This game is one of the best JRPGs that still holds up extremely well with this remade version making it even more accessible.

The game is extremely fun pretty much the entire time. The combat is some of the most fun in terms of action-like combat systems in JRPGs although it does get a little messy later in the game once your party and the enemies are spamming spells and abilities.

There is a pretty unique skill system that is really fun to engage with but can also be safely ignored for the most part (if you wish). You are able to invest points into a variety of skills that allow you to combine healing items, craft weapons, upgrade weapons, add secondary abilities to equipment, play music, cook food, summon a mount, summon superbosses, reduce your stats for more experience....you get the gist.

I think if you are a fan of JRPGs and have never played this you owe yourself a favor to do so.

This game peaks when a party member turns into a giant with 2d sprite jiggle boob physics.

This game has clear inspiration from some classics like FFT and Ogre Battle. Unfortunately this game tries to do so much that it fails on the execution. There were 30 chapters (+ side chapters) to complete and after the first "act" of the game with the initial 12 chapters it continued to slide downhill.

Battles became a slog with sometimes way too many easy to defeat enemy squads. Additionally the chapters get to the point where you are leveraging 20 squads in a single battle, which is often way too many for what needs to be accomplished. Even making all animations fast and removing the battle animations to simply see a quick outcome from each squad versus squad fight the game moves far too slowly.

I will probably still play the sequel and see how things improve because I greatly enjoy the SRPG genre. There is a DLC that apparently expands upon some of the puddle depth mechanics shown in the base game but I can't be bothered to pay even more money and slog through the full game again to enjoy them.