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This is a very impressive overhaul of SF2 with quite a lot to offer for experienced veterans of SF2. Battles start ramping up in difficulty when you get Kazin, pushing you to play smarter and make use of all the tools under your belt. As of writing this, I've made it up to Mitula's Shrine with only two or three Bowie losses.

As much as I'm enjoying this, the lack of a readme to document the changes is greatly dampening the experience. Without one to make educated decisions on alternate promotions and weapon changes has left me with Sarah and Kazin both rendered useless and having to burn money on weaker weapons just to see if they have additional effects (and even then, all you get is the default "it has an effect when used in battle" line from Rhode/Astral when inspected in the Caravan).

I used what little information given from the War of the Gods readme (another SF2 hack made by the same person as the author of this mod) to decide on who would get alternate promotions, but it seems some things have changed between that mod and this one. Warlock and Mystic (alternate promotions of Mage and Priest respectively) both abandon MP Growth entirely to slightly boost their attack stats, instead of having reduced MP Growth in favor of Attack as the War of the Gods readme led me to believe. Because of this, my Kazin and Sarah were doomed to fall off due to their MP being fixed at low numbers despite their increased attack. Their non-elemental spells, Raze and Missile respectively, aren't anywhere near strong enough to make up for their lack of MP Growth, especially in Kazin's case where elemental magic decimates enemies.

Speaking of Magic, it is FAR too powerful, even up to Mitula's Shrine. Enemies after you get Kazin have bloated HP Pools, and I'm not sure if this was to "balance out" how powerful magic is, or vice versa (either way, it's poor balancing, if you ask me). Once Kazin joins your team, monsters with nearly 50 HP start showing up, and it only gets worse from there. At Mitula's Shrine, I'm fighting enemies with over 200HP, and hitting their elemental weakness with Magic is the only thing that cuts them down at a reasonable rate. Otherwise it would take the majority of my Force just to take down One Singular Enemy.

Enemies are also stronger on top of having bloated HP pools, with enemy archers and mages being the biggest offenders of being too powerful at basically all stages of the game. Mages can easily oneshot your units for the entire early game, and it's not until you meet Volcanon that your units become sturdy enough to MAYBE survive one spell. Until then, Jaha is able to find his sole usage as bait to lure mages in closer for the rest of your Force to gang up on (and even then, if you get blasted by two mages before a Cleric can move, you can say "bye bye" to at least two units, and that's including Bowie if he gets targeted). Meanwhile Archers boast the highest HP and Agility amongst enemies, terrifyingly high attack, and the ability to inflict poison with their basic attacks. As this mod ties dodging & hitting with Agility, this means Archers will frequently dodge your attacks while consistently hitting your units. Their attack power and speed are fine on their own, but I don't understand why they were given such massive HP pools while Grounded Melee Units such as Minotaurs barely have half their HP totals in the later half of the game.

The elemental weakness "chart" isn't properly explained to you until Granseal on Paramecia is built (Flying enemies are weak to Gale/Dao, Healer enemies are weak to Bolt/Atlas, Archer enemies are weak to Freeze/Neptune, Mages are resistant to all magic, and basically everything else is weak to Blaze/Apollo), and by the time we get a second mage to "complete" our arsenal of elements, we've already got the Caravan and promoted our current main units. (Kazin also loses Bolt for Raze if you promote him to Warlock, meaning Bowie is your only source of Bolt until the Creedlings if you made the mistake of promoting Kazin to Warlock)

Those aside, it's very impressive what changes have been made to the game, both the many good things, and the few bad things. New characters have been added (at the cost of others, such as Rick, my favorite SF2 character), and two of them, Nadra and Sumina, are hugely important additions as they give a second Healer and Mage respectively before Creed (though Sumina could very easily be moved to join sooner, as she's immediately useful always, while Celeste's usefulness when you get her depends on how good your Chester is, while she'd jump up in usefulness joining in Sumina's place since you'd be able to instantly promote her to Red Knight or Pegasus Knight and skip the awkward unpromoted phase lol). Though some of these new characters have glitched portraits while "talking" and others are just static images. These new characters have also caused some pre-existing characters to now have glitched portrait animations while talking, or completely static portraits.

The new Level Up function at shops, as useful as it is, is easy to exploit, especially with the ridiculous number of Level Apples dumped on you to replace all other Stat Up items. However, not even this is able to save Jaha from being nothing more than monster bait. lol

Overall, despite my complaints about balancing and the absolute lack of much needed documentation of changed in the form of a readme, I recommend giving this a shot if you're a longtime fan of SF2 and want something harder.

Now we got a doozy here.

Requiem delivers the goods in terms of many. First, the backgrounds are well drawn and look amazing, the sprites are much improved, the dialog while mostly the same, does change here and there, and some nods to The original Shining Force, the battle system has the magic system of War of the Gods, and to balance that, fighter style units have good defense, attack and hit points while magic users have much less, but use that devastating magic (fire no longer pathetic, all are superior in their own ways) this applies to both sides giving the balance needed and forcing you to strategize. The special Dwarven weapons are available sooner and are menu picked, no longer random! I even found myself switching units as pre promoted characters are strong if not stronger than current ones.

The only cons here is one battle was annoying with constant re-spawns, not a glitch, just crush'em, and the final post credit fight was bad. The final true post endgame boss was far too over powered.

No problems here otherwise. This is a excellent hack. Play it!

So this is a new game. It's more than a re-balancing.

Your team is Stronger... Better stats sure, monster does too. You have access to good spell right at the start of the game. Now, Blaze 1 can hit up to 50... You must Buff your fighter to survive. You must Prioritize some target to survive. You MUST bring healer, you even get 2 at the beginning. They have PRACTICAL set of magic now. Not all level will let you go your pace.

What you really need is strategy.. You need a character you never leveled? No problem, don't grind, train...

I only wish I could get a walkthrough of it somewhere, for the new class, item, character, etc.

This guy make one solid Level Designer: You didn't add much in term of new feature, but you use the one already there BETTER than the original team did.

Congratulations!

Very fun indeed, it is more harder and adds some new characters, Bowie has a cool grey cape and the battles are different. The level up/train option is actually more balanced than WoTG. New weapons of course... I'm at New Granseal!