A fantastic remake that is insanely hard not to recommend over the original release. A shortlist of downgrades would be the overall difficulty being pretty easy, the camera angles of the interior and city scenes being pretty same-y and boring for the most part in comparison to some of the wild forced perspectives from the original, and a couple of tracks feeling decidedly weaker than their PS1 counterparts. That being said, the positives are far outweighing my complaints. Most songs are redone fantastically, giving a bit extra weight to the more emotional tunes. The combat overall is way more usable, allowing you to stop time with the hold of a trigger to determine your targets a little more decisively rather than just mashing to victory (when the game is still a little difficult at least). Ally spells are much quicker to watch through, putting more time and focus on the actual action of the combat and maintaining control of the player. Elements of the leveling and crafting systems are much less abstracted giving the player an actual idea of what they're doing from the outset of the game instead of having it be a sorta mess that'll make players feel alienated with missed opportunities and accidental skill allocations. Load times (on my PC) were non-existent. The new fast traveling is as fast as it gets with the player assuming control before the screen fully fades from black. I hadn't played the PSP version but I really like the audio track from it and am shocked that characters like Leon (a whiny 12 year old cat boy) managed to have a non-cringe performance. There's a lot to love in this remake, again with most asides just being a push for modernity getting in the way of that classic feel. What I will say distinctively as a negative is that the four fields segment later in the game feels way weaker, and each of the fields' gimmicks were replaced in favor of a much less impressive gimmick. It's a headscratcher why I'm just hunting enemies instead of having a unique battle style where I'm trying to prevent them from pulling a giant lever, and another field where the gimmick is LITERALLY to just walk in a straight line. NO idea why there was a switchup, but fortunately the gimmicks in the 2 following dungeons are definitely more pronounced and well thought out than in the original.
I'll say they had the opportunity to improve the story and they didn't. This goes two ways; is it better to stay faithful to the original idea as a testament to being a note for note remake, and be a lamer narrative, or should they take the opportunity of returning to a beloved game 25 years later to deliver a more satisfying story? Who knows. I understand their direction but can't help but imagine some sort of alternative ending where there's actually a little more intrigue in the assault on Phynal.
I'm not much of a JRPG buff but The Second Story was always my favorite growing up. I'm glad to say that this remake does it justice and I can fully recommend it over the original product, AND I can actually play it natively on my PC. I think Gemdrops did a fantastic job and I think I might be more swayed to play more of the franchise just riding off the high of my enjoyment of this game. Solid work.