Equinox (SNES)/Gameplay

Overworld Map
Entrances to dungeons are shown as brown cones with smoke coming out of them. Simply walk into the entrance to go inside.

The overworld also contains flying creatures and trolls. Walking into them will begin a battle. If you end up in a battle before you've collected a weapon, you cannot win and should run away by walking off the edge of the battlefield.

At the start of the game, all bridges are blocked by ghosts, which are impassible. They will display a message when attacked, and touching them is fatal. To make ghosts disappear, you must defeat the corresponding boss in a dungeon.

Dungeons
Each entrance to the dungeon is also an exit. To exit the dungeon, stand on the square where the entrance was, and wait for a rope to appear above. When it does, jump up to grab the rope. Exiting dungeons will save your game.

Press inside the dungeon to bring up a status screen. This will tell you your location (including a room number in hex), what items you've collected in this dungeon, and what weapons and spells you have. If you have more than one weapon or spell, you can use this screen to select a different one.

Most objects in the dungeon will disappear forever once collected, and all enemies will disappear forever once defeated. Sometimes defeated enemies will leave behind an item, so it's important to take the time to defeat them (but not until you have a weapon). A reasonable strategy is to explore dungeons and use the presence or absence of enemies and items to tell whether you've been to a particular area before.

When you have collected 12 tokens, you should save, and possibly fight some overworld battles to raise your health and magic levels before the boss fight. Once you enter the boss room with 12 tokens, you cannot exit until the boss is defeated or your life bar runs out.

Many of the puzzles rely on the isometric perspective. Often, objects are not where they appear to be, or they obscure other objects. Also, remember that some blocks can be pushed (sometimes even in mid-air).

If you get stuck and cannot find any items to collect or enemies to defeat, try keeping track of the numbers of rooms you've explored. Room numbers start at 00 and count up in hexadecimal notation from there (so 09 is followed by 0A, and 0F is followed by 10). If a number is missing, it's likely that you've missed a room, and it may be near an existing room with an adjacent number.