A finely balanced game which can be an unforgivingly frustrating experience at times. However, it's worth the challenge.
The battle system to this game is much like a hybrid of chess and rock, paper, scissors rolled into one. You essentially control your army on a grid, moving your units accross it to attack the enemy. With your army moving first, followed by the enemy and then any third party units. The weapons your units use all have strengths and weaknesses against units wielding different weapons, and give neutral damage against it's own weapon type, meaing alot of thought must be put into who you attack with what unit.
Added to that thought, is also that if one of your troops dies, they can never be brought back, they are quite literally killed outright, pushing up the daisys. Making each move very important with the limited characters available through the game.
The characters in this game are all quite different in ability, ranging from Knights, swordsman, archers, priests, mages etc. All of which can be promoted to a new class upon reaching level 10, giving them new access to better weapons as well as a stat boost. Gaining experience for those levels happens every time a character performs an action. The bigger the action taken, the more exp gained, so killing an enemy would get more then healing an ally, however both are as important to succeed. So using a balanced party is vital.
Some of the characters join as part of the story, but many are only gained in the battlefield by having certain characters talk to others, or even visiting villages as you fight. Outside of villages to visit in which items can be gained as well, there are also shops and armourys to go to. All your weapons and healing necessities can only be purchased during the course of battle, making balancing your equipment rather challenging, though you can trade items you have before battle when you select what troops you are taking with you.
As finely balanced as the gameplay is, focused on making the player plan every move as mistakes are severly punished. The game can also be a victim of it's own cleverness. Certain levels are punishingly hard, in which boss characters can insta kill your characters, counter everything and regenerate. Meaning that certain chapters must be restarted as your whole force have been unjustly wiped out permenantly by just one character. Lets just say that can be a very frustrating hour of gaming wasted.
The graphics to this game were never going to cause a cerebral explosion. But they do the job well enough. Character portrait art is well done, and character animation in attack sequences is also well animated with quite a bit of detail. However most of the battlefields throughout the game look very similar and kind of bland.
The music also does what is required of it, but once again while varying in degree of quality, it is not all that rememberable. The sound effects however for both spells and attacks are excellent, givind an extra crunch to the blow delivered.
The game itself is quite long at 31 chapters, not mentioning the secret chapters, and gaining all available characters and endings for each one. So the replayability is there if you so wish, but at about 20 hours a play through, would you really need it?