I didn't buy the pedal for modern reverbs like shimmer, swell etc. But I'm looking already for many years for the best pedal for big/long/warm/clean Hall and Plate reverbs on the market. I owned before: Specular Tempus, Strymon Big & Blue Sky, Ventris Audio Reverb, and severall cheaper reverb pedals. In A/B comparisons with the Empress I can say without any hesitation that the Empress Reverb delivers the most natural sound without any noise. All the other pedals did "something" with the sound of my guitar which I didn't like. And all of them where very difficult to get a long clean reverb without noise. The sounds of the Empress Reverb are really great. I really like the way of working with presets and banks and they are easy to select and/or tweak during live performances.
One little remark on the features: an USB port for connection with the PC (that many other pedals do have) would enlarge the tweakability. Especially some more adjustable parameters for the delay function would make the pedal really complete for me.
I honestly believe....if you want to keep the natural sound of your guitar and you want studio quality hall and plate for your live perfomances, there is no better choice than this Empress reverb.