The things that intrigued me to try this mod the most, were the new battle sprites, weapons and character portaits. The new battle sprites look awesome (especially the centaurs), except for a few which don't look bad but I don't consider them improvements over the originals (e.g. Max). The presentation tweaks for the intro and the chapters were also done in good taste. The fact that this mod fixes the EXP and land effect bugs of the original game, plus it adds an auto item pass feature, greatly improves the gameplay too.
Not able to save in-game is a huge disadvantage but I decided to forget about it as long as the mod is good. I mostly use emulators for retro-gaming anyway, so using only savestates is ok. I didn't like at all some added NPC portraits. Especially the shopkeeper who uses the portait of Liukan from Suikoden 1! I can't understand the thought process behind this choice... Breaking immersion for a shopkeeper's portrait??? The thing that I disliked the most though, was the replacement of all the outdoor battle scene backdrops (e.g. forests, mountains) with the SFII ones. Making the first game look as much as the second one wasn't right for me. Both have similar art styles but also their own unique artistic direction / character. Unfortunately, I felt that all these changes weren't improving the overall look of the game but made it look like like an early SFII prototype build. Sorry, I really wanted to like and use this mod.
