1. Based on a retelling of a world famous piece of literature. - The game is based on the manga Tenchi wo Kurau which is inspired by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms
2. You've seen the protagonists in other forms of media. - Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, and Guan Yu have appeared in books, movies, games, video games, etc.
3. Not what the developer was known for. - Capcom wasn't known for RPGs in the NES era.
4. 108 recruitable characters? That's nothing! - 150 playable characters!
5. But you can only keep 70 of them. - Your party is limited to 70 though
6. Innovative party mechanics in battle. - Your active party is 7 people. Five battle, one is in reserve if one of the five falls, and the seventh is your tactician.
7. This is definitely not Magic. - The tactician uses tactics to effect the battle. These function exactly like magic in the battles.
8. That's nice, the game can do the fights for you. - One of the options in the battle menu is 'All-out' which will just auto-fight for you. Though it just has both parties attack.
9. It's sequel didn't make it to our shores. - Tenchi wo Kurau II: Shokatsu Kōmei Den never came to America
10. Recruited members who leave your party will take up arms against you again. - Recruited enemies who leave the party will again appear in random battles on the map.
11. Jeremy Parish approved. - Jeremy did a 'pocket' episode on Retronuats about the game. He liked it.
12. Most likely kids playing it on their NES weren't even aware of the source material at the time. - I had no idea what manga was when I was a wee lad. I had absolutely never heard of the Romance of Three Kingdoms until high school or college. I certainly didn't have any conception of what it was or how influential it was on East Asian culture until much later.
