Oh hai monsters

Well after much tracking across country (and lava) and back (twice due to the "fly" spell), I finally recovered the robot needed to fly the ship. so my group can now travel to any of the 3 available worlds now.

The combat in this game is kinda odd.
Right off the random encounters don't jump at you with a big screen transition or music sting like in FF or DQ, the screen just quickly fades to black and the battle music starts up as it fades into the fight. Also there can be 2 monsters for each arty member, so a full party can encounter up to 8 of any monster at a time. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that you can't pick which of those 8 the party attacks each turn, so most times there will be 8 monsters with low health still attacking because the party dosen't take them out one at a time to lower their numbers.
After the battle there is always a chest left over and you are given the option to open it, most games just give you the loot after a fight but here you are given the choice since some times the chests are booby trapped. So when the party is low on health I have to decline all chests I get just in case they explode and do more damage than the monster I just killed.

One thing at least is that the monster are quite well drawn and colorful (for an 8 bit game) and some even have detailed attack animation (like a sand worm coming up and striking) . At least though I'm at a point I think that I don't need to grind any more for a while.