Got bored and decided to rip the sprites of Destiny Of An Emperor. Thought I was nearly finished, then I realized the portraits in the game were mix-and-match composites. So, back I went to redo the sprite sheet. Then I got the dumb idea to rip the kanji sprites and thus put names to all the portraits. This was what I had to work with:
It looks like an unreadable, jumbled mess and that's because it is. That is, until you change the palette. Matching the darkest shade to the lightest will make one half of a character legible. Matching the middle shade to the lightest will make the other half of a character legible. I've seen this in other games but always just assumed it was an issue with the bit depth, since in a 4bpp game (e.g., SNES) lowering the bit depth to 2bpp would make it legible. Not sure how many games got this bright idea, but it effectively cuts the memory required for large, legible characters in half.
Pointless nowadays, but intriguing to me nonetheless.