an excellent remake for an already awesome game!
overall, the game is nothing more than a masterpiece. the leveling system is at first, a bit confusing and can throw you off track, it's also difficult to go into exact details on how your levels are going since they used bars and not numbers.
the leveling system goes by skills with different weapons and combat categories (strength, intelligence, etc) it uses bar's to show your progress when you will improve on the skill or spell. yes, spells are like the bow and arrow of final fantasy 2. you can level spells like skills if you teach them to characters via spell tomes, items you can find in treasure chests or buy at magic stores. this saves square from adding a white and black magic store in each city. instead, the magic stores have a white magic logo with mixed spell tomes inside. you can also use the spell tomes as items that cast lower level "spread" spells that will give low amounts of damage to all the enemies. the best thing about spell leveling is that it changes appearance in one way or another every level! spells learned have two "modes" where you can use it on one enemy, for high amounts of damage, or use it as a "spread" attack on all enemies for low amounts of damage. either way, magic is a lot more fun in this game!
i really love the soundtrack! unfortunately, the victory fanfare commences through the money gain message automatically, so unless you get an item, you can't sit down listening to that addictive tune all you like! which is what i always do when i get an item ^^
the graphics are improved to a huge extent! it's got the best graphics i've ever seen in a 2D game!
gamespot lied so much in saying this remake wasn't great....