Those sprites don’t look good to me, but I wonder how much is being done in consideration of a sharp, pixel-perfect display. Softening the outlines and lowering the internal shading and contrast makes them look flatter but more legible; the shadows on the original sprites look more like noise without the rounding effect of a tube tv.
4 Likes
I think it’s just circular incompetence and I can’t fathom why anyone would litigate it rather than emulate
4 Likes
There is just enough friction to setting up retroarch on iOS to dissuade most people
3 Likes
they were actually doing a fairly good job of these rereleases for a while – the WSC-era redrawn FF1 and 2 sprites are very nice, the DS-era FF3 and 4 3D models are pretty clean, but so much as looking at a menu they’ve done in the past 10 years makes me want to vomit. if you can play through a whole jRPG with those menus you do not respect yourself enough to be a part of the conversation
6 Likes
Do I recall the 2014 Dragon Quest 1 port looking good albeit portrait mode?
Oh no, the menus.
or just throw a CRT shader to make these sprites look nice, on top of a widescreen and fast forward hack. They should be doing less work with these
9 Likes
iOS dragon quest is by and large barely OK imo
As long as FF3 is good, I don’t care about the other ones
2 Likes
I’m not as despondent about the sprites; I think they might be alright. But good lord, that menu font is fuckin tragic
3 Likes
the mobile dragon quest ports are ok but the switch/ps4 versions are hideous
but yeah retroarch ui is bad enough that i’ve begun to think it’s a worked shoot to sell these remasters to normies and the mister fpga to nerds
4 Likes
I didn’t even notice text was on screen
1 Like
The UI as a whole doesn’t match the rest of the game, so it looks cheap and weird. It gives off that RPGMaker windows vibe. I know that they’re kind of stuck working with antialiased typefaces because they scale to larger sizes much better, but there’s no excuse for everything else.
I don’t have a lot of time, so I just threw this concept together to show that you can still use system fonts or antialiased fonts in general for your dialogue and it doesn’t always have to look cheap and weird. (Will be a bit blurry probably when it’s embedded into the post)
(I think comic book style windows are wicked. It was one of many elements that made Vagrant Story so visually striking, and I’m not sure why they haven’t used it more often, especially with stuff like FF5, which is a bit more light-hearted vs 4, 6, and 7.)
12 Likes
Your second example reminds me of the Romancing Saga 2 remake, whose text boxes weren’t inspiring but weren’t actively hateful
6 Likes
yeah, my first impression was that the revisions were mostly to make the sprites read better on lcd’s, and also taking the 1x1 pixel aspect ratio into consideration. in that light I don’t hate them even if they don’t always feel like “upgrades” – though personally I think the IV and V sprites are just overall cleaner and better looking, even if the original aesthetic is somewhat compromised
kind of pointless if the rest of the remaster isn’t done with the same level of care, which seems to be the case from that screenshot tho!
2 Likes
I hold that “The Principal and the Pauper” is good, actually
1 Like
They fucked up when they called it final fantasy origins instead of the bouncer 2
11 Likes
what on earth
8 Likes
[exasperated sigh] river city…girls…zero…
7 Likes
Literally started pumping my fist in the air, that’s the lagniappe I needed
7 Likes