I generally liked it despite the flaws. Now I've played FF1 through FF10, and to be honest I liked this one a decent bit more than 1 (which had super basic battles imo), and dare I say I enjoyed it more than 8 (which I thought was fine but the junction system and later half of the story was kinda eh).

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Spicy hot take but I think the no exp growth system is kinda nice. It's no job system but it adds a fun extra layer to every single battle. At least in the later versions of the game the stat gains happen quite frequently that you get at least something at the end of most fights. Although the rate that your HP increases was a little too good and made most battles too easy, which is something later versions tamper with I think?

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The magic is the only real crappy part. I like using different spells but this game really leans towards you only picking a few and ignoring the rest to be worth it at all. I had Fire, Ice, Thunder and Toad around like level 7 or 8 with Maria by the end game, and everything else was stuck around level 3-4 and often super useless. Even then though, high level spells were often getting outclassed by my dual wielding physical attackers. It reminded me a little of FF8's Junction System which also didn't really encourage casting all your spells as much as it should have.

Oh and one other nitpick is the hidden weapon/heavy armor penalty for magic accuracy or whatever that people have mentioned is brought back in this version. Real nice of the game to nudge Maria's stats as a black magic user but also make her start with the bow, the weapon that penalizes it the most...?

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The story I thought was pretty good for its time, and probably its biggest strength. Killing off characters left and right kind of works to keep the dark tone this game's going for. The dying characters might not really get developed at all, and Minwu might die for Ultima only for it to be outclassed 80% of the time by physical attackers (lol) but for an NES era game it does a pretty good job at keeping things gritty and realistic for a rebellion.