Yes, IZJS does take away freedom. But that's not an inherently bad thing, it just makes you specialize. IMO it works quite well.

And well that's only one of many other things that are changed in IZJS. It doesn't solve all of XII's technical issues, and creates some new ones, but its improvements far outweigh everything else. For instance, just about ALL the chests/treasures are changed, and they are actually useful now. A lot of the best magicks, technicks and equipment have to be found in chests in difficult dungeons. Also, no more BS Zodiac Spear, that little secret has been taken out entirely, and you can get the spear in a different way. Finally, any respawnable chests are now respawned by going only ONE screen away, making farming them a hell of a lot more manageable and fun.

There's also the single feature that makes it absolutely impossible for me to go back to original FFXII ever again: the L1 speedup. Pressing L1 makes the game run at about triple speed, which turns getting around towns or lengthy areas from a chore to just a little diversion. A wonderful little addition.

And now I'll stop derailing this topic into a discussion that probably should've been on the XII board.