Based on some of the stuff that you are saying it kind of sounds like the Zelda games to me. Just the fact that you need certain items to get past certain points and stuff like that. Remember burning a bush with the candle in the original Zelda or how awesome it was the first time you found a cave by blowing a hole in the wall. I used to go to the special spot in Final Fantasy where the higher level monsters were in the lower continents. I would level up for hours and hours there so that by the time I finally decided to head to the Volcano and the Northern continent it was basically easy mode! Nice review. This seems like a pretty cool game.