Shining Force 2 is a game that is a lot longer than it should have been. You know you got problems when you have characters with ?? attack, defense, agility, and HP because the system is only designed to display 2 digits. Consider that the game is absolutely devoid of any strategic depth, the 'hide hero far away against a boss' gameplay gets boring after a while. While fundamentally there is absolutely no difference between Shining Force and Shining Force 2, I liked the first one better because the pacing was much better. At the end of SF you might still remember who these guys in your party are and why they are there.
Also, I didn't like how in the final battle of Shinign Force 2, Sir Astral is talking about how you must make a stand against Xeon to protect the princess, but the first thing you'd do is cast Egress because chances are too many of your guys already died in the last battle. For some inexplicable reason, the attack animation on SF2 generally looks worse (compared hero of SF2 to Max for example), and there are no special animations like the Max sword-wave.
