Is it worth it to track down a GBA copy of the SF1 remake ? The original is widely available in various compilations/ports, but apparently the localization is... somewhat questionnable ?
The localization of the original game removed Max's backstory (he had amnesia) and there are a few translation/script errors like almost every RPG of that era but the storyline is 100% understandable in every way.
The remake gave Max back his backstory... and added onto it and it completely ruined the remake in my opinion, I think they were honestly trying to tie it together with Shining Force Neo and then gave up half way and then rushed out a different storyline after the fact but to be clear I don't know that for a fact just the way it felt.
The remake itself has its ups and downs, it fixes a few annoying thing about playing the original game (inventory management for example) but largely what it ends up adding is very questionable at best. It adds 3 new characters only one of which is actually given any character development and its very limited at that, all 3 also join right when you also get like 5 other characters and it just really over crowds your roster. One of the characters has a unique 'card' mechanic which does various things but the problem is that these effects are completely broken. SF wasn't a challenging game to begin with but the adds just make the entire game a joke. There is a rather unique system that every time you beat the game it gets harder but its just not that much fun playing through the game THAT many times. Granted I did do so back in the day and got to like... the 6th New game+ and it just became a chore to play more then anything else at that point.
The remake also completely botched several things, for some horrible reason they made Musashi and Hanzou join with you earlier and unprompted while already having very high stats making them SUUUUPER broken and just honestly not that fun to use. Then you have the character portraits which were altered and most look nothing like the original works and all have this really odd yellow background which is very distracting on several characters.
It just feels like the developers just kept adding and changing things to make it seem like it was some HUGE remake when it didn't need any of that and in the end they added so much several things slipped through the cracks like the portraits which I stated above but also the normal character sprites just don't look right on the world map, they are much to large and it can be hard to judge distance for spells/snipers because of it.
Pretty much for everything they added it created problems showing that they really just didn't seem to know what they were doing. They decided to give several characters backstories which you learn while using the characters in battle over the course of the game but it seems like after getting like 1/3rd of the cast done they realized this was a lot more work then they wanted to do and the rest of the cast just got random little character traits such as Gong talking about all the crap thats in his backpack instead of any actual story development.
It's not a terrible remake and some of the new stuff they added was cool (like mission bonuses when you complete missions under certain requirements) but for the most part there was just way to many problems for it to actually succeed the original in my eyes.