mango drank
Member
I was thinking about Vagrant Story recently. Although I liked it back in the day, it always felt too big for its britches, constrained by the original PSX. The characters were too low-poly to represent the original character designs. Same for the epic gothic environments. The textures were too low-res across the board, for both characters and enviros. In gameplay, the framerate often dropped to single digits. The menus felt laggy. Loading and saving took forever. All in all, it felt like the devs ignored the limitations of the PSX hardware, and just barreled through, hoping their vision would come across intact. The result is a great effort and impressive in its own way, but too ambitious for the PSX, I say. It feels like it would've been a great candidate to have development move over to the PS2.
Years later, Matsuno and co would get a chance to execute on their lush, detailed aesthetic with much more fidelity in FFXII. Can you imagine how good VS would've looked, and how much smoother it would've played?
What other PSX games do you think tried to do too much, and would've worked better if the devs had moved over to PS2?
Bonus: Ico famously got its start as a PSX game, before Ueda decided the PSX was too limiting:
Years later, Matsuno and co would get a chance to execute on their lush, detailed aesthetic with much more fidelity in FFXII. Can you imagine how good VS would've looked, and how much smoother it would've played?
What other PSX games do you think tried to do too much, and would've worked better if the devs had moved over to PS2?
Bonus: Ico famously got its start as a PSX game, before Ueda decided the PSX was too limiting: