There was plenty I liked about this game, but it was outweighed by the bad. Frankly, it amazes me that more people aren't opposed to the episodic format. I mean, we already had to wait 25 years for a remake, and now we have to wait years more for two more games, and pay full-price for all three of them? (BTW, they don't warn you AT ALL before you buy the first one that it's only a third of the story). Not only that, but because they stretched the content out so much, the quality of it suffers greatly.
The remake gets incredibly repetitive, both in terms of gameplay and story. The vast majority of "story" is helping some old man find a lucky coin, or helping children find a cat, or several consecutive hours of, "To reach platform number blah blah, we have to cross bridge numbers blah and blah, then activate generator number blah blah..." Stuff that really just isn't interesting at all, let alone relevant to the main plot. They also made huge changes to the plot, most of which I couldn't even make it far enough to see.
While I consider the battle system to be the strong point of the game, it has serious flaws. Some bosses use OP moves that you literally have no defense against. And I get that the MP bar has to be limited somehow, but just having to wait on it (with NO way to speed it up) is cheap and tedious. I found myself spending huge amounts of battle time just running around in circles, waiting for my gauges to fill (battles would often take about half an hour, just for that reason).
While the remake has some fun, fast-paced action and is very faithful in many regards, I honestly feel like it was mostly a shameless cash grab, especially the way it was dragged out. Go figure that almost every media franchise with a central message against corporate greed has now been taken over by it.