Splinter Cell Essentials strives to deliver an authentic Sam Fisher experience. And by authentic, you should understand that developer Ubisoft Montreal has made very little sacrifices. For the most part, it looks and plays like the original. It still feels like playing a Splinter Cell game, only now it's entirely portable.
Ubisoft Montreal graciously made the game more mobile-friendly in a number of ways. The first, and perhaps most important, deals with saves. Essentials uses a two-tier system of manual saves and checkpoints. Throughout the course of each mission, players can save whenever and wherever they want. Loading a game will take you back to the point where you saved, not to the location of your last checkpoint. But, should you ever forget to save, or you end you kicking the bucket before you get a chance to, the game will load your most current auto-save checkpoint.