[DJ]

Kotaku sure does hate the way it looks and is urging people to not buy it because Pixels. Also apparently there's spelling errors in the script and a hint system.

Meanwhile I'm all

_________________

[DJ]

Eeeeew shitty iPhone resolution with black bars. I know Japan has a deep cultural boner for homogeneity and doesn't believe Android exists (just like they don't believe PC gaming is a thing people do or that peanut butter doesn't need to be composed almost entirely of sugar) but come on Square. :(



espier




Why is Terra's head a different shape in the battle screens than in the field.






huh.

It looks even more bizarre when you see the full-size resolution.

Man was Kotaku actually right about something? Shit.
_________________

[Schwere Viper]

Sweet Joseph, that's hideous.
_________________
HeavyViper@Twitter ~~~ HeavyViper@Soundcloud
Blog: Machines That Sing

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

what baffles me most is Figaro Castle being polygons on the world map. Are all overworld 3D, or does that somehow have to do with the way it sinks into the ground?

I guess the enemy sprites turned out pretty decently, tho. They're about the only thing that seems to have been done with anything resembling consistent quality ever since Square revisited 2D Final Fantasy on the Wonderswan.

[DJ]

They've got a new engine they use for these remakes that only vaguely resembles the tile-based setups for the previous games, so resolutions look blurry sometimes, less blurry other times, and you get stuff like the Floating Magitek Pilots. It also makes a lot of the characters look very similar to each other (not that this hasn't always been the case).

I've played this a bit more and the one thing I will give it is that the in-game character sprites are far more consistent with what they're "supposed" to look like as evidenced by the character portraits. Which are also rather nice, coincidentally. You get a high-res closeup of all the characters when they're speaking. I actually like it quite a bit.

Also to be semi-fair, the game looks WAY worse in screenshots than it does in motion. When it's holding still and there's no music or SFX playing you have time to take in all the weird inconsistencies in the visual layout, but actually playing the thing tends to smudge those to the point where it isn't terribly bothersome unless you're the type of person who's really anal about minor graphical things (which is going to be like 99.9999% of the playerbase who buys this but whateverrrrrr) Also, the controls and battle menus have been entirely redone for mobile in a reasonably intelligent way, i.e. they don't just ape Gamepad controls. It makes the active time battle system a touch more engaging, which is nice.

Also Terra's hair is back to green, instead of blonde. Thank fucking god.
_________________

[rye]

I just spent minutes doing this to control my rage


_________________

[Brooks]

Some screencap the Final Kefka in this plz

[Gironika]

the first thought I had, looking at these screens ……

man, SQEX really doesn't want to put games on mobile phones. This looks like someone deliberately tried to make it look odd enough that you will stick to the "proper" console/handheld versions the next time. The thing is: if I bought something like this, there'd probably be no next time …
_________________

[Felix]

as usual I have no idea why someone would rather play this than emulate the SNES/GBA version where you can have save states and fast-forward as well

[Ymer]

While I don't agree with this guy on the looks I have to say that some things with the interface look clever:

(start from the bottom and read upwards)
http://imgur.com/a/m0iag
_________________

[mauve]

white outlines on sprites in 2014 from a professional development studio

they can't even be assed to do premultiplied alpha

so quality
_________________
twit

[BenoitRen]

Yup, looks like you fell for Square-Enix's money-grabbing trap, DJ. Good job.
_________________
Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[Talbain]

Given all the screenshots I've seen, I have to ask: is the ATB system in the game anymore?

edit: Ah, apparently it is, as the menus scroll up onto the screen that indicates the ATB, I guess.
_________________

[Takashi]

It's incredibly jarring that this game was handled by RPG veterans Matrix Software, that also did all the neat 3D Final Fantasy DS games (and the Android/iOS ports).

I guess they were busy doing Bravely Default (back when it was supposed to be a 4 Heroes of Light sequel).
_________________

low-end.net | Whimsy (soon) | Serfdom 2.0

[Felix]

the somewhat hideous touch bubbles for the battle interface are the same as when I tried the Android ports of FFIII/IV DS, so I guess that's not too surprising.

[Broco]

[ionustron]

Saying to mauve last night, the sprites remind me of the old glossy battle sprite computer drawing program renderings that I'd see in game mag previews or SFC boxart. Problem is, they never had background set to them so perhaps it wasn't the best idea to go that way. I think I kind of get it but... I'm curious how saturated simplified renderings of the old assets would have turned out.

I can't stand the formations or windows on combat screens. It just reminds me of newgrounds.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Matrix Software doesn't exactly have a super-solid resume. They've made some good games and they've made some bad ones.
Developing for mobile means there's a significantly lower need for quality before a product is pushed out, especially on ports/remakes.

[DJ]

[Felix]

Easy tiger

[DJ]

Would it help if I just tl;dr it into "shut up benren"? That's what it started out as but I've had a long day. >:(

Eh nevermind I'll just slap him on ignore forever and save myself and everyone else the headache.
_________________

[BenoitRen]

You fell for your "Kotaku can't be right" bias, then? Either way, you gave Square-Enix money they didn't deserve.
_________________
Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[Booter]

IMO paying for this software can be described as nothing but masochism.
_________________

[BotageL]

[Gironika]

[Kabbage]

Oh god.

It's fucking mind-blowing to think that this is the same company that made that incredible FF4 3D remake.

how
_________________
tumblr

[Felix]

that FF4 remake is still kind of slow paced for my tastes though I think it's because I'm used to playing the SNES and PSX games with the emulator fast forward key held down

[Pijaibros]

[Broco]

I haven't played the FF4 remake but in the original SNES versions, I actually preferred FF4 easytype to FF4 hardtype because the battles lack tactical options so the only thing you can really do in reaction to hard bosses is to grind longer. Do these "augment systems" in the remake fix that problem?

[Felix]

sort of, yeah, though for the most part they just make you more overpowered (if you play your cards right, ie read a FAQ, Rosa can Doublecast and Cecil gets doubled HP and stuff like that), and fighting Zeromus underleveled was a lot of fun in hardtype. I agree that some of the earlier bosses are needlessly difficult in hardtype though (I remember getting stuck on Demon Wall when playing in ZSNES as a kid)

worth noting that I played and enjoyed the FF3 remake when they ported it to Android, because in that case the original NES title is painfully slower (also because I figured out that if you force quit the app when you're about to die at a boss it restores an autosave that it silently made at the beginning of the boss room, so you don't have to play through a 20 minute dungeon again), but it's hard to improve on the experience of playing an SNES/PSX jRPG in an emulator.

[MattCD42]

[rye]

[showka]

Looking at this many of the redrawn backgrounds and enemies look pretty good. The menus are meh, but the only massively fucked up thing are the character sprites. Seems like if they'd handled them differently this might have been a welcome remake.

I think showing portraits during dialogue was a misstep; the characters already expressed emotions via their SD versions already, which the static poses in the portraits conflict with. That really bothered me in the GBA version.

[Brooks]

Is this actually on iOS yet, can't seem to find the thing

[DJ]

So I played this a bit more today and it's actually growing on me quite a bit.

Worth noting that I'm playing on a Nexus 5, so it's not tablet-sized and the art looks a lot better when it's not blown up and has its warts staring you in the face. The touch interface actually works semi-decently (I like being able to tap on enemies to select them for attacks) and now that I've adjusted to how the thing looks it was pretty easy to slip back into the grove.

I have the original on my phone as well and actually had them both open simultaneously; I wasn't able to tell much of a difference between the audio. If anything the Android port sounded better.
_________________

[shnozlak]

Some of this looks "good" but the complete lack of elegance is just a killer.
_________________
Mixtapes galore ~ VG MUSIC
ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ http://phantom-photon.tumblr.com/

[Felix]

yup

[Broco]

I'd say it looks like it was done in RPG Maker, but Barkley Gaiden actually looks *more* visually coherent and less cobbled together than this. Since that game pulled art from mostly SNES titles at their original resolution, whereas this remake mixes upscaled SNES art with vector art. Compare:

[Faithless]

I got this game for free by filling out Google surveys in their app. You get a buck every time you tell Google something like, "I don't drive a Honda," or "My next TV will be 4k, 180 inches." With 18 bucks in my Google Wallet, I thought, "This is better than Candy Crush, and I'd like at least one game on my phone."

But yeah, it's a real confusing mess.
_________________
my website

[parkbench]

my childhood...
_________________
metafilter vs. youtube comments

[remote]