I've been having a lot of fun with Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection lately. Couldn't really get into Arges Adventure, but Zwei 2 really polished up the experience and tightened the combat - then dumped a shit-ton of charm into what was already a pretty fucking comfy setting. Combat in action-based and you control two characters at once. Ragna handles the melee combat with a kind of whip-sword called an Anchor Gear, while Alwen handles the magic - sort like how Pokkle and Pipiro worked in the first game. This time Alwen has a much bigger roster of spells, as well as special AOE attacks which charge up during combat. Ragna has multiple different Anchor gears which you can unlock by finding treasures in the dungeons - and these provide different functionality, such as flame gears for clearing out ice and vegetative obstacles, or a grappling hook for moving large objects that are needed to solve puzzles or access new areas. Pets got an upgrade too. In the first game, Pets just kind of went off on a mini-adventure of their own displayed in the corner of the screen and occasionally required your attention. It would have fit in well on a Dreamcast VMU. In Ilvard Insurrection you can now have multiple pets which follow you and help you on your adventure, doing chip damage, collecting coins and food, etc.
The story is pretty basic so far. The land is broken up into a series of floating islands, so air travel is the primary method of going from place to place. The game starts with Ragna getting attacked and crash landing during a delivery. The crash would have been fatal, but he was saved by a cutie vampire girl who gave him some of her blood in exchange for him helping her to retake her family castle from invaders.
The only thing I really don't like about the game is that you level up by eating food, which is also used as a healing item. I get the idea in concept - the game stays just the right level of difficult until you start getting smacked around a lot, requiring you to eat, which raises your level and makes you more capable and less likely to get knocked around so much. It works fairly well, since food is pretty plentiful, but it removes a sense of progress as all you get from defeating enemies is more food and coins - which have limited usefulness at the moment.