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low rated
Oh no, not all the DRM. Bunch of cry babies. Get over it.
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tomimt: Yeah, they ditched the original 3D intro for a sloppy 2D animation.
I just started a game, and watched the intro of that. It was very thief-ish (or mgs peacewalker). I thought the animation looked fine, although the one face of the guy who dies at the intro was off somehow...

i don't remember the original intro, never really played BG1 as BG was more my brother's games, not mine. Course when i played it i didn't have a grasp of the system so every fight was impossibly hard.
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rtcvb32: Saw that Dark Alliance came out, watched a review, it sounds terrible. It looks and feels nothing like the original one either... And i just wanted a playable full game that isn't on the Xbox (original) or PS2 system that i don't have to dust off or pay huge amounts of money for the collector's disc... And doesn't need an insane amount of power to emulate at a decent speed.
D&D Dark Alliance is not remake at all, completely unrelated game. And old Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance was re-released on consoles couple months ago and will come to PC later this year.
Pokemon Oras: A lot.

None of the Emerald enhancements were kept.
A lot of the character designs were made duller or more reflective of Ken Sugimori's newfound "creepy doll" style.
Buttloads of the overland traversal was simplified or simply removed; with several locations getting nerfed hard.
The Battle Frontier was completely missing.
A previously unremarkable city has now been shoehorned into a major plotpoint with three distinct locations being replaced.
And all the unwanted mechanics from later gens proudly parade around the games.
The Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition changes the way special outfits work and removed the ability to mix and match certain pieces.
Pokemon: Ultra Sun would have been a great upgrade if it wasn't for the Rotom Dex popping up every 30-60 seconds like Clippy to say something it already said previously. And there was no option to turn it off. And you couldn't tap the screen to skip the text. You had to wait for it to finish. And it would interrupt you even if you were trying to look at the world map. Just constantly talking and interrupting. I don't think I've ever been as annoyed by something in a game as much as that Rotom Dex. I'm so glad I was allowed to get a full refund. I just couldn't play it at all.
Post edited July 27, 2021 by Krimzon14
Hello everyone!

My biggest complain about so-called remakes (often applicable for remasters, as well) are the significantly increased system requirements or inclusion of many new bugs (e.g. when moving to a newer or different game engine)!

Take for instance the "Asterix & Obelix" (XL) games now available here on GOG. I would have bought the original in a heart beat. But the new verisons are overexcessive in their requirements and do not provide the necessary "Eye-candy" to justify their system load and sluggish performance.

In general, I prefer it, if only compatibility fixes are applied instead of complete game overhauls.
Usually, the new team does not have a clue on what made the originals so great in the first place. And even when the original developers are involved or onboard, there is no guarantee for a decent remake/remaster (compare the different iterations of "Flashback" for instance, especially its XBox-remake).

A second issue I have with remakes (or remasters alike) is the inclusion of current day "political correctness", changing or removing content, characters, their dialog & design or world building details to re-adjust for "modern sensibilities".
Just imagine, if someone would re-paint the Mona Lisa or your favorite Picasso with modern (social or political) agendas in mind--simply ridiculous!

And finally, those awful decisions of taking away a certain game feature, because somebody in the new team is convinced those were errors or broken.

Whenever possible, I choose the original version of a game. Although, I do not like the accompanying price hike, releases of remasters/remakes that include the original versions as extras at least provide options for those who do care about such details. Unfortunately, here on GOG.com not all language versions are kept intact or available when doing so--the first two "Broken Sword" games, for instance, lost their good German translations that had superb voice acting in comparison with their English ones.

Kind regards,
foxgog
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Krimzon14: Pokemon: Ultra Sun would have been a great upgrade if it wasn't for the Rotom Dex popping up every 30-60 seconds like Clippy to say something it already said previously. And there was no option to turn it off. And you couldn't tap the screen to skip the text. You had to wait for it to finish. And it would interrupt you even if you were trying to look at the world map. Just constantly talking and interrupting. I don't think I've ever been as annoyed by something in a game as much as that Rotom Dex. I'm so glad I was allowed to get a full refund. I just couldn't play it at all.
I have no idea what the designers were thinking, drinking, and smoking when they decided they needed to one up Fi. But at least for as useless as Fi was, she was "trying" to help. Doesn't Rotomdex go out of it's way to make useless chatter?
Post edited July 27, 2021 by Darvond
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foxgog: In general, I prefer it, if only compatibility fixes are applied instead of complete game overhauls.
Usually, the new team does not have a clue on what made the originals so great in the first place. And even when the original developers are involved or onboard, there is no guarantee for a decent remake/remaster (compare the different iterations of "Flashback" for instance, especially its XBox-remake).
Sometimes, it can be nice to have a remake that's overhauled to the point of being an entirely new game, like Ys: The Oasth in Felghana or SaGa 3 DS. In this case, they don't replace the originals (SaGa 3 GB is still a unique game that can be fun, even if it doesn't really feel like SaGa due to having XP-based leveling (which is gone in the remake)), but they do provide a nice fresh experience for those who have played the original. (I still miss the healing ring from Ys 3: Wanderers of Ys, however.)

(By the way, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is a complete overhaul as well; SaGa 2 DS is not, as while there are new additions (many of which, including the muses and the ability to link attacks with threads, are optional), the core mechanics (including things like the damage formula) are preserved.)
Speaking of the SaGa 3 remake, here's one negative change:

* Two of the music tracks, namely the cave theme and the boss theme, were replaced with completely different tracks that are not as good as the original tracks. (The rest of the game's music was decently remixed (even if I might not like all the instrumentation choices), and there are a couple new music tracks that don't replace old ones, but there's still the loss of two of the original tracks.)

Edit: Why the low rating here?
Post edited July 29, 2021 by dtgreene
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foxgog: My biggest complain about so-called remakes (often applicable for remasters, as well) are the significantly increased system requirements or inclusion of many new bugs (e.g. when moving to a newer or different game engine)!
Master of Orion (2016 Remake) is the perfect example of that. Original 1993 DOS = a few Megabyte. Remake = people were seeing +12GB RAM being eaten up and +90 second AI turn times late game. It was very poorly optimized and was using 10x more RAM than similar games like Endless Space (2012) only a few years older.
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foxgog: My biggest complain about so-called remakes (often applicable for remasters, as well) are the significantly increased system requirements or inclusion of many new bugs (e.g. when moving to a newer or different game engine)!
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BrianSim: Master of Orion (2016 Remake) is the perfect example of that. Original 1993 DOS = a few Megabyte. Remake = people were seeing +12GB RAM being eaten up and +90 second AI turn times late game. It was very poorly optimized and was using 10x more RAM than similar games like Endless Space (2012) only a few years older.
Hello BrianSim!

That is--albeit an extreme example--exactly what I meant. In fairness, maybe we should compare more "Master of Orion 2", but it is still a huge gap. Even the similar "Stars in Shadow" is still significantly smaller with its approximately 3 GB.

And let us not forget the terrible inclusion of "space lanes" in contrast to the free space travel in the original first two "Master of Orion" games!

Why should I make space for one large oversized remade game, when I could keep installed and playing multiple smaller classic games with better replayability than their "humiliated" remakes?

Kind regards,
foxgog
Post edited July 28, 2021 by foxgog
Take a look at this mess for Final Fantasy X. There's no one best version:
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X_version_differences

International had many improvements, but the inclusion of Dark Aeons and Penance is overwhelmingly bad. And then all the future remasters add and improve various parts, but they're still based on that version. They let you to some degree opt into "Original" rather than "International", but that also drops the other changes. If we could get a proper PC version (AKA, not Steam/MS Store DRM) of the Steam version, but with the option to toggle on or off the choices between which sphere grid to use, whether or not to include the Dark Aeons, etc, (and, yes, including its FMV skip and speedup options), it'd be a grand game. But I highly doubt it'll ever happen.
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mqstout: Take a look at this mess for Final Fantasy X. There's no one best version:
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X_version_differences

International had many improvements, but the inclusion of Dark Aeons and Penance is overwhelmingly bad. And then all the future remasters add and improve various parts, but they're still based on that version. They let you to some degree opt into "Original" rather than "International", but that also drops the other changes. If we could get a proper PC version (AKA, not Steam/MS Store DRM) of the Steam version, but with the option to toggle on or off the choices between which sphere grid to use, whether or not to include the Dark Aeons, etc, (and, yes, including its FMV skip and speedup options), it'd be a grand game. But I highly doubt it'll ever happen.
Would you want to include options for things like the following:
* Whether the Ribbon ability is available
* Whether Masamune uses the original Japanese version damage formula

Then again, I'd argue that FFX needs other changes to be worthwhile, like a cutscene skip, a mode that completely disables cutscenes and things like tutorial battles (for those who like to do things like speedrun or NSG runs), and if they want to make the postgame fun some serious rebalancing is needed. (For starters, remove the ignore defense property from celestial weapons, and make spells scale better with stats; while we're at it, the Dark Aeons should have the expected elemental weaknesses, and their spells should have the expected elements.)
FF5 and 6 are my most hated. Sprites, battle UI, and 5's frames are doubled so even though the game displays 60 FPS, it's just running at 30 FPS. Severe errors with 6's programming too. Good thing they're removed today, though I cannot appreciate how the PRs come without the bonus postgame content.

FF8r is also bad. No AI to rescale images to fix the blurry backgrounds and now we have HD character models contrasting someone's zoomed up water colour painting. Not the worst I played, though.

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Good point bringing up 10, mqstout. I have enormous nitpicks with it in addition to yours:

- I know it's just a remaster, but would've liked costume DLCs. Would've gladly pay extra to replace some of the most out-of-place and tackiest costume designs I've ever seen in the entire series rivaling LR. Tidus's whole design has got to go. And I understand Lulu is supposed to be a fanservice character, but it makes no sense to be wearing a low cut dress a fur trim and a multi-belt dress when everyone else is trying to stay cool as possible. Also, the bare thigh NPC lady, whom is neither sexy or interesting, just distracting and inappropriate.

- The endgame had terrible balancing and difficulty spikes. Sin is too easy, but Omega Dungeon is too difficult. I've no idea what they were thinking! Your only choice was to establish a foothold in Omega Dungeon after every battle before grinding at the Monster Arena.

- I didn't mind Dark Aeons too much until after Shiva. At that point, you were forced to grind the grid and get the Auto-Phoenix, Auto-Haste, Auto-Protect, RIbbon, Break HP Limit, etc. abilities to even stand a chance. And once you force your players to play a certain way, it's no longer fun anymore. What I did have an issue with was Dark Valefor blocking Besaid Island for those who missed the Destruction Spheres there at the start. But pretty easy to take down with Aeon OD abuse.

- Yeah, fuck Penance. To date, the only FF superboss I've never tackled legitimately. Ain't no one's got time to grind for hours on end, fully max out the sphere grid, and farm fortune spheres just to stand a chance. I just paid Yojimbo all my gil and I was done. And I'm not looking forward to Yiazmat one of you two mentioned earlier when I start on 12.

- Fuck those Celestial Weapon minigames even more. You need them to stand any chance against any of these superbosses. Save your frustration and just cheat them in after completing all the endgame content. Very disappointed they never made any of them easier even though they knew it was flawed through artificial difficulty. For those chocbo racing minigames, you have to keep repeating and resetting until RNG gives you the one track configuration where you're actually able to win for both Chocobo Hunter and Requiem Temple. Would've either made requirements to pass easier and/or add in other alternative ways of obtaining them based on NPC sidequests and monster hunts.

- Yep, needed cutscene skip. I thankfully didn't have this problem, but I'm sympathetic to those who died constantly to that boss at Mt. Gazette.
Post edited July 28, 2021 by MeowCanuck