I suppose easy is a relative term. A lot of games AIs only have to deal with attacking a single player character with little to no variation based on player/enemy stats. The AI in Brigandine has to account for all possible available targets, and add adjustments for variables such as attack/defense elements, path availability, creature HP, and maintaining a defense line to protect the enemy knight. I suspect Brigandine's AI requires a lot more CPU cycles than a basic combat game or FPS, and that's all withing the confines of the PS1 old CPU. Being surrounded by enemies in GE give serious penalties to hit/miss and critical chances. I've noticed the AI trying to surround my units more than I remember from LoF.
As far as being a "purist", not nearly as much was modified as it might seem based on all the ranting going on, and no one seems to comprehend that Atlus changed even more in LoF. The changes I made to creatures in the first release were done way back when I first started this project (I didn't even remember what they were it had been so long) and I actually thought people might welcome the slight variation in gameplay. Name changes, of which there are only a handful, were mostly done to eliminate some Engrishy conventions caused by Japanese trying to use English- 99% of the names in Brigandine are English words spelled phonetically in Japanese. They didn't pick those names because they sounded good or made sense in English, they were picked because they sounded 'cool' in Japanese. As such, I consider it a flaw to leave them in their Engrishy form.
An example is Ouroboros which I changed to Jormungandr. Ouroboros is a generic name for the symbol of a snake formed into a circle and biting its own tail. Jormungandr is the Norse serpent who grew so big that he circled the word and bit his own tail (thus becoming one of the earliest incarnations of the Ouroborus symbol). At the time of Ragnarok, it was said that Jormungandr would emerge and fight to destroy the world. In Brigandine, the end boss is most often called "The Serpent of Chaos", which is a proper noun for Jormungandr. The end boss is clearly a reference to Jormungandr. So why did the Japanese use the name Ouroborus? Because in Japanese, letter sounds are consonants squished together with a vowel. Double consonants are uncomfortable to their language and thus frequently avoided in naming conventions. If I restricted the English translation based on Japanese language sensibilities, it would be a disservice to the English audience.
Another example is the equipment item that gives a unit the ability to walk on water unhindered. The literal Japanese name is Water Spider- probably a reference to water bugs that that skip on the water's surface. That literal name would mean nothing to most English speakers. I changed them to Water Striders because I believe that non-literal translation is actually closer in meaning to the original Japanese than the literal name.
Overall, there were very few things that are altered or "westernized". There wasn't a need to as Brigandine is largely a westernized game to begin with. In the end, this isn't a project I'm selling so it doesn't hurt me if someone doesn't want to use it. Sure I'd be happy if everyone said "yay, it's wonderful", but I feel a greater responsibility to turn out a product that I'm proud of than to put out a product that's popular. It's borderline insanity for English speakers to avoid my project because I changed a few things. It's certainly not hurting me and they'll be missing out on quite a bit of content/nuance that was hacked out in the LoF release.
Here's one example. In the "Teath gives a gift to Yura" event, in LoF Atlus removed the line where Teath actually blurts out that he "loves" Yura. Because of that, it plays out that he's trying to drum up the courage to speak his feelings, but Yura runs off before he can. In the real event, Yura runs off because Teath says he loves her. She obviously doesn't return his feelings. It's far more poignant than the LoF watered down version. There are literally hundreds of subtle but significant differences like that which were lost in the Atlus' LoF translation. To avoid experiencing that because I called the Vampire Lord a Lich is just shooting yourself in the foot.
