I've never been the biggest fan of JRPGs, in fact they completely lost me in the late 90's and I've never looked back since. I'm more of a fan of what I like to call American RPGs. These were games defined by attempting to take the freedom of narrative tabletop role playing and fit it into a computer game. There were plenty of mechanical influences with turn orders and player stats, but the driving force was interacting with the world through narration. Games to keep in mind are the Forgotten Realms series, the Ultima franchise, Elder Scrolls, Wizardry, Strife, Stonekeep, and even the Japanese made Faxanadu for NES.
The thing that caught my attention with these games was the freedom. Players have many ways to solve problems and thousands of choices on how they want to start their characters. Everything in the world is interactive one way or another. The player character is really just a conduit for you as the player to touch the virtual world. That's awesome, and A&A makes the list with flying colors. This added lots of little gimmicks and jokes for players to enjoy.
So with that in mind, what are your favorite little details about A&A? Not major gameplay features, just little nuances that were fun.
For me it is the carrots giving night vision and the wand of lightning shocking players. There were such charming features to find out for the first time many years ago.
