I finally played this game and it was good, but had noticeable flaws. I had issues with the story and pacing which caused me to drop it for a while around chapter 7. The story was full of filler and I think some traditional silly JRPG dialogue is made more awkward with the more 'realistic' graphics and voice acting. I still enjoyed the story overall and it had some stand-out moments which were impactful. The action-focused cutscenes were very well done and were a great spectacle. I liked most of the English voices, but some of it was iffy at times. I tried the Japanese voices for a while, which I liked but I changed to back to English because I couldn't understand the chatter of NPCs in town. The combat was a surprisingly effective fusion of the original's systems with action combat. I do usually prefer turn-based games, but the original's turn-based combat wasn't exceptional even for the time, and I enjoyed the action combat of this game more than I thought I would. The game was carried by the music, which brings back familiar melodies in beautiful orchestral arrangements. Some of the best scenes would have been infinitely less impactful without the amazing music. I'm indifferent to the new stuff involving whispers and the final boss. It makes the extent to which the events of the sequel might differ from the original more intriguing to me. The intermission was of similar quality to the base game but I did enjoy the strategy minigame.