There have been numerous changes made in comparison to the original and so far I consider all of them to be an improvement. Which is not a given in a new version, considering how Nintendo bungled the screentext speed of last year's Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door by removing the fast-forward function of the original. Anyway, the most notable changes are:
1. Being able to perform artes that aren't ready. This is such a huge improvement because it speeds up battles so much. Whether or not you use this feature is up to you, but when enemies have commonly so many HPs, it's a godsend. Of course the usage of this feature is limited per battle, but most of the time the number of uses is more than sufficient. This ties in with...
2. ...rewards for reaching certain percentage milestones of exploration on each individual map. Among the early rewards are extensions for the usage of the aforementioned feature, but also probes that grant more miranium storage that were very hard to come by in the original. The rewards are very beneficial in general, so they are surprisingly good.
3. BLADE levels have been ditched. This means when you go exploring, you don't get disappointed by Frontier Nav points you can't activate or treasure you can't collect due to insufficient levels, which was very common in the original. There are still a few treasure boxes that are locked until much later in the game, but they amount to a single digit percentage of all treasure in the game.
4. Quest markers for everything, including the dreaded rare collectibles where it could take hours to find them in the original.
5. Adjusted pacing for basic missions that you can accept at the BLADE terminal. Now there's only a limited amount of them that get added per chapter instead of the far looser feed of the original that could be confusing and frustrating as hell. Limited amount still equates to ~40 per chapter, so plenty to do.
6. Almost all story and affinity missions have ditched character restrictions, so you have a lot more freedom in your party setup.
7. Shared EXP across all unlocked party members, again giving you more freedom to switch between people as you see fit.
8. Party members can be selected from a basic menu instead of having to pick them up at their designated spot in NLA.
9. Likewise, the time of day can be changed in the menu instead of having to look for specific resting spots.
10. The in-game bestiary doesn't record quest-specific enemies anymore from what I can tell. This means that quests with multiple routes are now a lot less likely to bug completionists by having to pick one or the other between a superior affinity outcome or recording an enemy entry.
The Wii U version isn't just obsolete because of these tremendous improvements for the Switch version, but obviously also because its servers have been turned off.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
Essay Pro