In some ways, this improves on the original, but in others not so much.
I find the combo system and the lack of pre-rendered backgrounds everywhere are a welcome change, but I really disliked the shift from gothic horror towards a more comedic approach, which just came off as lame and unfunny 100% of the time. It ends up causing a huge tonal clash when it expects you to suddenly take it seriously in dramatic moments. The result for me was just not caring at all about what was going on in the story, or about the characters themselves, which I found to be almost universally annoying.
There's some really terrible dungeon design at parts here as well. Some of them felt like a chore at times in a way the original never did for me. The SP system also seems much more lenient than the original, I basically never paid any attention to it and never really suffered any consequences because of it. I guess that could be considered a good thing since it was kind of irritating to manage before, but It makes me wonder why they even included it in the first place.
One thing that didn't change is how tiresome the judgment ring system starts to become over time. It's especially noticeable here since the game is a good bit longer.
I find the combo system and the lack of pre-rendered backgrounds everywhere are a welcome change, but I really disliked the shift from gothic horror towards a more comedic approach, which just came off as lame and unfunny 100% of the time. It ends up causing a huge tonal clash when it expects you to suddenly take it seriously in dramatic moments. The result for me was just not caring at all about what was going on in the story, or about the characters themselves, which I found to be almost universally annoying.
There's some really terrible dungeon design at parts here as well. Some of them felt like a chore at times in a way the original never did for me. The SP system also seems much more lenient than the original, I basically never paid any attention to it and never really suffered any consequences because of it. I guess that could be considered a good thing since it was kind of irritating to manage before, but It makes me wonder why they even included it in the first place.
One thing that didn't change is how tiresome the judgment ring system starts to become over time. It's especially noticeable here since the game is a good bit longer.