Switched back and forth between the Jpn and US releases. I machine translated the Jpn version to see what changes Working Designs (abbreviated as WD going forward) did, as well as mapping out almost all of the dungeons in Excel, plus logging the various items and stats on character level ups. That took me over 216 hrs. It took me just under 36 hrs to play through the US version as I pretty much played it as normal. So, yeah, I put in over 250 hrs on this one.
I played through the first Cosmic Fantasy about a year ago, so there will be some comparisons between the two games.
I'll start with the good, since there isn't much of it:
You can now walk diagonally! This is a help, since now NPCs walk around and thus can block you. The nice thing is if you're facing them while in contact with them, they will stop until you turn or move away.
You can now find items in things other than treasure chests. Aaaaaaaand, that's it.
Now for the bad.
The system to create a new save file is borderline broken. In the Jpn version, you can only start a new game on File 1, and there are only 2 save files. On the US version, when you start a new game, it deletes BOTH save files. So, if you want to start a 2nd game on the US version, you actually have to select Load Game and choose the file you weren't using. And there's no way to know if the files are being used, unlike the first game that actually shows the Level your main character is at (or is blank if it isn't being used).
Your characters are fully healed on Level Up. This is nice, except that you level up so quickly and the monsters quickly start doing 1-4 points of damage, so you'll almost never have to heal. Inns are also all free, which also helps remove any need to heal. And you gain so much Gold, that even if they did charge to stay, they'd have to charge exorbitant rates to make you think about whether you should use their services.
The magic system is broken in that offensive and healing spells level up, but a few of them will take up spaces in your magic list for different levels of the spell, rather than replacing the Level 1 spell with Level 2 and Level 3. WD did fix this for most of them. There's also the issue of the last spell a character learns randomly disappearing at a subsequent level up, which WD didn't fix.
They added Amulets to protect against magic attacks. That's great! Too bad monsters don't use magic, not even bosses. Monsters also don't have special abilities, so no status effects. This makes curative items and magic pointless. Because enemies don't use magic, that means they don't have all party attacks. What this means is that the bosses pose zero threat since, being 4-on-1 in your favor, you're able to heal at at least the same rate as they deal damage. It comes down to a battle of attrition.
And the final nail is that the Jpn version freezes if a character reaches Level 50, which isn't hard to do. The end boss for some reason gives a large amount of experience, so if I hadn't had a save file going for each version and was only playing the Jpn version, it would have been literally impossible for me to see the ending without replaying the entire game. Thankfully, WD fixed this major issue.
The ONLY thing this game has going for it is the story (and maybe the cutscenes for its time), so if you don't like that, I don't see anything you'd like about this game.
