I don't watch let's plays (nothing against the people who make them - they just bore me), but I thoroughly enjoyed Emerald Dragon.

The combat is relatively novel, but ultimately sort of unsatisfying. I like the set-up of having to move around an entire field and using up points just for movement, since that then contributes to strategic decisions. And it's one of the few early games with AI controlled party members in which the AI is actually pretty good, so that was good. The unsatsifying part to me is that the MC only has melee physical attacks (or the dragon transformations), so there's just not a whole lot of variety in what you do from one battle to another.

The difficulty of the battles is sort of surprising - I think I died more in that game than any other JRPG I've played for a long time. And oddly enough, the boss battles aren't all that difficult - the bosses are tougher than most, but not a whole lot so. It's other opponents scattered here and there that are the real danger, and doubly so because, since they're not bosses, you have no real way of knowing that they can potentially one-shot kill you until they one-shot kill you.

The best parts of it's the characters. The story's pretty good, but it's a bit trite and predictable. It's interesting from time to time, but not terribly surprising. The characters are great though. Rather than just being representatives of particular jobs, they're each unique and interesting and they come and go as a meaningful part of the overall story.

Since I didn't watch the LP, I have no idea how much of that was mentioned in it, but it's Saturday afternoon and I have nothing better to do at the moment, so there you have it...