Shame. The worst DotEmu's work ever. This is barely a "remaster"

[Blackened Halo]

Thank you Square Enix and DotEmu for putting literally zero effort into this "remaster".
Basically they just upgraded several characters (yeah, not all, only several like they say on the official FF8R website), put an agressive blur effect on the game's pre-rendered backgrounds, applied some kind of filter on polygon-made enviroments and that is basically it. An average modder (except the new characters) can do this within 2 hours...

To be honest, the shown characters look awesome except Squall and Rinoa. Zell, Irvine or Edea, they look absolutely fantastic. But what about Squall and Rinoa? Well they suck. I really do not understand as we have that official logo on which they are shown, we have many FMVs videos where we can see details of their faces, we have memories of FF8, we have tons of screens, pictures, videos, whatever where they look like we remember them in the original FF8 version. Buuut noo. Theeey just got a brilliant idea to completely change their look. They just did, even it makes absolutely no sense. There was literally no need to do this, but they did. I.. I am speechless.

Look for example on the Triple Triad screen. Modders improved the arena in TT a long time ago and Square/DotEmu didnt even touch it. Look at whatever screen you want and everything you will see is laziness.

Battles? They seem to still be at infamous 15-20 fps and the rest is at 25 fps. I do not care that this is a turn-based game so quick reactions dont matter. 60 fps just looks and feels better. It makes the game more alive. Just check some videos showing Final Fantasy 8 at 60 fps.

The worst thing is how they present this remaster. They do not mention what was remastered, how the game looks, the resolution, the fps, nothing of this. The whole ad campaign was focused on how much legal cheats aka "customise your gameplay experience" they added to the remaster. They basically say "we made the game so much easier, buy it!".

Summary:
- graphics/blurry backgrounds can hardly be considered an improvement
- framerate absolutely intact
- awfully looking Squall and Rinoa (the rest is thankfully fine)
- low-res FMVs
- twice as pricey as the original FF8 on Steam
- focus on bringing the cheats instead of real gameplay imrprovements

Square/DotEmu shouldnt call this a remaster. They should just have released this game as Final Fantasy VIII for consoles and release these new models with the PSOne quality OST as a free update for the original PC version. Nobody has any rights to call this a remaster since they really remastered aprx 5% of the game.

So much potential wasted here... I am disguisted...

[herro_Kitty]

Honestly expectations should have been set with DotEmu as the developer. They refurbish old games for newer systems. They don't do much beyond that, which is OK. Can't see how this would be more than a repackage of the CD-ROM edition from 2000. Don't expect the PS1 soundtrack for this release.

[Blade12775]

Some of your statements are false.
1) There is no mention on the FFVIII website about how many characters have been remastered.
2) Speeding up the game would effect game play. Why? Because when squall does his limit break you can press the trigger button to do extra damage. Also, summons do extra damage by timed button presses.
3) You say you have memories of the game. Well, memories tell a different story as to how the game looked back then. We remember it as being the best looking game out there but the truth is that the game looks bad if you were to replay the original game.

As for price of the game: Original Final Fantasy VIII when released was around $45.00, Steam version is $11.99, Remastered version is $19.00. If game was double price of Steam version it would be $23.98.

[ClockDownRMe]

You guys do know that DotEmu also did the original Steam port as well, right? This is very likely just a refresh of that code, which by itself was technically a remaster. This new version is just really dumb, and marketed very poorly, very. If I get it, it'll probably be on PS4 but I do want to see what the new PC port looks like and if they have made any improvements that just simply haven't been advertised. Square Enix could've handled this a lot better.

[Luna ~]

squall rinoa look complete fine to me.
i agree with the blur effect being awful. and non upscaled backgrounds is bleh.

[Blackened Halo]

Originally posted by Blade12775:

Some of your statements are false.
1) There is no mention on the FFVIII website about how many characters have been remastered.
2) Speeding up the game would effect game play. Why? Because when squall does his limit break you can press the trigger button to do extra damage. Also, summons do extra damage by timed button presses.
3) You say you have memories of the game. Well, memories tell a different story as to how the game looked back then. We remember it as being the best looking game out there but the truth is that the game looks bad if you were to replay the original game.

As for price of the game: Original Final Fantasy VIII when released was around $45.00, Steam version is $11.99, Remastered version is $19.00. If game was double price of Steam version it would be $23.98.

1. ok, my bad, it was stated on https://blog.eu.playstation.com
2. wtf are you talking about? what has speeding up the game (which is absolutely unnecesary in the first place) to do with his limit break or summons?
3. memories of how Squall and Rinoa looked like, their face, their hair, just their appearance
4. jesus, what a nitpicking we have here, btw your mention of the price of the original FF8 is absolutely nonsensical

[Blackened Halo]

Originally posted by ClockDownRMe:

You guys do know that DotEmu also did the original Steam port as well, right? This is very likely just a refresh of that code, which by itself was technically a remaster. This new version is just really dumb, and marketed very poorly, very. If I get it, it'll probably be on PS4 but I do want to see what the new PC port looks like and if they have made any improvements that just simply haven't been advertised. Square Enix could've handled this a lot better.

I didnt know that ...info about it?

[TheMonkofDestiny]

Originally posted by Blackened Halo:

btw your mention of the price of the original FF8 is absolutely nonsensical

Seemed about as relevant as the hyperbolic nonsense of calling this remaster "double the price", to be fair.

[Pilda]

DotEmu even didn't put this to their collection of remastered games on their website.

[Blackened Halo]

they are ashamed of this halfbaked awful product

[DJScias]

Originally posted by Blackened Halo:

Originally posted by Blade12775:

Some of your statements are false.
1) There is no mention on the FFVIII website about how many characters have been remastered.
2) Speeding up the game would effect game play. Why? Because when squall does his limit break you can press the trigger button to do extra damage. Also, summons do extra damage by timed button presses.
3) You say you have memories of the game. Well, memories tell a different story as to how the game looked back then. We remember it as being the best looking game out there but the truth is that the game looks bad if you were to replay the original game.

As for price of the game: Original Final Fantasy VIII when released was around $45.00, Steam version is $11.99, Remastered version is $19.00. If game was double price of Steam version it would be $23.98.

1. ok, my bad, it was stated on https://blog.eu.playstation.com
2. wtf are you talking about? what has speeding up the game (which is absolutely unnecesary in the first place) to do with his limit break or summons?
3. memories of how Squall and Rinoa looked like, their face, their hair, just their appearance
4. jesus, what a nitpicking we have here, btw your mention of the price of the original FF8 is absolutely nonsensical

Hey hey!

Not gonna take sides, but just wanted to pitch in since I might have a clue about one pointer:

2. Timed button presses, like the limit break and such are affected when you change FPS. To the point they become near impossible to hit. There's examples like this in the Trails of Cold Steel games. They had a fishing minigame that was near impossible to complete on the 60 FPS version due to the game having been built around 30 FPS and the computer would compute your presses as too slow because it now was calculating twice as fast than what you had to do.. Which meant nearly impossible button mashing for a human.

So, all in all what they were trying to say is you can't just crank up FPS nilly-willy as it does have an effect on timed button presses and other computations that were linked to the FPS.

On the flip side I'm also not saying you said this. Just giving a bit more info into this phenomenon. Of course, I don't know all the coding-related parts of this but it's a very simple breakdown of the issue.

Edit: Since I don't like saying stuff without proof or references, this is the patchnotes that fix the FPS-related fish bug: https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791461408543/announcements/detail/1662265540767847156