Not as much underrated as simply under marketed, During its time it was pretty good and worth a look for any RPG fan.
The problem when Sega Saturn died and Nintendo moved away from classical RPG's was that the void that us gamers who LOVED classic menu based RPG gaming stopped getting our fill of games, especially us North American gamers. When this game was new in summer 1996 there were not a ton of other RPG's of this style out on Playstation, Wild Arms and the Original Suikoden were months away and Final Fantasy Seven was almost a year away.
This really was it, and of the PS RPG out it was in my opinion among the most fun.
From a Gameplay stance it was really very straight forward, it was your standard menu based RPG, with a very similar equipment screen and an average selection of Armor and Weapons for the player to select from, but that does not hinder the gameplay, game like Lufia for SNES that gave the gamer what seemed to be an ENDLESS range of weapons and armor were just a headache and really wasted a lot of time and effort.
It was a nice clear straight forward battle engine, money engine (in terms that you actually had to build up to afford things) and the menu's were easy to use.
The story is nothing to write home about, although the characters are interesting from a Great Warrior who is cursed to a Pirate who seems to juggle knifes in battle. Its your typical good Vs. evil storyline that brings in a WIDE range of characters, the thing that the gamer must be mindful of is that you really MUST talk to EVERYONE, some could see this game as having a hard story to follow and at somepoints I can see why, its always the last person you talk to in town that tells you were you need to find what you are looking for it seems.
In terms of Graphics its not a huge step forward from the 16bit days, but it is on an even footing with what was out on Saturn at the time, and it was a still a step forward in terms of what last gen looked like and what the PS gen RPG's looked like.
The Battle screans were colorful and the enemies for the most part looked pretty good, in some case out of place (Fish on Land sort of Japanese RPG stuff) but overall I cannot say I was disapointed the monsters were not repeated all that often and there was a very wide range of new enemies and new area's that looked very nice and different, nothing crazy new but still more then enough to feast your eyes on
The soundtrack I will admit is rather cheesey, but there is a good varity of cheesey soundtrack so you won't get bored of it too fast, but for a CD based RPG I guess I had expected more from the score and soundtrack, it was not really a step up from the 16 bit days and a touch behind the current times with Saturn RPG's but I wouldn't say it was bad just nothing new.
In terms of its value its like most classic RPG's are, you can burn through it in about 20+ hours, but for those who really like to do all the side stuff and build our characters up and have a look at upward of 40+ hours I think my finally tally was 36 hours, but I stopped doing side stuff because Suikoden came out.
Basically for those who have done it all and played it all and long for the solid classic titles this will get you by,
Give it a chance, its worth the ride.
-Z