This isn't really brief but I may just copy/paste a fair amount of this when going back to do the actual article anyway.
Actraiser Renaissance is amazing.
The graphics are an acquired taste, but once you get used to how the models and such look in the action stages, you can appreciate how much more detail and such they added, especially with some downright gorgeous background textures. Also, the city-builder parts have a lot more character now. Every area has its own tileset and architecture design and everything. Places like Northwall and Kasandora went from "there's a puddle of snow/sand, clean it up and then make this land into the same identical field-city as all the others" to still looking like a city in a desert/frozen Northlands, respectively, even after they've been tamed. (The music really helps with this, too--every city now has its own unique theme and the Default ActRaiser City-Building Section Theme is now just the one for Fillmore.)
The gameplay feels much slower and more hand-holdy at first, especially if you're used to at least repeatedly replaying if not outright speedrunning the original. You can't build over monster lairs and seal them until you get to the plot point that unlocks the quest that says you can, everything has a tutorial, it takes several hours just to get through Fillmore and at this point you may have a dreadful thought that oh no did they turn your entire beloved childhood classic into xyzzysqrl's Soldatorobo experience, but... no, it's fine, I promise it clears up. It's half just getting used to the city-building sections being meatier, more plot-heavy, and less speedrunnable now, and half because they're throwing a lot of new stuff at you (the tower defense thing, in particular) and so Fillmore has a lot of tutorials. You get used to the new pace and get through the tutorials and everything from Bloodpool on is fine.
The tower defense thing is great, too, and I'm saying this as someone who normally detests tower defense games. That is not my genre. But here? It's fine. You have your Super Plot-Significant Chosen One Hero Characters (one per city; you can summon previous ones in later ones,) things like your archer towers and defense-related buildings you can put down beforehand, and your miracles (the city becomes temporarily immune to miracle damage during sieges so feel free to just rain down as many earthquakes and thunderstorms and whatnot as you have MP to help take out the swarms) and none of them feel like they're quite enough on their own--there will always be some last-second scrambling and "oh crap" hero redeployment and miracle abuse to tamp down whatever hole in your defenses became apparent during the raid--but in that sense it actually feels pretty balanced. You're not supposed to have a perfect defense you can build beforehand and then just sit back and watch the mage towers handle everything (that's why there's a limit to how many defense buildings you're allowed to build, and it never feels like enough to cover every possible point of attack on the whole map.) You're supposed to do the best you can to mitigate as much of the threat as you can with those, then use the heroes and miracles to mop up the rest. It's supposed to feel like a team effort, like every resource coming together to pull off a victory that definitely required you to be awake and alert and flexible in your strategy but wasn't, like, brutally impossible or anything.
I don't know if I'm explaining this properly, but it just... it works. It's fun. ActRaiser was always this odd duck where two completely unrelated genres (your action-platformer bits and your SimCity bits) got bolted together and Renaissance adds a third game to the game, but I swear it fits in so well and so seamlessly that you wouldn't notice it's new if you hadn't played the original. (If anything, the city-building and tower-defense parts blend so well together that it's the action-platformer bits that now feel more out of place than ever, but even those... I won't spoil but let's just say there's an entire bonus city area after Death Heim that plays with that concept beautifully and made me legitimately mark out at one point.)
Music is incredible. There are classic and remastered versions you can switch between, even for the new songs (like the non-Fillmore city themes, tower defense theme, etc.) For extra authenticity, Yuzo Kushiro composed all the new music in the SNES soundfont first and then remastered it to the HD version along with the original songs rather than back-porting anything, because of course he did; he's Yuzo Kushiro. Like, have you seen the first three Etrian Odyssey games?
Story is great, too. It may slow down the pace in the city-building parts when there's now more of a plot that you have to follow before you can just speedrun the whole town, but the new characters they came up with, the cities' heroes and their story arcs from when you first meet them to when they realize their status and join you and whatnot, is lovely to behold. The stakes for each city (especially when it's time to face Act 2 and beat the boss of that area) feel a lot higher and more personal, and even emotional at times. Northwall's story made us cry forever aaaa
I can understand people bouncing off this game because its two most polarizing drawbacks (the graphics look weird if you're not used to and acclimated to them yet, and Fillmore is incredibly handholdy) are what they hit you with right at front; you kind of have to tough those out for it to hit its stride from there. But... my God. When you do? The back parts are gaming perfection.
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Actraiser Renaissance is amazing.
The graphics are an acquired taste, but once you get used to how the models and such look in the action stages, you can appreciate how much more detail and such they added, especially with some downright gorgeous background textures. Also, the city-builder parts have a lot more character now. Every area has its own tileset and architecture design and everything. Places like Northwall and Kasandora went from "there's a puddle of snow/sand, clean it up and then make this land into the same identical field-city as all the others" to still looking like a city in a desert/frozen Northlands, respectively, even after they've been tamed. (The music really helps with this, too--every city now has its own unique theme and the Default ActRaiser City-Building Section Theme is now just the one for Fillmore.)
The gameplay feels much slower and more hand-holdy at first, especially if you're used to at least repeatedly replaying if not outright speedrunning the original. You can't build over monster lairs and seal them until you get to the plot point that unlocks the quest that says you can, everything has a tutorial, it takes several hours just to get through Fillmore and at this point you may have a dreadful thought that oh no did they turn your entire beloved childhood classic into
The tower defense thing is great, too, and I'm saying this as someone who normally detests tower defense games. That is not my genre. But here? It's fine. You have your Super Plot-Significant Chosen One Hero Characters (one per city; you can summon previous ones in later ones,) things like your archer towers and defense-related buildings you can put down beforehand, and your miracles (the city becomes temporarily immune to miracle damage during sieges so feel free to just rain down as many earthquakes and thunderstorms and whatnot as you have MP to help take out the swarms) and none of them feel like they're quite enough on their own--there will always be some last-second scrambling and "oh crap" hero redeployment and miracle abuse to tamp down whatever hole in your defenses became apparent during the raid--but in that sense it actually feels pretty balanced. You're not supposed to have a perfect defense you can build beforehand and then just sit back and watch the mage towers handle everything (that's why there's a limit to how many defense buildings you're allowed to build, and it never feels like enough to cover every possible point of attack on the whole map.) You're supposed to do the best you can to mitigate as much of the threat as you can with those, then use the heroes and miracles to mop up the rest. It's supposed to feel like a team effort, like every resource coming together to pull off a victory that definitely required you to be awake and alert and flexible in your strategy but wasn't, like, brutally impossible or anything.
I don't know if I'm explaining this properly, but it just... it works. It's fun. ActRaiser was always this odd duck where two completely unrelated genres (your action-platformer bits and your SimCity bits) got bolted together and Renaissance adds a third game to the game, but I swear it fits in so well and so seamlessly that you wouldn't notice it's new if you hadn't played the original. (If anything, the city-building and tower-defense parts blend so well together that it's the action-platformer bits that now feel more out of place than ever, but even those... I won't spoil but let's just say there's an entire bonus city area after Death Heim that plays with that concept beautifully and made me legitimately mark out at one point.)
Music is incredible. There are classic and remastered versions you can switch between, even for the new songs (like the non-Fillmore city themes, tower defense theme, etc.) For extra authenticity, Yuzo Kushiro composed all the new music in the SNES soundfont first and then remastered it to the HD version along with the original songs rather than back-porting anything, because of course he did; he's Yuzo Kushiro. Like, have you seen the first three Etrian Odyssey games?
Story is great, too. It may slow down the pace in the city-building parts when there's now more of a plot that you have to follow before you can just speedrun the whole town, but the new characters they came up with, the cities' heroes and their story arcs from when you first meet them to when they realize their status and join you and whatnot, is lovely to behold. The stakes for each city (especially when it's time to face Act 2 and beat the boss of that area) feel a lot higher and more personal, and even emotional at times. Northwall's story made us cry forever aaaa
I can understand people bouncing off this game because its two most polarizing drawbacks (the graphics look weird if you're not used to and acclimated to them yet, and Fillmore is incredibly handholdy) are what they hit you with right at front; you kind of have to tough those out for it to hit its stride from there. But... my God. When you do? The back parts are gaming perfection.