Genuinely fantastic remake, my only caveat is that they didnt include War of the Lions content for some reason. The updated graphics and music are wonderful, the English voice acting, even though it's from literal, unironic England is just as good, with the characters being given an impressive amount of gravitas, and the new translation is excellent--some complain about it being Shakesperean, but the lines are pleasingly written and most importantly much more understandable than the original 1997 translation, which was very confusing at times and also had some mystifying choices, like for instance having the Northern and Southern Sky knights untranslated as "Hokuten" and "Nanten" for some reason. Now, a couple lines in the remake dont hit as hard as they did in the original translation, and they removed a lot of ambiguity in places, most notably the ending, which has some dialogue explaining things, but thats a very minor caveat.
The story itself isas wonderful as it had always been, a complex political intrigue of medieval conspiracy touching upon inequality as a source of social conflict and religion as means of social manipulation, although those more religious than I might say the former is dealt with more deftly than the latter, which seems bluntly anti-religious. You won't hear me making that argument, though, and thats all I'll say as I don't want to spoil things. The gameplay is also fantastic, the base game isnt too hard but the new Tactician difficulty they added is definitely a respectable challenge. The battles are similar to Tactics Ogre (fitting, since Matsuno-sensei as well as Acky-sensei and Ymoh.S-sensei from the Ogre Battle saga all worked on this as well), panel-based warfare on a 3d board where height is important as well as terrain, but the turn mechanic is unique, every unit goes not in player-enemy turns but in its own spot in the timeline based on speed. There's a wide variety of classes to choose from and best of all, once you master a class you can mix and match its abilities with nearly any other one which provides a HUGE amount of variety. Its soooo much fun, just like it was in 1997. So yeah, buy this game to show more support for Yasumi Matsuno-sensei :D :D :D
