I don't mind the level system thing they had, it really just kept track of what you were missing and whatnot in terms of power-ups, and because they're using it, there's a good chance they'll have the buster upgrades back from 1 and 2 (no matter how awesome the Customizer got in later games, I honestly believed that 1 and 2 dealt with the buster WAY better). Escape as a button and not a chip is a great thing, because it was a pain to have to waste one of your chips for that just for a 1 in 5 chance of being able to run from the battle so you aren't wasting time. The chip system used in BN2 and 3 is also a somewhat welcome addition since now if I find a useless chip at the start, I can toss it away to pull out a third of the remaining folder, which helps out a lot in looking for particular combos and such.
No Wi-Fi is a stupid thing to do; I mean, most of the friggin' time when you played against someone in those games, it was with someone online, which pretty much meant that the Star Force series got the most amount of PvP done. The series isn't as popular as Pokemon, not everyone has a cart laying around and plays it a lot, and because each game is specific to what it can hook up with, the odds of finding someone who was around your area of progress in a particular game was close to nothing.
It's official for me, but I won't be getting the game. They half-assed quite a bit with this 'remake' while in some other areas they excelled really well in. They went through the trouble of giving Subaru his own sprite sheet for battle and changed the mug shots for Lan and MM.EXE, but they didn't even bother to change the background, layout, or mug shots of other important characters.