After seeing gameplay of 2's remake, I really don't want 4
Incoming essay!
I've answered this question a few times over the years and it's proven to be an unpopular opinion, but I'm adverse to remakes in general because it's rare that they're executed in a way that I believe feels right for that specific game. Remakes in general tend to be really lazy and uninspired, and I largely believe that in most cases, a remake is completely unnecessary. As someone who primarily games on PC, I still have access to a grand majority of the original versions of games, and those original versions can generally be enhanced through mods and hacks, or dolled up via ReShade, so I see absolutely no value in remakes.
Where ports are concerned, they tend to be nostalgia cash-ins for developers, doing the bare minimum to make games that are still available on PC (through emulation or otherwise) accessible on a modern console. I refer to this as the "console tax," where you're effectively paying extra for your decision to focus on a walled-off format like consoles.
I'd say that an example of a decent remake would be what they did with Star Ocean: The Second Story R. They didn't fundamentally change anything about the core of the game. It's the same story, same characters, and pretty much the same mechanics, they just recreated the entire world from scratch to make it more tolerable for modern sensibilities and added a few quality of life adjustments. It's more than just a remaster because there's a lot more than a simple fresh coat of paint added, but they didn't try to reinvent the wheel. Sure, you can still play the original on PSX or the updated version on PSP and it'll feel mostly the same, but the overhaul in the remake is a nice update that makes the experience more streamlined and enjoyable. Same goes for the remake of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. The game is excellent and just needed a few design adjustments, and they just tweaked a few things and the changes were nice.
And then there are remakes like the ever-beloved Final Fantasy VII abomination, where they add in a ton of fluff, retcon multiple scenarios, change character personalities, and alter major plot points. Then they have the audacity to split it up into multiple entries. It just smacks of greed to me because they know that FFVII fans are nostalgic and rabid and have a tendency to hoover up anything to do with that game, so no matter how mediocre the remakes are, people are going to happily pay for every single entry just to get that glimmer of happiness that they had when they were younger and playing the original during a time when they were carefree and happy. I just pray that they keep disregarding Final Fantasy VI, because if they do to that what they did to VII, I seriously don't think my heart could take it.
I just don't have a desire in most cases to pay to see something updated that I still have immediate access to. The only games that I have any desire to see updated are Persona: Revelations, and the Persona 2 duology, because although I still do annual playthroughs of those games every year, there are some core mechanics that have aged like milk that make them feel clunky to play. And then I start to think about how modern Persona is being handled, and I'm afraid that they'd turn those three original Persona games into generic high school harem simulators somehow, just to appease to modern Persona fans, so I'd just prefer that they were left alone entirely.
I have a lot to say about this too
In my book remakes were done the best from the super famicom to the ps2
I used to like them, when they came out it was because with the new tecnology you could expand the original. Add more stuff, make the gameplay more complex or add elements from future games in the series, use the tecnology to give it a new look that stands on its own or to do stuff that wasn't possible before
Nowdays remakes are mostly so normies can play older games they dont know how to emulate/dont want to play cause they're old
They're just banking on the brand name
The gameplay is often homogenized so be similar to the standard big budget game so no one can get stuck or have to learn how to play it, it will all play like the last of us mixed with resident evil 4
Same camera, same controls, same photorealistic graphics, same lighting, same type of hollywood acting, same animations, sometimes changed character designs, in the worst cases censored, making it longer just because they think a short game = bad, same unskippable 3rd person slow down to talk, same generic interface
I hate it
Remakes I like would be something like Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland, Kirby Ultra Star Deluxe, Pokemon Heartgold\SS, Fire Red and LG, many of the psp ones, the super famicom dragon quest remakes (many sfc remakes in general), mario all star, Biohazard 1, Project Zero 2 Wii, Metroid Zero Mission, the final fantasy ones before 7, the Dragon Quest remakes on ds, mega man powered up (if it counts)...
Most of these simply use the tecnology used for the following entries, and apply it to the older games and add some stuff on top; or they use a new console to re do it in a slicker way, remakes used to be special to me but now I usually groan when a new one gets announced, hence this thread
