Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remaster is a good version of this game that does a lot to bring this entry into 3d, but you can definitely still feel the original NES game in there pushing against its limits and some strange gameplay choices and jank stop it from being an unmitigated success. The unique open world format, character gathering gameplay, and variable quests and difficulty all make the game feel very advanced and dynamic (for its time as well as today) but it is held back by fairly repetitive, simplistic combat and storylines that are simply serviceable.

Romancing SaGa is an incredibly open game. Each main character has a story that leads you through the world, but otherwise locations are available based on if you have heard about them or if you get someone to join you who knows about them. This means you are free to explore different parts of the world and storylines pretty much at your own discretion, with a (sort of) level-based system opening and closing quests as you play, so the experience is different for each playthrough. I played through three times and it was interesting to do things differently each time and explore events I had missed or not gotten to quickly enough. The new game plus implementation is great -- character stats and equipment carry over so replaying things is about as painless as it could be (though the large amount of combat and length of the dungeons adds quite a bit of tedium).

The overarching story is very generic (stop an ancient evil from destroying the world) with a couple of different approaches you can take that depend on an invisible morality system. This is cool but feels very nebulous and I don't think I would have even known things could be different if I hadn't looked it up. Additionally, this story seems to have almost no connection to most of the character stories, so it sort of feels like something you are also doing, then the game ends. 
The events and individual character stories are fine and do quite a bit to flesh out the world. The actual content is mostly straightforward dungeon crawls, but they do a good job of introducing the world and systems at play. I was interested in playing them all, but there isn't quite enough to them for me to really feel excited about playing through the shared portions of the game more times. Like the other Romancing SaGa games (they have a similar structure), there is just too much here to really nail the multiple playthroughs angle in the way that SaGa Frontier does.

Combat is more about team setup than the actual act of fighting. Various magic and weapon types to focus on give a lot of depth to your team makeup and how you build each individual character. Characters gain stats (rather than the traditional level based advancement) and learn new abilities for their chosen weapon randomly as they fight. This is a now classic SaGa character progression setup and it works really well here. There is also a system of classes you can assign that give somewhat hard to understand (but valuable) bonuses to specific things and also give you a basic template for how to spec your characters, so the open advancement system isn't that overwhelming. Character development is by far the strongest part of this game.
There is a fairly complex spell creation system and a weapon and armor crafting/improvement system that sort of offer more complexity than feels necessary. Once you find a good spell combo and craft the best armor (everyone just wants max defense) you sort of stop thinking about this stuff.
 Combat itself is pretty rote, unfortunately. You will basically end up using your strongest attacks while a dedicated healer or two keep your party alive. Once you have gained some end-level weapon techs and magic spells most fights just come down to doing the same thing and having enough defense to survive. You can definitely start to see the bones of the original NES Game here.

The game has quite a bit of jank, unfortunately. The menus are extremely overdesigned and hard to navigate reliably or quickly. An addition of a quest log that other RS games lack is counterbalanced by the fact that it is basically an unusable list that is hard to navigate or understand, split into categories that don't make sense. Battle menus require too many confirmations and simple features like holding down the button to speed through confirmations aren't supported. The in-game camera is basically broken most of the time and, though you do get used to it, it never feels good or useful. These problems don't destroy the experience but do seriously mar what is otherwise a really good remake.

I also do really like the way this remaster looks. It is very colorful and has an almost flat-shaded look to it. Character proportions are weird, but somehow they work really well for me.

This is a cool release in the history of the SaGa games and is worth checking out if you are a fan of the series. Once you get past the implementation idiosyncrasies, it plays pretty well and exploring the character development and cute character stories is a pretty chill time.