Classic Rpg’s you’d like to see in the HD-2D art style

[Tinhornjam]

what are some Classic Rpg’s you’d like to see remade in the HD-2D art style that octopath traveler and dragon quests remakes are doing? personally i’d love to see what an earthbound remake would look like!!

 

[Numubunde]

Final Fantasy IV might be a cool one to see in that art style. Xenogears would be awesome too.

 

[Cu-Neo]

I would like to see the Lufia games in that style, specially the spin off Energy Breaker

 

[Tinhornjam]

Final Fantasy IV might be a cool one to see in that art style. Xenogears would be awesome too.

would have loved if the 1-6 pixel remasters went the HD-2D style, i think all of them would look amazing!

 

[pingugaming]

Final Fantasy VI

 

[Tinhornjam]

Final Fantasy VI

the opera scene in the pixel remaster made me want more

 

[Dr.Kisaragi]

Lufia, the quintet trilogy, Dragon Quest 4, 5 and 6 FF 1-6, Earthbound (I guess) Secret of Evermore.

 

[qw90700]

- Metal Max games for sure.

- Persona 1 would look better in such a way instead of a 3D remake.

- Final Fantasy 6 "weirdly" ignored a lot from actually develop a version that has "better visuals". All they did was change the visual style in a way that I can say a "demake" especially because they lack visual details over the original in a way they look "badly made cartoonish" bland dull graphics in most simple way possible and the BS is they were entitled to call it "remaster" just because of "higher resolution".

They are partly right because pixel art looks bad when it's upscaled as its but it would look better when the pixel art is way more detailed by making pixels "barely distinguished" but instead they just did bad cartoon job and called it a day.

- Front Mission 1 would look better in this way. I didn't like the way the new remake looks like. It's a repulsive style. I never thought 3D and realistic graphics make a game necessarily look better. What matters more is that visuals looks appealing as a visual art style. For example I like the way how Breath of Fire 4 looks like.

- Zero4 Champ games on SNES would look cool.

- Star Ocean and Phantasy Star games thus would give me a reason to replay them otherwise I wouldn't play them again.

- Fallout 1 and 2 would look interesting to experience but they are okay as they are.

If the topic also had included any game despite how modern it is:

- Persona 4: I think such visual styles would fit to such a game.

- Yakuza: Like a Dragon: It's kinda a crime that it doesn't have such HD 2D style lolol.

 

[tenkai star]

Fan made shots like this make me wish Pokémon went into the hd 2d direction instead of 3d. Especially because the old battle sprites have so much personality and are more visually interesting than the 3d models just standing there in battles

 

[Tinhornjam]

- Metal Max games for sure.

- Persona 1 would look better in such a way instead of a 3D remake.

- Final Fantasy 6 "weirdly" ignored a lot from actually develop a version that has "better visuals". All they did was change the visual style in a way that I can say a "demake" especially because they lack visual details over the original in a way they look "badly made cartoonish" bland dull graphics in most simple way possible and the BS is they were entitled to call it "remaster" just because of "higher resolution".

They are partly right because pixel art looks bad when it's upscaled as its but it would look better when the pixel art is way more detailed by making pixels "barely distinguished" but instead they just did bad cartoon job and called it a day.

- Front Mission 1 would look better in this way. I didn't like the way the new remake looks like. It's a repulsive style. I never thought 3D and realistic graphics make a game necessarily look better. What matters more is that visuals looks appealing as a visual art style. For example I like the way how Breath of Fire 4 looks like.

- Zero4 Champ games on SNES would look cool.

- Star Ocean and Phantasy Star games thus would give me a reason to replay them otherwise I wouldn't play them again.

- Fallout 1 and 2 would look interesting to experience but they are okay as they are.

If the topic also had included any game despite how modern it is:

- Persona 4: I think such visual styles would fit to such a game.

- Yakuza: Like a Dragon: It's kinda a crime that it doesn't have such HD 2D style lolol.

great picks! and yes omg i HATE the ff6 mobile “remaster”. and what you said about how they “upscaled” the game by like smoothing it with a bilinear filter to make it less pixelated, kinda like what they did to the pre rendered backgrounds with the ff7 and ff8 remasters is so true. i like how the dragon quest 3 remake completely remade rhe models from the ground up with higher pixel counts, they look great.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 6:14 PM

View attachment 96934Fan made shots like this make me wish Pokémon went into the hd 2d direction instead of 3d. Especially because the old battle sprites have so much personality and are more visually interesting than the 3d models just standing there in battles

thats looks sooo good

 

[thumbsdown]

View attachment 96934Fan made shots like this make me wish Pokémon went into the hd 2d direction instead of 3d. Especially because the old battle sprites have so much personality and are more visually interesting than the 3d models just standing there in battles

I'm gonna leave this here cus I feel like many interesting projects of fangames could emerge from this thread, if anyone's conceding and willing to put some effort in making adjustments:

RPG Paper Maker by Wano

A 2.5D game making engine free for non commercial use!

wano.itch.io

Game Boy Advance - The Spriters Resource

Game Boy Advance - The #1 source for video game sprites on the internet!

www.spriters-resource.com

 

[Jayonnaise6105]

- Metal Max games for sure.

- Persona 1 would look better in such a way instead of a 3D remake.

- Final Fantasy 6 "weirdly" ignored a lot from actually develop a version that has "better visuals". All they did was change the visual style in a way that I can say a "demake" especially because they lack visual details over the original in a way they look "badly made cartoonish" bland dull graphics in most simple way possible and the BS is they were entitled to call it "remaster" just because of "higher resolution".

They are partly right because pixel art looks bad when it's upscaled as its but it would look better when the pixel art is way more detailed by making pixels "barely distinguished" but instead they just did bad cartoon job and called it a day.

- Front Mission 1 would look better in this way. I didn't like the way the new remake looks like. It's a repulsive style. I never thought 3D and realistic graphics make a game necessarily look better. What matters more is that visuals looks appealing as a visual art style. For example I like the way how Breath of Fire 4 looks like.

- Zero4 Champ games on SNES would look cool.

- Star Ocean and Phantasy Star games thus would give me a reason to replay them otherwise I wouldn't play them again.

- Fallout 1 and 2 would look interesting to experience but they are okay as they are.

If the topic also had included any game despite how modern it is:

- Persona 4: I think such visual styles would fit to such a game.

- Yakuza: Like a Dragon: It's kinda a crime that it doesn't have such HD 2D style lolol.

A prequel to Yakuza: Like a Dragon featuring Ichiban in his younger days in the 2D-HD sounds awesome to me hehe

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 6:55 PM

One of my favourite DS RPGs was Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans. Such an underrated licensed game! I would love a remake in the 2D-HD style and then hopefully we could get a sequel/sequels that go beyond the Saiyan saga. One can dream, anyway hehe

 

[qw90700]

View attachment 96934Fan made shots like this make me wish Pokémon went into the hd 2d direction instead of 3d. Especially because the old battle sprites have so much personality and are more visually interesting than the 3d models just standing there in battles

Yeah. I guess video game industry, over the decades, had a misunderstanding on what people said as "the game has bad graphics" so they believed people necessarily want 3D realistic graphics.

Sure realistic graphics are "wow" when done right but it's just "wow", not "it looks so good" necessarily.

For example I remember the era when people bashed GTA San Andreas because "its graphics are so cartoonish" which they meant "this visual style doesn't fit into such a game due to its theme" but Rockstar understood it as "people want realistic graphics". And then Crysis was kinda the first game that had "realistic graphics" which turned into ego masturbation topic over "my PC can run Crysis but yours can't" BS and then PC Master Race™ concept was invented because even long after Crysis released console games barely had "realistic graphics" and most importantly resolution and FPS-wise console games were too behind compared to PC gaming lol.

In the end now new games tend to have dull realistic graphics that has the same problem of some NES games: You have no idea what you clearly look at because colors are so used wrongly you cannot distinguish between what you see. I watched Assassin's Creed Shadows videos the other day and honestly game looks so "flat" can hardly see with ease to see what is what because colors are blended into each other making the game require Reshade filter a lot. Back then what people said like "bad graphics" was meant either "wrong visual style" or "can't see shit" are still the visual problems that exist in the industry by making the graphics "dull realistic graphics" that are actually repulsive to look at, and another issue is like you said visual design of anything itself tend to be so dull devoid of artistical expression whatsoever because instead of artists they hire the person just doing its job for money.

In the end graphics became a topic of "I bought my GPU by paying 10 gold bars so I wanna see the power of it!!!" BS. For me it seems no different than rich people making cities have unnecessarily long roads with Trackmania-style crazy roads and all just so they can enjoy driving their fast cars lolol.

 

[Saint_c]

I've been tracking this for some time now and without all the post processing you see in the AAA titles I think this is looking good so far. I'm going to have to be patient though, it seems like it's only one guy working on it but I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Breath of Fire II: Awakening 5.0 UI Update in Progress II - Breath of Fire Awakening: Fangame Version 4.1b by knightmarish_Games

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing well! I wanted to give a quick update as work on the game is taking longer than expected. I squashed the UI bug that has been plaguing me for weeks, and have b...

knightmarish-games.itch.io

 

[AtelierTohka]

Not a single one. Those HD-2D games all look the same, same sprite proportions, same styling, same bloom effects, it ruined Star Ocean 2 for me, and generally feels like the corporate equivalent of fan-made Unreal Engine remakes of Super Mario 64 of Ocarina of Time that get gassed up with "Nintendo, hire this person!".

Furthermore, it also been shown in other areas that it is possible to have 2D graphics on modern hardware in vastly improved form over 16- and 32-bit sprites. Gust's PS2 titles still hold up very well graphically, and Arc System Works had especially sublime sprite artwork with Guilty Gear XX and BlazBlue, and that is more or less what I personally would've wanted to see from a Square-Enix title that used sprites today. Just imagine Guilty Gear XX-esque visuals in an RPG and you get the idea.

Genuinely, look me in the eye and tell me that Octopath 3 with the style and flair of these screenshots wouldn't go hard. Vanillaware titles like Odin Sphere, Dragon's Crown, and Unicorn Overlord are probably the closest to that. When it comes to modern RPGs, I do actually prefer them to have a certain level of flash, and the way Square-Enix does HD-2D doesn't offer that.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Final Fantasy III, I know about the PSP one and like it, but i would love it to be properly updated in 2D, Pixel Remaster doesn't convince me, and i really want to see what the Famicom version would offer with the improvements of, say, Dawn of Souls

 

[Jayonnaise6105]

Not a single one. Those HD-2D games all look the same, same sprite proportions, same styling, same bloom effects, it ruined Star Ocean 2 for me, and generally feels like the corporate equivalent of fan-made Unreal Engine remakes of Super Mario 64 of Ocarina of Time that get gassed up with "Nintendo, hire this person!".

Furthermore, it also been shown in other areas that it is possible to have 2D graphics on modern hardware in vastly improved form over 16- and 32-bit sprites. Gust's PS2 titles still hold up very well graphically, and Arc System Works had especially sublime sprite artwork with Guilty Gear XX and BlazBlue, and that is more or less what I personally would've wanted to see from a Square-Enix title that used sprites today. Just imagine Guilty Gear XX-esque visuals in an RPG and you get the idea.

View attachment 96996View attachment 96997View attachment 96998View attachment 96999

Genuinely, look me in the eye and tell me that Octopath 3 with the style and flair of these screenshots wouldn't go hard. Vanillaware titles like Odin Sphere, Dragon's Crown, and Unicorn Overlord are probably the closest to that. When it comes to modern RPGs, I do actually prefer them to have a certain level of flash, and the way Square-Enix does HD-2D doesn't offer that.

I don't really have a counterpoint. I like the look of them, but I can see where you're coming from. The HD-2D games I tend to get most excited for are the remakes/remasters of older games I never played, like Live A Live, or Dragon Quest, where it's a franchise I love and am always happy to see the older games become more available for others to try. In both senses though, I could probably be just as happy with straight ports that keep the original visual styles.

 

[Mahan_Native]

Xenogears
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy VI
some older Pokemon games
Persona 2 Duology
Earthbound/Mother

 

[Jayonnaise6105]

Xenogears
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy VI
some older Pokemon games
Persona 2 Duology
Earthbound/Mother

Just having the older Persona games officially on newer platforms would be great. Same with most of those older games actually

 

[nobitakun]

The other day I was talking with a friend exactly this. I told him that FF Pixel Remaster is a robbery and for them to charge 80€ all the games would have to be HD-2D style.

Not a single one. Those HD-2D games all look the same, same sprite proportions, same styling, same bloom effects, it ruined Star Ocean 2 for me, and generally feels like the corporate equivalent of fan-made Unreal Engine remakes of Super Mario 64 of Ocarina of Time that get gassed up with "Nintendo, hire this person!".

Furthermore, it also been shown in other areas that it is possible to have 2D graphics on modern hardware in vastly improved form over 16- and 32-bit sprites. Gust's PS2 titles still hold up very well graphically, and Arc System Works had especially sublime sprite artwork with Guilty Gear XX and BlazBlue, and that is more or less what I personally would've wanted to see from a Square-Enix title that used sprites today. Just imagine Guilty Gear XX-esque visuals in an RPG and you get the idea.

View attachment 96996View attachment 96997View attachment 96998View attachment 96999

Genuinely, look me in the eye and tell me that Octopath 3 with the style and flair of these screenshots wouldn't go hard. Vanillaware titles like Odin Sphere, Dragon's Crown, and Unicorn Overlord are probably the closest to that. When it comes to modern RPGs, I do actually prefer them to have a certain level of flash, and the way Square-Enix does HD-2D doesn't offer that.

Although I can be agree with you to some extent, I don't think Star Ocean was ruined at all. That game is my favourite Start Ocean by far and I found it enjoyable. It is true that the magic around the original game is kind of lost, specially thinking that game had antialiased sprites, which I don't know how Enix could accomplish that on PS1.

On the other hand, Guilty Gear is not a good example. I am not a big fan of beat'em up games, but I actively disliked ANY 3D beat'em up only until Arc System Works showed me they can do 3D models with 2D gameplay. The first games released that way were kind of so-so because consoles weren't powerful enough to create models with millions of polygons, but nowadays that's a reality. And more and more 3D well executed anime games look like they were 2D, and part of its magic is recovered.

Techniques to improve animation on 3D models to look alike 2D are growing, and they look wonderful if they are well implemented. 2D animations are expensive, and the more resolution you have the worse. I believe if the 4360p reality arrives to consoles someday (I hope to be dead by then), creating sprites that big will be a headache, specially if you have to do hundreds of animations.

 

[AtelierTohka]

I have my reasons for mentioning Star Ocean 2. Got into the series with the PSP remakes of 1 and 2 and those are two of my very favorite games of all. I won't act like they're perfect, but they have a quaint, simplistic charm, and after having recently seen a side by side comparison on Instagram, it really dawned on me just why the older visuals are more appealing to me. In terms of aesthetic, the older versions felt more vibrant in their backgrounds, art style, and presentation, and the backgrounds for the newer remake just look like those of any other AAA game. I also found it jarring how the exact same character sprites were kept with the lighting appearing worse for them. I also felt that the presentation should've seen more of an overhaul as I find character portraits with textbooks to be more underwhelming at higher resolutions. (Sorry, Persona, much as I love you, you really need to step up your game in narrative presentation.) Given the choice between the two, I'd go with the older version in a heartbeat as it feels more unified in its aesthetics compared to the new one, at least to my eyes.

My mind also kind of goes back to the models from Star Ocean: Anamnesis, and while I will freely admit they're not the most cutting-edge examples, I always found them quite pretty, and I do wish they could've used them for something other than a live-service mobile game that isn't even accessible to play anymore. Do I think the new remake should've been 3D? Not necessarily, but I would've liked to see how they would've pulled it off, especially considering how Trails of Mana and Romancing SaGa 2 turned out.