pretty underwhelming. the kinda youthful, angry creative spirit of the computer game originals gets toned down in favour of more polished presentation and cinematics making it more palatable for the console game market. I don't think this is as much of a compromise compared to the translation situation, though.

Working Designs' CD translation is shameless about cutting down the text and shows that all this American studio really cared about were the cool cutscenes, which you won't be seeing a lot of. both it and the Mega Drive version suffer from garbled English scripts; the CD script renders the quest incoherent and pares things down to "go from point A to B", and both are way too liberal with names and places which makes figuring out the historical context and relevance of where you are a very tedious puzzle.
I understand that they couldn't say something like Christianity outright, but what's up Working Designs inventing a name given to the final boss and mangling other names like Hiram, Rama and Bacchus? I think there's some more foul play going on in both translations, but I'd need to confirm.

so what about the actual gameplay (on PC Engine, anyway)? it's basically a simpler Ys III. there's a cool visual indicator for the dice rolling but everything else is simple side scrolling early ARPG stuff. unfortunately the programming and design are played so fast and loose that it spoils most of the fun. there's busted hitboxes on both sides, poor level balance, no choices to make in building up your character, poor dungeon designs, it feels more like button mashing than a fun test of skill. I could go on.

the MD version has smoother action, a wonky but fuller English script and some really cool FM music (it's a Telenet game so you can expect cool music either way) that I feel makes it the better game over the CD. maybe you could watch the CD version alongside your MD playthrough to get the "full" experience? it'd make the story way more coherent.
if you can read Japanese, then just play the computer versions. the story is what I imagine most people are here for.

it's a game with a lot of cool ideas brought down by the poor quality of everything else. I especially like the concept of a foreign globetrotting protagonist being made to participate in a bunch of abstract rituals in an attempt to bring about world peace and enlightenment.