as simple as "go to the last castle of the game and beat the dragon" and that's all there's to it, but of course with a beginner party this isn't feasible until you get more stuff. Gotta get that gold, gotta get that experience, gotta keep your characters' skills and spells up to snuff, and the difficulty is actually quite varied. Early on, goblins and kobolds shouldn't actually give you trouble, even though you're bound to miss a lot, so shall they. The quests do involve usual monster killing in general, or some other things. One quest in particular basically is a trap too.
The battle system is a nice blend of tactical RPG with some nice sprites (that you set yourself) and enemies always approach in hordes. Weak enemies however will miss your experienced fighters and die quickly, however you of course meet the stronger suits who will take up more than one tile. Spells are really really good in this game though, the stinking cloud spell and the hold spell render units helpless and VERY easy to kill, then there's the awesome fireball spell with high power and AOE. Some of the battles will be long just cause there's so many targets to take down, and then you have to manually end battle which is annoying. Oh, and the loot? There's often lots of it, but with the correct walkthrough and all I basically had to get what I truly wanted in these cases. Another fun fact to this game's overall nonlinearity is that it's not over after you beat the main quest, you can go and do other sidequests any time afterwards.
