Paladin's Quest

I just finished Paladin's Quest, a 1992 SNES JRPG developed by Asmik and published by Enix (and released as Lennus in Japan. The basic plot is that, on a dare, you, the protagonist, have unwittingly unsealed an evil being that will destroy the world, and you must stop it.

Mechanics 
There are a few things that differentiate the game's mechanics from others:

• There is a strong focus on magic, but there is no MP system per se. Magic drains HP (a fixed amount for each spell) in order to be cast.
• There is an element system, similar to Secret of Mana, where you have to use spells in order to make them stronger. In Paladin's Quest, spells can belong to one or two elements. (There is a traditional EXP-based system for HP and other stats).
• There are only two spells that heal: one that drains (a rsmall amount of) HP from the enemy, and one that kills the caster to restore the rest of the party's HP.  The former is only useful for leveling its elements, and the latter is useful only in a dire emergency.
• Otherwise, healing is generally accomplished through the use of refillable medicine bottles. There is a fixed number of these throughout the game, so that limits the total healing capacity until you can get to someone who can refill the bottles. A very few pieces of armor can heal the wearer if used in battle.
• There are four party slots, but only two permanent characters; the other two slots are filled by mercenaries, whom you can hire/dismiss throughout the game. Mercenaries' equipment cannot be changed. They do level and gain proficiency in the elements that they already know, but cannot be taught new elements.

Overall, the  fact that magic drains HP isn't a huge hindrance; it just slightly changes the dynamics of when you must heal. The exception to this might be at the very beginning of the game, when you have few bottles.

Pacing/Difficulty
I made it a point to train spells constantly, which probably made some parts of the game somewhat more tedious, because the weaker elements are obviously less effective at helping you win the battle at hand. On the flip side, Freeze, a spell that potentially paralyzes a group of enemies, is probably useful and effective for 90% of the game, once you train its element, so this made battles less dangerous.

The encounter rate for random battles can feel somewhat high. After the first third of the game or so, I didn't find it necessary to consciously grind/train, so the pacing was pretty good from that perspective. You would probably need to do so, however, if you wanted to get the final elements learned up to a decent strength. This isn't strictly necessary to beat the game if you trained enough of the other elements.

I wasn't timing myself, but Paladin's Quest felt like a 25-30 hour game or so: long enough, but not too long.

Music
The soundtrack is above average. It falls a notch below the SNES-era games by Square (the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger), but it's memorable. For me, the best theme is probably the Naskuot overworld theme:

In contrast to this, though, you'll spend a lot of time listening to drearier tracks, which were effective at capturing the mood, if somewhat less catchy.

Graphics
The graphics are a less refined than those of some other SNES RRPGs from this era, and look cartoony, which is probably a bit out-of-place for the kind of RPG that this is. This didn't bother me too much, but then again I generally don't look for graphics in RPGs.

Text
The English localization suffers mainly from a lack of menu space, such that, for example, you have to "EXIT" mercenaries to dismiss them, and "Helmet" is variously abbreviated as "Ht", "met", and "Hl". This makes it a bit difficult to figure out what you're buying. Other than this, the dialogue has a few minor grammatical errors, but I don't recall any striking examples of Engrish in the text.

Overall, Paladin's Quest is good. I wouldn't put it in the upper echelon of SNES-era games, but it's decent. In terms of one-off Square-Enix JRPGs, I like Robotrek better, but Paladin's Quest was worth the time, and it was definitely unique in terms of mechanics.