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For reference, the original PC game came out in 2002. In 2006, there was a PS2 remake of the game that kept the same graphics, but:
- Added a new opening movie with a new song by Suara
- Replaced all of the R18 scenes with all-ages versions
- Added full voice acting
- Added an equipment & item system to the game
- Added combo attacks between characters
- Allowed you to bring more units into each battle
- Added a new story arc
- Made some miscellaneous other gameplay tweaks
That version of the game also got ported to the PSP in 2009. There is a fan translation of the 2002 game, but no translation exists of the PS2/PSP versions.
In 2018, Aquaplus released another remake of the game for PS4/Vita; this one's gameplay is identical to the PS2 version, but:
- The opening movie is the same, but there are new versions of the opening & ending songs
- The 2D battle sequences have been fully remade in 3D
- All of the background art is redrawn
- Most of the main characters have new portraits in battle
- Most of the character portraits have had their hair & eyes redrawn and proportions adjusted to be more consistent
- All of the full-screen CGs have been adjusted to add new lighting effects and fit properly on a 16:9 screen
- The soundtrack is remastered, and there is an optional "extend" soundtrack mode that adds in music from the sequels
This release is going to be a port of the PS4 version.
In their most common meanings. After all, PC version is the only one with sex scenes.
Also, kinda shame about opening. I really liked the 2002 one.
Actually, I forgot that there are going to be a few differences between this and the PS4 version; we know they're adding an auto-save feature (which is also being added to the earlier games), and there are some typos and translation mistakes that are getting fixed, although we don't have a full list of those. The Japanese press release implied their would be some other changes, too, but we don't know what; everybody is hoping the resolution & frame rate will be increased, because one of the most common complaints about the PS4 version and prior PC releases is that they were locked at 720p/30Hz, but we don't know if that will happen.
Utawarerumono 2 and 3 were 720p and 30fps on PlayStation 4, too. The console releases are just upscaled to 1080p by default, whereas the PC ports let you choose between the original graphics or upscaling them as well. If anything, the Steam versions are better by virtue of giving you that option at all, but people who didn't know the whole picture thought the games actually had a higher resolution on PlayStation 4 and began spreading misinformation.
The only real issue with the PC releases was that they contained a few bugs, if memory serves me right, but I think they got polished over time, and both games will be receiving an update that should address the remaining ones soon.
Also, if you aren't familiar with visual novels and VN/RPG hybrids, you should know that drawing the assets in 1080p leads to a massive increase in budget required, so many companies either cannot afford the difference or aren't sure they'd recoup the losses and opt for 720p. It's not their own fault nor "insanity and incompetence" at all—all games have budget limits defined by the projected sales.
As for the 30fps—honestly this type of gameplay looks perfectly fine in 30fps. From all games where a capped frame rate could be an issue, these are not really ones where it matters.
What do you mean "massive" increased in budget required? Please correct my incompetence but I assumed that all digital art done from the past 10 years or more can easily be saved in 1920x1080 or larger resolutions. Are you truly certain that the original game art Photoshop files or whatever, in their original states before saved as .JPG or .PNG and formatted for the PS Vita, were not gigantic resolutions in the thousands of Pixels x Pixels or could be saved as such? You truly propose that these artists are originally mince-making tiny little 1280×720 images in 2010+?
There is a definite gap in understanding from the uneducated laymans' perspective that all these artists are making tiny little 1280×720 images because nobody at these VN developers can bother to buy monitors from the past decade that support 1920x1080+.
Maybe I'm wrong. Please correct me.
Passionate fans can see these glaring issues based primarily on laziness/paying employees and they would love to do the legwork at polishing the product, but the developers and legal teams, I guess, are just an empty uncommunicative void. I am positive that there would be a workforce of at least 10+ people who would love to improve the Utawarerumono games using raw original assets for free, but we just don't get access to even try. THAT is what is disappointing. Free work is out there if the developers/publishers do not want to pay for an employee to spend 2+ hours re-saving/upconverting original game art.
Yes, drawing at lower resolutions is a widespread practice in the visual novel and VN/RPG hybrid medium—both because of budget limitations and because, in Japan, personal desktop computers are scarce and laptops commonly have resolutions below 1080p there, so demand of higher-resolution assets isn't as common. Although you often see them for action-packed JRPGs such as Square Enix's, those not only benefit more from higher resolutions by virtue of their gameplay but the companies behind them also have way larger budgets.
Hell, one of the highest-profile visual novel developers just released a remake of a 20-year-old title and the assets were drawn in 800x600, because it was a side project and most of their funding is going toward a different one, that one likely to be released in 720p going by their track record. Budgets are just not large enough in this medium. I can count with one hand the number of visual novels and VN/RPG hybrids I know that were released in 1080p.
Drawing at higher resolutions is more expensive, and unfortunately in this, a dying medium, the vast majority of developers have to choose between a higher number of assets or higher resolutions, and most would rather opt for the former—which the audience as a whole seems to prefer anyway, since both VNs and VN/RPG hybrids are pretty static.
I cannot know myself in which resolution the Utawarerumono assets were drawn, but if the titles have been released in 720p, there's virtually always a fair reason for that. And so, the possibilities are: 1) the original assets are in 720p, 2) they were drawn in a higher resolution but released purposefully in 720p, 3) the engine is old, restricted, and needs an entire revamp.
As for 2), although I don't have access to Aquaplus' servers so I can't check their files, I doubt they'd have implemented the option to display the games in 1080p on PC and not use native 1080p assets if that was a possibility, so I'd be hesitant to assume they weren't made in 720p.
As for 3), I've never heard of an engine allowing you to upscale everything to a certain resolution but not working with assets that are already in that resolution.
In the end, I cannot know any undisclosed information on the development, but I simply ask that you consider everything I've said before making a call on what the issue might be if there really is one at all.
Regardless, my original point was that the graphics from the Steam versions are not a lower resolution than those from the console releases. It was misinformation that spread when the ports were announced since the games technically ran in 1080p on console—but the assets were upscaled, and you have the option to upscale them here as well.
Honestly, I don't know if you've seen actual gameplay, but the current 1080p looks good—if you wanted any better assets, you'd have to pay people to redraw them in 1080p or get lucky that everything was drawn in that resolution and convince the higher-ups at Aquaplus to patch it in. And as I discussed earlier, there's a significant chance the assets were just made in 720p.
This is not blindlessly defending released products, but understanding the limitations and production process of titles and being realistic about the possibilities. Everybody, myself included, would rather everything were better—that graphics were drawn in higher resolutions, that all titles had voice acting, hell, I wish most companies wouldn't use a first draft of the story as definitive, which leads to a variety of issues that are painfully common in visual novels and VN/RPG hybrids. But I know not all titles have the same possibilities, and this medium in particular is standing on its last leg, only hybrids maintaining a decent level of popularity but even then not breaking into the mainstream anymore.
Now, with all of this in mind, what I do ask for is that the upcoming updates for Utawarerumono 2 and 3 fix the kerning issue, and that the port of the remake doesn't have it, because that's perfectly doable and more than realistic; on the technical side, the only other thing I can hope for is that they update the games to run at 60fps if the engine isn't a mess (although like I said in my previous comment, they look fine as is). I also hope that the port of the remake contains the script improvements ShiraVN/DMM allegedly gave NISA. But, for better or for worse, I can't ask much else of these releases.
Oh yeah, I definitely have seen actual gameplay which is the basis for me writing my whole rant. The game (Or at least Mask of Deception) has software upscaling .dll's which really don't do justice at all in my opinion. There was another user that discussed using ReShade with the "AdaptiveSharpen" filter to improve the blurriness caused by the software upscaling and I have spent hours trying to tweak things on top of that.
I don't know if you are familiar with waifu2x-caffe, but it can be used on anime art to upscale it to a surprisingly high quality standard and should work very well to upscale 1280x720 art to 1920x1080.
Basically, it pains me to know that things can be improved, but they just aren't. Take a look at the 6th screenshot of this game of Karura. I honestly do not think that was originally drawn in 1280x720. Think about how painstaking it would be to make the highlights of her hair and the trees/bushes of the landscape on such a teeny tiny scale by hand at a 1:1 scale. I truly believe that this image, and likely all others, were originally produced at a vastly higher resolution.
By the way, running that screenshot through waifu2x-caffe looks beautiful with hardly any loss in sharpness. If all the art was run through this software, literally all concerns would be solved, people could have their 1080p resolutions and nobody would have to redraw anything, even if the original art were 1280x720, which I highly doubt it is.
Otherwise, I disagree almost completely. It's not difficult to produce art at higher resolutions and the artists most likely already do so for over a decade, even in Japan. It's most likely the programming side that is behind. I'm always fascinated at how bad Japan has gotten in the software-department, it's shocking.
First of all, quite a few games will have images created in twice the target resolution. This is for PV reasons, but also for zooming in (which hopefully is implemented correctly..). So for 720p that'd be 1440p. Then images should generally be saved lossless so you can work with them. And this is where things get obscene. A single 1440p picture is over 1gb in size. There was a VN where some photoshop originals were included on a bonus disc, and yeah. It was BIG.
Now keep in mind that a VN can have thousands of pictures, because of variations. Upgrading from 720p to 1080p isn't sounding like such a big deal at first, but it essentially means you increase size by a factor of 2.25. And given that we already talk about TB when it comes to image data for 720p.. yeah.
This means, a lot more space is needed and generally working with the files will take longer.
That is actually a big reason why to this very day, smaller resolutions are happening quite a bit in the industry. Not like you should just accept it. But there IS an actual reason for it.
That said, plenty of companies work with a target resolution of 1080p for some years now, and some even generally offer the highest possible resolution (as in, if you have twice the resolution, why not use it as well as possible and not just for zooming) which means up to 4k is supported in those rare cases, but yeah. There's an unfortunate second problem: Most VN devs aren't particularly well versed with technology. You don't want to know how many VNs STILL only have bilinear as upscaling available...