There are many paths forward from that point. The spacetime rift has most of them, and the old man there explains what to do then.

You don't have to do any particular ones of them. But you can:-). Especially with the powered up pendant that you got from the Mammon Machine (necessary to even get to the area where the queen is), you can now go back and open up all the doors and treasure chests scattered throughout the game that were locked with "a mysterious power". Hopefully you wrote them all down in your notes taken while you went through the game!? Or just consult a guide, even if only for that one thing. Plus I thought the game showed hints to remind you.

There's SO MUCH to the game past that part - you are missing the absolute best of it!:-) But yeah, seriously, use a guide for that part - no reason that each person has to do all the discovery entirely on their own. Or just muddle through the boss fight using items - that will take awhile and be frustrating as you get confusion put onto you (hint: there are multiple types of helmets that protect against that...), but it does work, as that is how I beat it the first time myself without a guide.

Do as you please, but it's a fun project to see what's beyond that point in the game!:-)

In part bc damn is that music great to listen to!!:-)

Absolutely. It is a very short JRPG that wastes no time and has no filler. I finish it about monthly.

The only discernible flaw is that one dialog box is missing a closing quotation mark.

The game mechanics and pixel graphics (not to mention the great soundtrack) aged amazingly well. I'm super biased though

Caveat: the graphics were fairly low-res even for its time, and that bugs some people.

Everything else though... it is made by the people who did the early Final Fantasy series, who were given the free reign to do as they pleased so this is how they wanted games to be. e.g. battles aren't random but you can see them on the screen before you fight them, which increases the level of immersion. Most are also skippable if you wanted, though if you fight each battle once then you need do no grinding at all unlike most early JRPGs.

It is super short, but has a New Game+ feature with >15 different endings. So very replayabile. It offers very little difficulty, but that's not what it's for, being a story game. Especially the first time, set battle mode to "Wait" so you have all the time you want to think through things.

And I wasn't exaggerating saying that it's a strong contender for best game of all time - again caveat those gfx but otherwise... The reviews it got were phenomenal and as you see it has a cult-like following!:-)

yes.

Yes

Literally, we all can!:-)