SO2R: Finished on Galaxy mode. Characters were Rena/Claude/Celine/Ashton/Welch/Bowman/Dias/Noel. Endgame party was Noel (controlled), Bowman, Dias, Celine. Beat
Indalecio Gabriel around level 90.
I did a lot of item crafting, but more in a "fill in the pokedex" way than a "break the game" way. I did make a few fun things though like
https://imgur.com/a/ypm015nSpeaking of breaking the game, there's about a million new ways to do so. I tried to avoid almost all of these, so the game was still pretty challenging. Hardest fights were Zaphkiel and Metatron (Wise Men #1 and 3).
Formation-wise, I used Free-fight in the early game (bonus XP) and Assault Shift for the rest of the game (gives bonus crit and items affect all). Items! Items are amazing now. They're cast by you, the player, rather than the character you're controlling. So it doesn't matter if the character is paralyzed or whatever, items are still usable. You can do tricks like start casting a healing spell, then use an item to resurrect an ally right before it goes off. They revive and get a quick heal. There's also a factor that reduces the cooldown time between using items. So yeah, use them items.
Character notes:
Noel. Probably the worst character in the game, but he's usable. His spells seem to have a much longer cast time than Celine (Hasten Speech included). He gets Energy Arrow for early multi hits, but it's slow to cast. I mostly just used Fohn Wind and Cure All. Earthquake was his only spell breaking the damage limit, but it's super slow.
Celine. Quite lovely. I had Faerie Ring and Light Cross on her so MP was never an issue. Put her AI on kill all the things and she did. Just stands at the back of the screen and rains AOE hell on enemies.
Bowman. Relatively unchanged from the original. Which means he's still good, but didn't get the buffs that others got. So he's more of an "average" now.
Dias. Also relatively unchanged from the original. BUT! He may benefit more from the remake than others. His weapon from the Fun City Arena doubles his damage. That wasn't great in the original since 9999 was pretty easy to hit anyway. But now with Break Damage Limit, he can hit them high notes so pretty.
I didn't use Welch, but I hear she got some major upgrades and is either #1 or 2 best character in the game. Ernest and Precis also reportedly got major updates.
Overall it's an amazing remake of an already great game. I'm probably forgetting a dozen things I wanted to gush about. But let's talk about the one thing (the only thing!) I didn't like.
The voices.
Japanese got a new voiceover, but English didn't. They're using the PSP version voices. Some of these are okay, but there's a lot more misses than hits. Claude sounds like he's 12 years old. The Wisemen fights were extremely disappointing, especially Michael who is now speaking his lines rather than screaming maniacally like the PS1 version. Certainly this isn't a dealbreaker considering how amazing the rest of the remake is, but it's an ugly blotch on an otherwise beautiful painting.