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[2+2=5]

Yeah that game kind of looks like shit too, especially since it's a strategy title without much action going on. This game looks like it's being designed for a 5 or so year old mobile device, just like it's predecessor Adventures of Mana.

Are we looking at the same screens?
Yes they are different genres but those screens are all in a limited environment in or near a castle, one has 4 characters in a very very small room, the other has dozen of characters in a way bigger environment and looks way better and more detailed.

It's not about how dark it is, it's about the detail and the nuances which haven't been carried over in the remake, and even the Android version still has a lot of detail that isn't being addressed. I just don't feel like this is doing justice to the game.

The outdoor areas a little better and seem more vibrant, but even there it's not very impressive... the textures are bafflingly poor for such simple visuals. You'd think that with so little going on that they'd at least have clean, sharp texture work. Instead, it looks lower res than the original GC Wind Waker. I've yet to see a shot where I don't think the original looks better and has more charm:

The colors are bolder and more intense, yet it manages to still be more coherent than the remake.

You are making the correlation not faithful=bad looking, that's not fair, the 2d android game maybe doesn't have all the details and the atmosphere of the original version but it definitively looks better, at least in that castle screen, the 3d one tries to replicate the 2d android game so that's also not too faithful to the original but we agree that it could have looked a lot better.

 

[zeopower6]

Are we looking at the same screens?
Yes they are different genres but those screens are all in a limited environment in or near a castle, one has 4 characters in a very very small room, the other has dozen of characters in a way bigger environment and looks way better and more detailed.


You are making the correlation not faithful=bad looking, that's not fair, the 2d android game maybe doesn't have all the details and the atmosphere of the original version but it definitively looks better, at least in that castle screen, the 3d one tries to replicate the 2d android game so that's also not too faithful to the original but we agree that it could have looked a lot better.

Mostly I think people are just upset that they didn't do a full HD 2D hand-drawn remake. After Adventures of Mana's release, it was very much unlikely that would ever happen since they can just reuse assets for future games with touchups. Though I wonder what this means when/if they do Seiken Densetsu 3... would that possibly be the first official English version to come overseas or would it be JP only? It'll have its 25th in 2020.

 

[saturnine]

Basically it was all rearranged with the supervision of Kikuta.

This is the part that's most intriguing. I wonder how they're gonna handle some of the more extreme instruments. Part of me wants them to stay faithful and keep the stupidly slappy bass and 80's snare drums.

 

[2+2=5]

Mostly I think people are just upset that they didn't do a full HD 2D hand-drawn remake. After Adventures of Mana's release, it was very much unlikely that would ever happen since they can just reuse assets for future games with touchups. Though I wonder what this means when/if they do Seiken Densetsu 3... would that possibly be the first official English version to come overseas or would it be JP only? It'll have its 25th in 2020.

HD 2D remakes require too much effort(unless you are ok with upscaled filtered sprites), 3d is pretty much inevitable.

 

[zeopower6]

Seeing how huge this reveal was, I think this will probably sell quite well in Japan at least. Maybe it'll fund the eventual SD3 remake and making that look better than Adventures and Secret?

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/09/1...remakes-if-final-fantasy-adventure-does-well/

Adventures did well enough to make this so...

 

[Augemitbutter]

the previous game had a very good rearranged soundtrack with original soundtrack version available. this will most likely be great too.

 

[Celine]

Seeing how huge this reveal was, I think this will probably sell quite well in Japan at least. Maybe it'll fund the eventual SD3 remake and making that look better than Adventures and Secret?

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/09/1...remakes-if-final-fantasy-adventure-does-well/

Adventures did well enough to make this so...

I doubt PSV/PS4 version will even reach the 200K threshold combined.

 

[speedpop]

I keep seeing posts about the bad personal reactions and none of them highlight what exactly they wanted in a remake. A sporadic few talk about higher res sprites but I can't think of anything like that being feasible in the environment of game development these days. Don't forget that this is a game with a very simple story, a twitch battle system that relies on charging, and a soundtrack that is king. There isn't much else.

This captures the spirit of the original game, I'd say it's a job well done.
Hopefully the rest of the game can keep up with this quality.

I'm of the same opinion. I personally enjoy this screenshot thoroughly and have faith in the remake.

 

[PixyJunket]

Make sure to preorder for that... swimsuit DLC...

SOLD!! 💞💞💞

 

[Yawnny]

Same graphics as SNES with a slight polish would've been all that's needed....

 

[speedpop]

Same graphics as SNES with a slight polish would've been all that's needed....

It would require a whole new build. Time and effort they probably don't have as elite 2D artists have become a bygone era.

I once completed Secret of Mana without the sprite Popoi in my party anymore because the AI didn't "catch-up" after the screen transition randomly cut them off. There's no way they could release it with a simple spit & shine.

 

[Northeastmonk]

I'm kinda upset this wasn't announced for mobile.

I can still get it on one of the other 3 platforms, but given how big mobile is in Japan. I am surprised.

 

[Zippedpinhead]

I am really happy that this is coming to console/Pc first. The mobile version is ok, but the unmovable touch icons on vita really limited the viewable area of the first one.

 

[jgwhiteus]

I keep seeing posts about the bad personal reactions and none of them highlight what exactly they wanted in a remake. A sporadic few talk about higher res sprites but I can't think of anything like that being feasible in the environment of game development these days. Don't forget that this is a game with a very simple story, a twitch battle system that relies on charging, and a soundtrack that is king. There isn't much else.



I'm of the same opinion. I personally enjoy this screenshot thoroughly and have faith in the remake.

I don't know, even the comments which seem supportive or excited about this (like yours) seem to make concessions like "well, a full HD remake would have cost too much money for the series", "well, they had to reuse assets from the previous game; what else did you expect" etc. As in, "don't expect a AAA effort for this, just be glad this even came out at all in some form" and... the original is one of my favorite games from my childhood and can be considered one of the highlights of the SNES library (which is full of great RPGs), so when I read a headline saying "PS4/PC/Vita remake!" I guess I was hoping for something along the lines of DQ11 on the UE4 engine, not something which seems to be targeted towards an eventual mobile release. And there doesn't seem to be much info about new gameplay elements, story elements, etc. so right now the value proposition is "it's the same game with slightly better graphics, but you can pay $40 for it."

And the original's graphics weren't the peak of the SNES era, but with the art direction and palette they were colorful, saturated, and had some charm to them. One thing I've noticed looking at the new screens is that the colors seem to be slightly washed-out and a bit lower-contrast, which contributes to a sense of the graphics being on the bland side.

It's still a great game and the updated character designs looks good, etc., so I'm sure it'll be a good introduction to a lot of people that haven't played it before, but I also can't get excited about being asked to spend $40 for a reissue when the original is readily available, e.g. on Wii VC.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Is it just me or the English voiceover is missing many lines compared to the original Japanese? Or it is just a case of Japanese language being wordier?

 

[Trogdor1123]

I keep seeing posts about the bad personal reactions and none of them highlight what exactly they wanted in a remake. A sporadic few talk about higher res sprites but I can't think of anything like that being feasible in the environment of game development these days. Don't forget that this is a game with a very simple story, a twitch battle system that relies on charging, and a soundtrack that is king. There isn't much else.



I'm of the same opinion. I personally enjoy this screenshot thoroughly and have faith in the remake.

Same here, the trailer really turned me off but that pic alone sold me. Just need to wait for a price drop.

 

[Durante]

That art style looks 1:1 with the original designs, just in 3D.

At this point we're dealing with the traditional complaints about modern graphical updates of classic sprite games that have plagued every remake/sequel since 3D began.

"it looks better in 2D" or "I assumed the 2D was implying some different art style" (realistic? non-anime? etc).

I do get it. I viscerally understand how these graphics had a more universal charm in 2D. But I don't think this represents an effort that misrepresents the original art at all. It's pretty authentic. It's just going to be a different feel in 3D entirely.

I agree.

A few people are losing their shit and claiming it looks "horrible", but doing that for a decently competent effort like this just blurs the lines between it and actually atrocious "remakes" like FF6.

 

[Champion]

Holy shit this looks bad Why?

 

[Vital Tundra]

It's so weird how we get so many games day and date on Pc with consoles from SE yet had to wait for FF15. I'm optimistic about this game. Hope it's not just a visual remake and the fix up the translation and some battle mechanics.

 

[orioto]

Yeah i think this is a semantic matter.

Art style is not bad actually i think, it's more a problem of budget here. It's obviously a smaller scale effort than the original game was for the time.

 

[Miniature Kaiju]

A few people are losing their shit and claiming it looks "horrible", but doing that for a decently competent effort like this just blurs the lines between it and actually atrocious "remakes" like FF6.

I would've been completely ecstatic if FF6 had received a remake of this caliber instead of that... thing... it got. And I say that as someone who played both games when they were released, replayed them multiple times since, and loves them to bits.

My only "complaint" about this remake is that I wish they had done more with the lighting model to make the screen a bit more dynamic. It's not a big deal, game looks nice, true to the concept art.

 

[Nerrel]

I've never played the original game, but the remake looks pretty great to me? Even in comparison shots it looks like a faithful recreation in 3D. It's budget but that doesn't make it automatically horrible

Also isn't meant to infringe upon the original graphics, that version will always exist. May as well remake it in a new style vs. trying to make "better sprites" or something (which will never make everyone happy anyways)

I think this game is so beloved because of it's extremely high aesthetic appeal. Its gameplay was pretty heavily flawed compared to the other RPGs on the SNES, especially its own sequel, but a lot of people still have a special place for it because the music and art are so memorable and great. When you're remaking a game like that, you have to do it right.

It raises the question of why remake something at all. If this is about better visuals, I don't think they put the time and money into this to pull that off. Just having the game in 3D isn't worth anything; Cave Story 3D tried that, and most people seem to agree that it's a junk version of the game. At this point, the only thing that I'm sure will look better is the world map.

I keep seeing posts about the bad personal reactions and none of them highlight what exactly they wanted in a remake. A sporadic few talk about higher res sprites but I can't think of anything like that being feasible in the environment of game development these days.

Sprite based games aren't that uncommon. Rayman Legends, Muramasa, Dragon's Crown are good examples. And Vanillaware isn't exactly some giant studio with huge resources. But even when working in 3D, they could just put a little more budget into it. I'd much rather have had text for the dialog than awkward voice acting if it meant more resources could go into the visuals.

You are making the correlation not faithful=bad looking, that's not fair, the 2d android game maybe doesn't have all the details and the atmosphere of the original version but it definitively looks better, at least in that castle screen, the 3d one tries to replicate the 2d android game so that's also not too faithful to the original but we agree that it could have looked a lot better.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm pointing out that this version is losing detail compared to the 24 year old version. They're not putting the effort in to either capture the original details or to create new ones of their own; I wouldn't care if they strayed from the original art a little as long as they found a new style the worked in its own way. After all, going to 3D is going to necessitate a lot of changes no matter what. My problem is that the visuals they're delivering are very cheap and don't have the same attention to detail and obvious hard work that the original version does. Which makes me bring the point I made above up again... why remake it if you're not going to put as much into it as the original artists did? Just to cash in on nostalgia and sell a mobile game for $40?

As long as they've really overhauled the gameplay and fixed all the bugs and combat system issues, then the remake has a solid reason for existing. But again, if it's just visuals alone, I feel like this is treading pretty close to Cave Story 3D territory.

 

[120v]

It raises the question of why remake something at all

if anything needs a remake it's SoM... not necessarily because it's a revered game but because the original is a glitchy mess.

in spite of the graphics if they pare down the gameplay 1:1 with improvements, i'd be one happy ass camper to say the least

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Looking at it a bit more, I'm pretty happy they're doing this game and not touching games like Romancing Saga, SD3, Chrono Trigger and other classics.
Then again it might be worth it if they rebalance the game and add a postgame that's more than just orb farming.

I don't get how they can't manage to do what they did for Ministrel Song, guess it's way too low budget for that.

Lol

If you think Chrono Trigger and other classics aren't coming. It's only a matter of time.

 

[Father_Brain]

This captures the spirit of the original game, I'd say it's a job well done.
Hopefully the rest of the game can keep up with this quality.

Yeah, it's clearly a low-budget project, but it at least looks noticeably better than Adventures of Mana and captures the original art direction fairly well. The visuals are getting way too much hate.

 

[PMS341]

Secret of Mana is my favorite SNES game, and the artstyle might not be perfect, but it matches with the original artwork pretty well. I'm sure it will be fun to play regardless.

 

[harriet the spy]

Based Nasir.

I wish they had something more watercolor-looking (at least a filter), following the graphical evolution to the gorgeous legend of mana. Was not a fan of the look of the remake of mystic quest (forget the US name).

Also, it's frigging expensive.

Also.... Seiken Densetsu 3, square?

Also, can't wait for a remastered Premonition. Beautiful, beautiful track.

When's my updated Secret of Evermore?

Spoiler

In the trash as it should be.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Did the mushroom king tag along with the party at some point in the original, or is this a new event?

 

[ChronotriggerJM]

I think it looks great personally lol. Hopefully that bamf dash is still in.

 

[Syril]

I'm interested in the possibility of improving on the very janky gameplay of the original and having a new translation. The original suffered a lot from having a stupidly wide font and being insanely rushed. The graphics are clearly low budget but they keep the look pretty faithfully. It's certainly a far cry from actually horrible remake graphics like Final Fantasy 5 and 6 where the sprites don't have the right perspective with the maps.

 

[duckroll]

Today I remembered the same negative response when Nintendo announced a sequel to Link to the Past and it looked like this:

 

[Phu]

I'll check this out. I never got to play this game for realsies and the new art actually looks alright.

 

[120v]

Did the mushroom king tag along with the party at some point in the original, or is this a new event?

that was in the game iirc. i think when you first see flammie as a grownup

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Today I remembered the same negative response when Nintendo announced a sequel to Link to the Past and it looked like this:

So now Mana looks like Zelda lol

 

[mstevens]

I tried to play the original a couple years ago and couldn't get over the weird hit boxes. Felt like I could never hit what I thought I was hitting. I loved everything else about the game so hopefully this improves that aspect.

 

[Psxphile]

that was in the game iirc. i think when you first see flammie as a grownup

Right. You don't see it like in the remake but

Spoiler

Truffle tags along for the very first flight after your fight with Geshtar.

 

[JP]

Really hope theres an option to disable the minimap. As for the preorder DLC I thought it was funny since there literally was a Tiger bikini armor in game.

Wait, is that a map? I thought it was being used as a comparison to the original artwork?

It seems strange that they would create new 2D artwork just for an onscreen map. Maybe if that's what it is then they'll be generous enough to let us play with the old style of graphics too?

Obviously, it would depend on what sort of quality that artwork is in the game because if it's only a map then it may not be good enough to play it full screen. Hopefully, they do have high-quality 2D assets in the game, imagine that map being full screen and playing on that, the aspect ratio is already close to the original game.

Maybe a little like they've done with Dragon Quest XI on the 3DS?


EDIT:
Actually, I suppose they could just use the mobile version is that was in a better state for a HD release.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

HD 2D remakes require too much effort(unless you are ok with upscaled filtered sprites), 3d is pretty much inevitable.

That's ridiculous. Vanillaware makes incredible, gorgeous 2D games and they're absolutely tiny compared to Square Enix. A company with Square Enix's resources at their disposal could certainly make amazing 2D art, they just choose not to.

Hell, you even have indie games with gorgeous 2D HD art, like Darkest Dungeon, Hollow Knight, the Wonder Boy: Dragon's Trap remake or Monster Boy, or even some made by one or two developers, like Dust: An Elysian Tail or Salt & Sanctuary.

They could also opt for modernized pixel art, like Slain: Back from Hell, Cosmic Star Heroine, Hyper Light Drifter, or CrossCode.

All of these games look a million times better than this remake.

I agree.

A few people are losing their shit and claiming it looks "horrible", but doing that for a decently competent effort like this just blurs the lines between it and actually atrocious "remakes" like FF6.

I disagree. I think this looks honestly worse than the FF6 mobile version, as bad as that one was. At least FF6 still had decent battle backgrounds and enemy sprites.

I would've been completely ecstatic if FF6 had received a remake of this caliber

Good gods please no

I think this game is so beloved because of it's extremely high aesthetic appeal. Its gameplay was pretty heavily flawed compared to the other RPGs on the SNES, especially its own sequel, but a lot of people still have a special place for it because the music and art are so memorable and great. When you're remaking a game like that, you have to do it right.

It raises the question of why remake something at all. If this is about better visuals, I don't think they put the time and money into this to pull that off. Just having the game in 3D isn't worth anything; Cave Story 3D tried that, and most people seem to agree that it's a junk version of the game. At this point, the only thing that I'm sure will look better is the world map.


Sprite based games aren't that uncommon. Rayman Legends, Muramasa, Dragon's Crown are good examples. And Vanillaware isn't exactly some giant studio with huge resources. But even when working in 3D, they could just put a little more budget into it. I'd much rather have had text for the dialog than awkward voice acting if it meant more resources could go into the visuals.

Great post once again. And yeah good point about the VA. Voice acting is expensive, and the one they had is horrendous anyway, why bother?

Today I remembered the same negative response when Nintendo announced a sequel to Link to the Past and it looked like this:

You're probably sarcastic, but that does look bad though. ALttP looks soooo much better it's not even funny....

 

[SuomiDude]

I tried to play the original a couple years ago and couldn't get over the weird hit boxes. Felt like I could never hit what I thought I was hitting. I loved everything else about the game so hopefully this improves that aspect.

The game has a weird (but IMO great) real time combat but with accuracy and time to make a new attack still being taken into account, so sometimes you simply miss the attacks, especially if you just spam attack button. It's better to wait until it loads the attack bar to full before attacking again. Btw, you can still miss an attack even if you have fully powered weapon and make a max level attack.

 

[Fiendcode]

I wonder if they'll backport Adventures of Mana to Steam and PS4?

 

[duckroll]

You're probably sarcastic, but that does look bad though. ALttP looks soooo much better it's not even funny....

What's there to be sarcastic about? I honestly just remembered the same reaction because I saw a bunch of ALBW footage again today during the Zelda concert.

Oh and I just remembered another era a while back where there was the same reaction when Capcom announced these:

 

[Zekes!]

Been asking for a remake of SoM for eons so I'm there day 1

 

[Durante]

I disagree. I think this looks honestly worse than the FF6 mobile version, as bad as that one was. At least FF6 still had decent battle backgrounds and enemy sprites.

Really? I absolutely cannot fathom that.

FF6 mobile is a jumbled mess of disjointed tilesets, sprites that don't fit with them and 3D models that fit even less.

On the other hand, this looks like a uniformly designed and implemented low-fidelity 3D take on the art style of Secrect of Mana.

Today I remembered the same negative response when Nintendo announced a sequel to Link to the Past and it looked like this:

As far as I am concerned, that actually looks a lot worse than this.

 

[zeopower6]

I wonder if they'll backport Adventures of Mana to Steam and PS4?

Adventures of Mana had been PC/PS4 "in the works" for a while since the Vita release. Maybe they'll put it out closer to February?

I doubt PSV/PS4 version will even reach the 200K threshold combined.

Compared to the lackluster promotion for Adventures of Mana (which was able to get 100,000+), this has gotten like 500k+ YT views just in its first day or two and is a best seller on Amazon Japan atm. It probably won't do super high numbers but at least higher than Adventures of Mana's download base.

That's ridiculous. Vanillaware makes incredible, gorgeous 2D games and they're absolutely tiny compared to Square Enix. A company with Square Enix's resources at their disposal could certainly make amazing 2D art, they just choose not to.

Hell, you even have indie games with gorgeous 2D HD art, like Darkest Dungeon, Hollow Knight, the Wonder Boy: Dragon's Trap remake or Monster Boy, or even some made by one or two developers, like Dust: An Elysian Tail or Salt & Sanctuary.

They could also opt for modernized pixel art, like Slain: Back from Hell, Cosmic Star Heroine, Hyper Light Drifter, or CrossCode.

All of these games look a million times better than this remake.


I disagree. I think this looks honestly worse than the FF6 mobile version, as bad as that one was. At least FF6 still had decent battle backgrounds and enemy sprites.

Great post once again. And yeah good point about the VA. Voice acting is expensive, and the one they had is horrendous anyway, why bother?

You're probably sarcastic, but that does look bad though. ALttP looks soooo much better it's not even funny....

Well, you have to consider that they did initially wonder if they should do 2D or 3D back when Adventures of Mana was being remade and ultimately 3D was chosen because it would allow for other remakes to be more feasible. Vanillaware is an isolated case, I feel, since they kind of have their own look going. And also those indies usually always have much more freedom to be experimental in the way that they produce things. What's certain to me though is that a lot of people don't seem to know what they wanted from a Secret of Mana remake to begin with which is kind of even more concerning. This is a cute and rather sterile take on Secret of Mana but I don't know if they could have done it any other way within whatever budget (nonexistent?) they have. And it's easier to add stuff like voices or rearranged music over completely doing everything in 2D so costs there are less labor intensive I feel.

Both FF6's mobile remake and that LTTP look horrible compared to this.

To quote the interview:

There was a bit of an argument going on in Square Enix on whether they should do the remake as a 2D game, but Oyamada explained that it easier to control 3D games on smartphone. From there, they settled on the idea that it would be better to make it in 3D, especially should they consider doing remakes for Seiken Densetsu 2 and Seiken Densetsu 3.*

Dengeki asks if that means Square Enix are currently working on remakes for Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3.

”If that's the case, this Final Fantasy Adventure would be the base for them," says Oyamada. ”If it gets well-received, then I'd like to use it as a base to do a remake for Seiken Densetsu 3. We've already thought about doing even better remakes should there be a demand for it. If there's demand for Secret of Mana, then we'll consider it as well."

Oyamada also explains that it was already decided on having the Final Fantasy Adventure remake be for PlayStation Vita and smartphone from the very beginning, but since it's been in a negotiation stage, they weren't allowed to say anything about it. They're also already thinking about a PlayStation 4 version, for after this one releases.

From two years ago, even within SE they were 'arguing' about 2D or 3D but ultimately decided on 2D because it would translate better to mobile and also any future remakes would be based on Adventures of Mana. So should SD3 get made, it will definitely look like this.

http://dengekionline.com/elem/000/001/116/1116424/

However, the interview itself kind of indicates that should SD3 get remade, it may be more grand depending on the demand. Interestingly I think in the interview they mention doing a 'remake a year' if that is/was feasible.

 

[Father_Brain]

Today I remembered the same negative response when Nintendo announced a sequel to Link to the Past and it looked like this:

I was never put off by ALBW's art direction like some were, but this looks better, perhaps because SoM's art style was already more visually complex and is thus less prone to looking artificial and plastic-y when translated into 3D.

 

[Nif]

Did the mushroom king tag along with the party at some point in the original, or is this a new event?

He rescues you with Flammie at one point.

 

[GhostTrick]

Yeah i think this is a semantic matter.

Art style is not bad actually i think, it's more a problem of budget here. It's obviously a smaller scale effort than the original game was for the time.

It's not a problem of artstyle or assets but shaders. The game looks flat and colors feels bland. It should be more vivid, cell-shaded to mimic the sprites charm and have better water effects.

 

[zeopower6]

I feel that for 'development footage' it still looks very good. I wonder how far along they are in development.

It's not a problem of artstyle or assets but shaders. The game looks flat and colors feels bland. It should be more vivid, cell-shaded to mimic the sprites charm and have better water effects.

I think the general look was decided long ago when they did Adventures, sadly. However, I think it looks fine but I am usually a fan of cute things in any form

Lol

If you think Chrono Trigger and other classics aren't coming. It's only a matter of time.

With Chrono Trigger, it could probably come for a 25th anniversary or something. And in retrospect, I think people should have seen this coming especially since the game before this did rather well on solely Vita. I wonder how it did on mobile as well.

 

[dragonzdogma]

Is that mini map on the top right screen removable?

 

[zeopower6]

Is that mini map on the top right screen removable?

We don't know many details about it but I would guess yes. I assume we'll probably get an interview soon about this or maybe closer to release.