Promises Excellent Enjoyment!
STORY = Eventhough there is not anything new to the story neither anything stale to the story, it is fine. Friendship and world in danger and evil person looking for super power and so on and on. However the story has been well directed and is been told a fine way. The decent character developement alongwith nice characters, both playable and non-playable makes the story shine in greatness. There are two things in this game which until this game completely new to me. dating-sim thing and weapons and skills. I will get into them later. The amount of detail to story is good and there is a less chance that you will have to wander around as its mostly linear. But the decisions you make within the scenarios makes the story active and entertaining. Since its a short game the story does not feel stretched at any part. Everyone including almost all the bosses have an interesting tale of them all, but most important story is of the hero and his party makes it quite an engaging story overall and is directed well indeed.
GRAPHICS = Nearly perfected are the graphics if it was nto for the dark and sort of repeat environments. Character sprites as well as enemies are done in great art. Almost everyone will be impressed and in my opinion they are the best on GBA compared to most others. Nice portraits as well as the unique skill designs for the characters makes me think that the developers have given great attention to the details of graphics. Beautiful is what the graphics are and there are not many games on GBA with such quality.
SOUND = Again perfected however not due to the fact that some tunes get to feel of being repeated again and again. Battle theme and some other various music effects are great. And some of the tunes are definetly memorable. There is decent voice in the 'skill-shouts' for each character and for each skill of them, to be precise whenever a characters pulls-out a special move their voice for that move could be heared. Nice music and sound effects and some of them are memorable atleast for a short time.
GAMEPLAY = As described earlier two important factors were new to me. First the dating-sim thing, its really as easy as responding to your characters and giving them answers of their liking, but its not that simple. Second is the weapon and skill factor, which is the most important part of this game. Eventhough the battle-system is traditional as with most rpgs, the weapons though are playing a major role in it. Each weapon will give a unique skill to a certain character. However it takes time to learn the skills and since the weapons are limited, it sometimes becomes slightly hard. Although first it looked annoyable thing to me, i got quickly adjusted to it after learning the importance of each of the weapons. Some of the weapons are rare and quite important and they are thus having one-time use in battles. You will need to decide whether to use some of the weapons in either random battles or keep them reserve due to their limited number of usage for the boss battles.
Another major factor in the gameplay is the item department. The game has a different approach to items. Nearly everything including accessories are supposed to be re-selected/equipped before the battles and due to the fact that this game does not allow more then a certain of items ot be selected, it sometimes get annoying and another annoying factor is its limitation of selection for the items. Here you will have to select everything from weapon to accessories and to items before entering any battle. Sometimes its hard to determine whether to keep the accessories or the healing items such as herbs due to the fact that some battles take more time and are harder. Its nearly completely easy game but not too easy as some of the bosses as well as the random battles are quite hard.
The major plus in gameplay is that the random battles are tremendous fun. Infact i did not have more fun with random battles in any other game with the exception of tales of destiny 2.
Lastly if it was not for the shortness of the game it can get more then 9. Great but short games give me bitter taste in the mouth. Promised land is one great game and i strongly suggest giving it a try and i guarantee that almost everybody who is playing it will have tremendous enjoyment. And if you feel that i have not mentioned any major detail for the game then think of it this way that i do not wish to spoil it for you.