I want to give a big shoutout to Digi.k for having yet another helpful translation of the game's menu + some helpful hints; it made jumping into this game so much more smooth.
There are a few parts that will probably trip people up that I figured I'd add in case someone is REALLY stuck.
In the ghost town, you need to get three things to remove the curse. To do this you essentially need to play hide-and-seek with the resident ghosts. All the monsters are invulnerable until you remove the curse. The lady by the well will hop around to a few different locations (well, basement of the large house, and so on), finally cluing you in to the location of one of the items in one of the town wells itself. Some guy with a hat in another house will tell you his item is in his bedroom filled with zombies. The final is inside the large mansion itself. Afterwards you can head into one of the town wells to continue the game.
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In the water palace, where you have to set the blue stone into the central chamber, there are lots of teleporters. Two of them lead to mermaid statues who will give you clues. Destroy them to open up two additional teleporters. There will be text-boxes that pop up before you enter these chambers. There are three of these chambers in total: left, middle, and right.
You have to enter into them in the right order: you will know which order is correct because your characters will say something each time (if it's wrong they say nothing). I believe the order is Left, Right, Middle.
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In the castle area, you need to make some type of medicine but you don't know the ingredients. You have to have Melvy talk to the little punk wizard (and I think you need to have some story-related items in her inventory - doll? Book? Harp? I had them all in there just in case) to get him to tell you the right ingredients. Pay attention to the kanji(?). Of the three ingredients in the middle garden,
you only need two of them. I can't be sure but I THINK mixing all three makes a potion. I can't remember (will try to confirm this later). This will be useful for surviving the frustrating boss fights ahead.
Also, you will see a guard fiddle with some statues. Make sure you examine them! One of them will have a switch that deactivates the fire-breathing statues a few floors up.
This boss unfortunately you have a time limit. I found it is best not to spam any spells at him otherwise he will deflect them and just stand in the same spot deflecting them till the time runs out and then game over. You should move around a bit till he teleports and then when he re appears hit him with a magic spells. Most spells take a moment to charge up so pre judge when and where he will re-appear it might help. Just avoid his ice attack and heal if you need to by taking potions. He only takes a few hits and then he's down!
This boss is proving to be a real pain in the ass, mainly because it seems hard to keep your partner from walking into his attacks, which sometimes gets you into the crossfires as well.
The image above seems to imply that you are better off unequipping your AI partner so they don't do anything stupid. I might try that later.
This game has been not too shabby so far, though the game's enemy AI has a distinctly amateurish Japanese-PC tinge to it - everything mostly rushes towards you (sans a few wizards), and the bosses randomly shamble about. I don't think I've found half of the spells available; I can't imagine where they all are, or if you can even get them all in one playthrough.