Posted December 09, 2015
Elmofongo: And it is ugly how?
Its looks fine to me. Better it that low resolution pixles :P
I mean whats wrong with the new sprites here and not the new ones in Final Fantasy 1 and 4?
Just because something has a higher resolution doesn't mean it automatically looks better, as several botched Blu-Ray releases of movies can attest. Do not buy blindly into corporate marketing buzzwords. Its looks fine to me. Better it that low resolution pixles :P
I mean whats wrong with the new sprites here and not the new ones in Final Fantasy 1 and 4?
I had never seen those particular remakes of Final Fantasy 1 or 4 before, but going by various screenshots, they look pretty good and also significantly better than the one for FF VI.
(Note: At first, I mistook screenshots of FF4's PSP port for the mobile port, until I found out that the latter is actually based on the NDS 3D remake of the game. However, both versions look good to me, in vastly different ways.)
The FF VI port simply has pretty bad artwork. A lot of it looks rather bland and cheap, despite the higher resolution. Compare [url=http://www.siliconera.com/postgallery/?p_gal=366653|0]this screenshot[/url] from the remake with [url=http://www.siliconera.com/postgallery/?p_gal=366653|1]this one[/url] from the original.
The background in the "overhauled" version lacks the atmosphere and liveliness of the original. The SNES art makes siginificantly better use of shadows, for example. Some parts of the architecture disappear entirely into darkness, which creates contrast and mood, whereas the mobile version looks too clinical and, frankly, boring.
A good point of comparison is the window in the background. In the original, half of it is obscured by shadow, but you can make out its structure very well. It has depth, while the new version looks flat enough to be mistaken for a drawing on that wall instead of a window.
The mobile port's background reminds me more of the generic default art in RPG Maker than the SNES version of Final Fantasy VI.
And then there are the sprites. Dear lord, the sprites.
Granted, the enemies look good, but the character sprites are awful. If you look at the mechs in those screenshots, you might notice that they actually look less detailed than the ones in the old game, despite not really being that different. The potential of the higher resolution isn't used at all there.
The human characters are the worst of the lot. Their sub-par shading in combination with the choice of colours makes them look flat and washed out, almost blurry. They don't mesh at all with the environments, which is even more noticeable [url=http://www.siliconera.com/postgallery/?p_gal=366653|2]outside of combat[/url], partially thanks to their comparable lack of detail.
The original looked as crisp and polished as pretty much all of Squaresoft's games for the SNES/SFC, with a fitting and unified style; while the mobile port seems like a quick and cheap cashgrab, where all the visual elements clash horribly with each other.
If you have a personal distaste for SNES-era pixel art, that's fine, but that still doesn't make this artwork good; and the ports of FF1 and FF4 prove that such a thing doesn't have to look like shit.