Kaldaien destroys the Chrono Cross Remaster

[Crusta]

https://steamcommunity.com/id/Kaldaien/recommended/

I hate giving nearly every release a negative review, but here we go again :-\

Where to start?

If you were hoping for anything uniquely different than emulating -- ban me for saying the naughty word, I dare you -- the original PS1 game, you will not find it. Achievements are the only thing the Steam release does that an emulator would not do better.

Under the hood, things are ugly. The only part of the game that actually renders using D3D11 is the game's UI. They give plenty of high-res UI assets and an insanely high resolution font that won't even load on Intel GPUs (textures larger than 128 MiB are not required by Microsoft to work in compliant D3D11 drivers and of course that means Intel users get the shaft as usual), but there's zero hope of doing anything like a re-texture mod since the game isn't even rendered using a PC graphics API.

Making matters worse, the actual render rate of the game is decoupled from the UI framerate. You can use all the monitoring software in the world and you're not going to get an accurate measure of the game's actual framerate or the severity of its stuttering and slow downs. I can't quantitatively measure any of that stuff, but I can tell you it -feels- wonky as hell with definite uneven frame pacing between each UI and game frame.


Tl;Dr: I think the game's only saving grace is its price. $19.99 is just low enough that you might not care you could have bought the game used at a yard sale for less and had a better experience. Buy the game because you have never played it before, not because it's anything special.

[Tracido]

Oh look, more people proving my findings were correct, funny that.

[Yerc2]

There are quite a few negative reviews for this game on Steam. Why highlight this one in particular?

[Tracido]

Originally posted by Yerc2:

There are quite a few negative reviews for this game on Steam. Why highlight this one in particular?

Because this guy actually is a modder who has created unique tweaks of tools for the Steam gaming community..

[Draken/Eitan]

I mean, it's nice to get confirmation of what I could see. Game was janky right from the title screen.

SE strikes again! 😅

[Crusta]

Originally posted by Yerc2:

There are quite a few negative reviews for this game on Steam. Why highlight this one in particular?

Well know community modder who has been fixing PC ports for two decades. Specially bad japanese PC ports.

[Shylaar]

They give plenty of high-res UI assets and an insanely high resolution font that won't even load on Intel GPUs (textures larger than 128 MiB are not required by Microsoft to work in compliant D3D11 drivers and of course that means Intel users get the shaft as usual)

So the new HD font is at least 256MB, aka 1/6 the size of the entire original game across two discs? Incredible.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by Shylaar:

They give plenty of high-res UI assets and an insanely high resolution font that won't even load on Intel GPUs (textures larger than 128 MiB are not required by Microsoft to work in compliant D3D11 drivers and of course that means Intel users get the shaft as usual)

So the new HD font is at least 256MB, aka 1/6 the size of the entire original game across two discs? Incredible.

It may be stored on disk in Deflate format. However GPUs can not handle deflate compressed content directly.

[Tracido]

Originally posted by Shylaar:

They give plenty of high-res UI assets and an insanely high resolution font that won't even load on Intel GPUs (textures larger than 128 MiB are not required by Microsoft to work in compliant D3D11 drivers and of course that means Intel users get the shaft as usual)

So the new HD font is at least 256MB, aka 1/6 the size of the entire original game across two discs? Incredible.

While the FMV's and sound super compressed, comes off like, say, MONEY GOT SPENT ELSEWHERE, besides compression work and quality..

[Crashed]

Originally posted by Tracido:

Originally posted by Shylaar:

So the new HD font is at least 256MB, aka 1/6 the size of the entire original game across two discs? Incredible.

While the FMV's and sound super compressed, comes off like, say, MONEY GOT SPENT ELSEWHERE, besides compression work and quality..

The problem is that they should have split the sprite sheet into multiple textures so it doesn't overload less capable GPUs.

256MB just happens to be the size of a 8192 square 32bpp texture.

[Tracido]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Originally posted by Tracido:

While the FMV's and sound super compressed, comes off like, say, MONEY GOT SPENT ELSEWHERE, besides compression work and quality..

The problem is that they should have split the sprite sheet into multiple textures so it doesn't overload less capable GPUs.

256MB just happens to be the size of a 8192 square 32bpp texture.

I am lucky I have been able to barely keep up on upgrades, but this is just sloppy work, whereas the censorship couldn't have a single error, I'd say that's kind of telling.

[Crashed]

Could you please not derail with your politics?

[Crusta]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Could you please not derail with your politics?

what??

[Tracido]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Could you please not derail with your politics?

The game being ruined with them is perfectly fine I see. As if I programmed it into the game itself, go play your broken game.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by Tracido:

Originally posted by Crashed:

Could you please not derail with your politics?

The game being ruined with them is perfectly fine I see. As if I programmed it into the game itself, go play your broken game.

You're the one politicizing things that shouldn't be political. Perhaps you could slow down with the insults and keep this to the technical issues?

[Crusta]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Originally posted by Tracido:

The game being ruined with them is perfectly fine I see. As if I programmed it into the game itself, go play your broken game.

You're the one insinuating politics. Perhaps you could slow down with the insults and keep this to the technical issues?

whats happening here? he never insulted you. And censorship in games sucks,. You can't just dismiss it as "politics".