A remake of a great game that doesn't live up to the greatness of the original.
Taken as an absolute, this game isn't bad. It's a pretty fair strategy-RPG as a stand-alone, but unfortunately, it's meant to "improve" on the original Shining Force, and in that it fails miserably.
The sound is a great improvement from the original Shining Force; the music sounds much better, and it fits the atmosphere of the game well.
The graphics are excellent for a handheld as well; the only gripes I have are that all the characters look like they're 11 and that I don't particularly like the art style. Other than that, the graphics are great.
Unfortunately, it fails in the field of gameplay. Amusement Vision took much about Shining Force that made it a great game, and did a very bad job of attempting to recreate it. The fun and excitement of choosing your characters is gone, and you're left with a choice between 32 extremely generic characters. All of the worthless characters are now average, and all of the excellent characters have been nerfed. Also, two new characters have been added, one of which uses cards to unlock abilities. This was a terrible idea. Mawlock, as this character is known, is way too overpowered as well as being of no use whatsoever in advancing the storyline. It gets worse from there, too: once you beat the game, it loops you back for another go. All the enemies are harder, and your characters keep their levels; there are 10 loops in all. Quite honestly, no one should want to play through the same story over and over again, especially when nothing new happens. By the time a player gets to loop 5 or 6, the only thing left to do is collect any missing cards for Mawlock, which is really a pointless diversion and a waste of time.
All in all, it's a travesty that this game wasn't better. It could have been excellent, but Amusement Vision butchered an excellent game in their attempt to recreate its greatness.