The plot incorporates elements from Indian religions, centrally the concept of the wheel of time - every 4000 years the world is destroyed and recreated by a Rudra - the name taken from an aspect of the Hindu god of destruction, Shiva.

Towns contain the prerequisite shops and villagers who offer information, while dungeons are mazelike affairs where random enemy encounters may occur.

These battles may also strike on the overworld map and follow a typical RPG pattern: the player makes choices for their characters (such as whether to fight, cast a magic spell, or run away), and then the enemy takes a turn.

After successfully completing all three scenarios, players must take on a fourth, featuring the roving thief Dune and the heroes from the previous three chapters in their final confrontation with the game's major villains.

They then gave life to an entity known as a Rudra with power from the Guardian of Evolution, Gomorrah, who uses his Eternal Engine to facilitate new beings.

It is later revealed that Gomorrah requires the Jades in addition to other treasures to create a perfect Rudra, and that a weapon known as Sodom destroys every successive race from its lair on the Moon.

After both Gomorrah and Sodom have been thwarted by the Jadebearers, they unite and board a Danan flying vessel known as the Ark to travel to the Moon and confront Mitra.

Upon defeating her, Mitra praises the Jadebearers for their strength and reveals that long ago the Majestic Four once fought a force known as the Destroyers who were a threat to the world.

During the ending, the party return home and experience a vision of a world brought to ruin by the Destroyers, which Dune interprets as a warning from Mitra.

[4] Ide revealed that his team started by conceiving its magic system, basing the inclusion of kotodama on the cultural appreciation for word play in Japan.

Similarly, programmer Shingo Tanaka gave the party members a lot of movement during combat and wished to make the game's lengthy battles as stress-free as possible.

[5] He was originally set to design everything and magazines had advertised his involvement from the start, but Amemiya did not become officially attached to the project until a year and a half before its conclusion.

[7] It was one of the last Square-developed titles for the console[1][8] alongside Bahamut Lagoon, Super Mario RPG, and Treasure Hunter G, which were all released within four months of each other.

[16] Upon its release, a quartet of writers for the Japanese magazine Famitsu awarded Treasure of the Rudras an aggregate score of 31 out of 40 points, placing it in the publication's "Silver Hall of Fame".

The reviewers commended Square for continuing its track record of excellent RPGs and for making complex mechanics like the mantra-based magic system easy to understand, though one member of the panel felt that instantly switching between the game's three storylines could be disorienting to the player.

GamesRadar+ praised its unique battle system of learning spells through words and combining them to make new ones, but noted that there were games from the mid-1990s that were more beatifically drawn and "narratively ambitious".

[21] Retro Gamer also complimented the magic system and its approach of having three branching stories that players could exit and enter at will, labeling the title a "hidden gem".

[20] HobbyConsolas called the title one of the best games ever released for the Super NES, praising the graphical detail and the innovative magic system.