What a lazy remaster!

[toughnails]

We added AI upscaled backgrounds + widescreen support, this will be $30 + tip, make sure to pre-order, tee-hee.

I mean, even the Secret remake had a lot more effort put into it. This one doesn't have any new assets whatsoever, they just upscaled the backgrounds with waifu2x, kept the same old pixelated sprites and increased the render window to 16:9.

Not to mention the terrible regional pricing.

[LKjgyu7tyh]

The people with complaints about the quality of this remaster and its pricing are simply comparing it to other remasters of the same or similar price and essentially asking the question "all of this effort went into remaster X, Y, or Z, why can't SE give LoM the same treatment?"

It's a valid criticism.

[Silyon]

Originally posted by LKjgyu7tyh:

The people with complaints about the quality of this remaster and its pricing are simply comparing it to other remasters of the same or similar price and essentially asking the question "all of this effort went into remaster X, Y, or Z, why can't SE give LoM the same treatment?"

It's a valid criticism.

Because, as has been said many times over by now by many people, LoM doesn't need much extra stapled on top. Bug-fixes, resolution updates, and the like are enough. Many things they might try to stack on top of the game would actually detract from it, since it's already full to bursting with enough content to keep a player busy for hundreds of hours and plenty of replayability besides. If it wasn't that good to begin with, it wouldn't have so many die-hard fans still playing it 20 years after it's original release. Very few games can claim similar, modern or not.

[Elegnaim]

Originally posted by Silyon:

LoM doesn't need much extra stapled on top. Bug-fixes, resolution updates, and the like are enough.

I agree completely -- and again, there's no real indication that much meaningful cut content exists in terms of quests. I'm only aware of a handful of dropped quests and all of those seem to have been deliberate writing choices.

But the problem is that, as far as I can tell, the remaster is *not getting any bug fixes* or rebalances or whatever, which are kind of necessary because the combat and gameplay in general are both very dysfunctional.

[maestro]

Originally posted by LKjgyu7tyh:

And that's a fine viewpoint. It doesn't negate another person with higher expectations based on what we already know is possible from other releases.

The problem here, though, is that people are selling short the work that *was* done on LoM.

They redid, by hand, every single piece of hand-drawn environment in the entire game and had to re-code the game (or at the very least, convert the code for the PS1) for a PC-compatible engine.

And I know the sprites are not up to the 8k standards everybody seems to want these days, but they have been touched up too. Not quite as much as the backgrounds and I will agree to there being some dissonance, but they wanted to keep the sprites faithful and not redo them entirely.

The point is.

People are saying it was a "lazy" remaster and "there's not as much work put into this game as there were other remasters" and that's just bull. In fact, if you want to talk about lazy re-releases, go look at FF5, Chrono Trigger. Slapping a bilinear filter on doesn't make a remaster.

And people talk about Persona 4 a lot, but you know, I've seen screenshots of the original and I've seen P4G on PC and... there is a difference, but not a huge one. It seems to me that not a lot of work really needed done on that one, to get it up to snuff for PC. That's how they could sell that one for so cheap. Oh, and P5? Look at that. $59.99.

Oh, and there's also Grandia HD. Another Bilinear Filtered game, $19.99. Grandia 2 HD barely had anything at all done to it, basically just upscaled. $19.99. And look at that, neither of them were done by Square-Enix.

LoM redoes their entire hand-drawn artwork by hand, and somehow $29.99 is too much to ask for. Somehow, asking an extra $10 for completely redrawn assets, redrawn by hand (I'm rather impressed at how faithfully they did it, and how much care and love was taken to keep the game as close to the original as possible! Thank God we didn't end up with another FF7R) is too much to ask for.

If Grandia had re-done their non-sprite graphics by hand and asked $29.99 for it, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. I WISH they had done that, rather than slap a bilinear filter on it.

But the problem is that, as far as I can tell, the remaster is *not getting any bug fixes* or rebalances or whatever, which are kind of necessary because the combat and gameplay in general are both very dysfunctional.

"As far as you can tell", Using what data? And outside of a few glitches and maybe a few optional items not doing what you'd think they'd do, I don't really think that those make the game "dysfunctional" unless you're going for No Future Mode or something, which is something <1% of the players would even likely do anyhow.

And we don't want a combat overhaul. Maybe make a few tweaks, like I'd love for them to change the XP crystal system, but if they change it too much then we go from a Remaster to a Remake, as in FF7R and I don't want that.

FF7 was one of my favorite games back in the day and there's a reason why I didn't feel a single iota of an urge to run out and buy a PS4 to get it even after the PS4s came down in price, despite having enough money I probably could have. If FF7R comes out on PC, I might, maybe wait for a sale and maybe get it then. Maybe. Why?

Because they screwed with the game too much. It's not FF7 anymore. It just isn't.

I'm glad they didn't try any big over-arching changes to LoM. Just some graphical touchups, maybe fix the bugs with certain items not functioning, and leave it at that. Oh, and the XP Crystals. Just make battles give the XP to the whole group to reduce grind a little. Anything else, and you're running into the danger of making LoM, not LoM.

[Neiro]

Originally posted by maestro:

Originally posted by LKjgyu7tyh:

And that's a fine viewpoint. It doesn't negate another person with higher expectations based on what we already know is possible from other releases.

The problem here, though, is that people are selling short the work that *was* done on LoM.

They redid, by hand, every single piece of hand-drawn environment in the entire game and had to re-code the game (or at the very least, convert the code for the PS1) for a PC-compatible engine.

And I know the sprites are not up to the 8k standards everybody seems to want these days, but they have been touched up too. Not quite as much as the backgrounds and I will agree to there being some dissonance, but they wanted to keep the sprites faithful and not redo them entirely.

The point is.

People are saying it was a "lazy" remaster and "there's not as much work put into this game as there were other remasters" and that's just bull. In fact, if you want to talk about lazy re-releases, go look at FF5, Chrono Trigger. Slapping a bilinear filter on doesn't make a remaster.

And people talk about Persona 4 a lot, but you know, I've seen screenshots of the original and I've seen P4G on PC and... there is a difference, but not a huge one. It seems to me that not a lot of work really needed done on that one, to get it up to snuff for PC. That's how they could sell that one for so cheap. Oh, and P5? Look at that. $59.99.

Oh, and there's also Grandia HD. Another Bilinear Filtered game, $19.99. Grandia 2 HD barely had anything at all done to it, basically just upscaled. $19.99. And look at that, neither of them were done by Square-Enix.

LoM redoes their entire hand-drawn artwork by hand, and somehow $29.99 is too much to ask for. Somehow, asking an extra $10 for completely redrawn assets, redrawn by hand (I'm rather impressed at how faithfully they did it, and how much care and love was taken to keep the game as close to the original as possible! Thank God we didn't end up with another FF7R) is too much to ask for.

If Grandia had re-done their non-sprite graphics by hand and asked $29.99 for it, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. I WISH they had done that, rather than slap a bilinear filter on it.

But the problem is that, as far as I can tell, the remaster is *not getting any bug fixes* or rebalances or whatever, which are kind of necessary because the combat and gameplay in general are both very dysfunctional.

"As far as you can tell", Using what data? And outside of a few glitches and maybe a few optional items not doing what you'd think they'd do, I don't really think that those make the game "dysfunctional" unless you're going for No Future Mode or something, which is something <1% of the players would even likely do anyhow.

And we don't want a combat overhaul. Maybe make a few tweaks, like I'd love for them to change the XP crystal system, but if they change it too much then we go from a Remaster to a Remake, as in FF7R and I don't want that.

FF7 was one of my favorite games back in the day and there's a reason why I didn't feel a single iota of an urge to run out and buy a PS4 to get it even after the PS4s came down in price, despite having enough money I probably could have. If FF7R comes out on PC, I might, maybe wait for a sale and maybe get it then. Maybe. Why?

Because they screwed with the game too much. It's not FF7 anymore. It just isn't.

I'm glad they didn't try any big over-arching changes to LoM. Just some graphical touchups, maybe fix the bugs with certain items not functioning, and leave it at that. Oh, and the XP Crystals. Just make battles give the XP to the whole group to reduce grind a little. Anything else, and you're running into the danger of making LoM, not LoM.

Oh, boy. In this scenario, the AAA should cost 200 bucks.

[Elegnaim]

Originally posted by maestro:

"As far as you can tell", Using what data?

Judging from the trailers the monster AI still looks like it's incapable of really attacking the player unless you go out of your way to let it, and that's a huge factor in why nothing *else* about the battle system really works. The one bit where you see a pet in battle also shows the pet not doing anything, which also makes me think they haven't done anything to fix the AI.

And I don't think people generally liked LoM's battle system much/at all. This isn't an "it didn't age well" thing. It was a huge criticism back in the day. As much as I love LoM's story and worldbuilding, as a *game* it's bad. They had an opportunity to make it not-bad and I'm not seeing anything that indicates they did that, outside of giving the player the option to turn the gameplay off by disabling battles. Which isn't a solution.

Legend of Mana is a game I'm deeply nostalgic for and I'd really just like a version of it that's actually fun, I guess.

[Solid_Pilson]

Originally posted by Elegnaim:

Originally posted by maestro:

"As far as you can tell", Using what data?

Judging from the trailers the monster AI still looks like it's incapable of really attacking the player unless you go out of your way to let it, and that's a huge factor in why nothing *else* about the battle system really works. The one bit where you see a pet in battle also shows the pet not doing anything, which also makes me think they haven't done anything to fix the AI.

And I don't think people generally liked LoM's battle system much/at all. This isn't an "it didn't age well" thing. It was a huge criticism back in the day. As much as I love LoM's story and worldbuilding, as a *game* it's bad. They had an opportunity to make it not-bad and I'm not seeing anything that indicates they did that, outside of giving the player the option to turn the gameplay off by disabling battles. Which isn't a solution.

Legend of Mana is a game I'm deeply nostalgic for and I'd really just like a version of it that's actually fun, I guess.

Strong disagree. Did you know, original LoM had 3 pet behaviours programmed?

[maestro]

Originally posted by Pilson:

Strong disagree. Did you know, original LoM had 3 pet behaviours programmed?

Pretty sure it was way more than three.

I remember Golems being affected by ... what was it, runes? And I'm sure that the animal pets had some sort of minigame centered around them, too. I just forget what it was. Something about what fruit you feed them?

I know for one the golems were heavily affected, in how they acted in combat.

Now, random NPCs that join you for quests....eh, yeah. But then... because of the XP Crystal Issue, I rarely brought allies with me unless a quest required it anyhow, at least until I was leveled up.

Hey, the XP Crystal system is one thing I will agree with anybody on, that royally sucked. But yet, every game has its flaws. You can't name a perfect game on the market, because there isn't one. But a few AI flaws isn't enough to go dissing a remaster. Maybe they felt that there was a reason those "flaws" existed? Maybe it was intended? I don't know.

Either way, such flaws existing doesn't suddenly make the game "not worth it". I pointed out earlier that Grandia and Grandia 2 were $19.99 and they had almost no work done to their assets whatsoever, and that LoM had every single environment re-done by hand, and that's one of the big reasons why it's $10 more, and of course they couldn't refute that and instead pulled a slippery slope fallacy and said "Pfft, that means you think Triple A should be $100." (which, by the way, is not far from the truth, as the "release" of a Triple A is $60 and then they try to sell you 3-4 DLCs that they want $10-20 each for and/or a $100 season pass).

And then they go on to say "This isn't some small-time indie" well, no, SE is not a small-time indie. They are Triple-A. And this is a Triple-A game from back in 200...1? that has been remastered, its assets redone by hand and outside of some emulation re-releases on later Playstations, it's the first time it's been re-released. I can't say I'm surprised by a $30 pricetag on a game that was not all that available back in the day, that's a Triple A, whose art assets were redone by hand.

And, still, at the end of the day... if your nostalgia isn't worth $30, then there's plenty of other titles out there. Go play one of them. But dissing a company and a remaster just because it isn't quite good enough for you, is just... I dunno what to say there that hasn't already been said.

I want more remasters. I want the ability to play these cherished classics on PC. I don't want the ungrateful crowd to convince publishers that we are demanding everything for nothing.

I would have been fine with LoM being released as-is, to be honest, just so I could get around the emulation issue. Though perhaps not for $30. They could have released LoM as-is, charged $19 and just slapped a bilinear filter on it, like they did with Grandia.

Would you rather they had done that?

[Elegnaim]

Originally posted by maestro:

And I'm sure that the animal pets had some sort of minigame centered around them, too. I just forget what it was. Something about what fruit you feed them?

It's based around what you feed them, but it doesn't actually work right. Nearly all of the food items are bugged and don't impact personality at all, and of the handful that do, I think only four convey *useful* personality types (and those are rare-ish and iirc the in-game produce guide lists the wrong personality types for them anyway), so you're generally stuck with the default personality which doesn't really do anything in battle, unless you get one of the demihuman monsters, which start with personalities (and even then they're not very useful).

I don't think anyone's ever figured out how to make golems... do anything useful in battle. The logic blocks don't seem to work right either.

All of the side mechanics either don't work or don't matter.

[Silyon]

Originally posted by Pilson:

Originally posted by Elegnaim:

Judging from the trailers the monster AI still looks like it's incapable of really attacking the player unless you go out of your way to let it, and that's a huge factor in why nothing *else* about the battle system really works. The one bit where you see a pet in battle also shows the pet not doing anything, which also makes me think they haven't done anything to fix the AI.

And I don't think people generally liked LoM's battle system much/at all. This isn't an "it didn't age well" thing. It was a huge criticism back in the day. As much as I love LoM's story and worldbuilding, as a *game* it's bad. They had an opportunity to make it not-bad and I'm not seeing anything that indicates they did that, outside of giving the player the option to turn the gameplay off by disabling battles. Which isn't a solution.

Legend of Mana is a game I'm deeply nostalgic for and I'd really just like a version of it that's actually fun, I guess.

Strong disagree. Did you know, original LoM had 3 pet behaviours programmed?

9 pet behaviors, actually: Aggressive, Arrogant, Calm, Indecisive, Scheming, Lazy, Lonely, Friendly, and the default. Each alters how the pets behave in particular ways, some in a positive way while others in a negative way. For example, a Scheming pet will keep it's distance and favor the use of ranged or debuffing attacks, while a friendly pet will stick as close to the player as possible and attack the same target as them. All of them except for the default are assigned semi-randomly when the pet is fed specific produce.

If your pet's wandering about like an idiot and only occasionally doing anything at all, then you've not fed it the appropriate types of produce to give it a behavior that makes it actually do something. Which isn't entirely the player's fault, as the in-game Produce Encyclopedia gives incorrect information about what the produce offers your pet in the first place. One of those bugs that needs fixing in this remake.

We know nothing about the actual gameplay from the trailer, it was mostly a cinematic one announcing the game's existence. Not enough has been seen to comment on Pet or Enemy AI, but even in the original it was more complex than is being implied here.

[maestro]

I know you guys hate this suggestion/mentality, but again:

A release on PC means that modding is possible, and much easier to do than attempting to mod a Playstation .iso. That, and the art is redone, which removes a lot of work modders would have to do if you wanted the absolute best way to play LoM.

So outside of perhaps some spritework for the people who are that bothered by it (I notice it, but I'm not complaining), who knows maybe they'll fix some of these bugs. Just looking at a 1 and some minute video and going "oh they didn't fix _____" is silly. Maybe the pets in the party weren't fed anything yet. Maybe the golems only have the starter logic block.

Who knows. I'd say wait until release, and wait until some people give it a try and even if not, here's the thing:

Wait for modders to mod it. There are diehard fans out there, and I'm sure they WILL figure out how to mod it and fix this stuff if SE didn't. Then, when they do.... then, it might be on sale, and you can buy it.

But, all of this would be impossible if the game weren't remastered and released at all. Getting a game company to actually remaster some obscure game that hardly anybody talked about for years like LoM is a miracle in of itself, and it opens lots of doors. It's something that should be celebrated. They could have just as easily chose not to, like the many other games that have yet to get re-released. Xenogears, anybody? When are we getting that? Xenogears was way more popular than LoM ever was, but LoM got a re-release and XG ... not yet, that I've heard of. Or, how about this? Final Fantasy Tactics. I would kill for a PS1-faithful FFT, maybe with the optional WotL content thrown in, as long as they kept stuff faithful to the original. I could sit here all day and rattle off games from my childhood that are still on the "I wish they'd rerelease this for PC..." list.

EDIT: Hey, I'm a huge fan of Subnautica despite what UWE has done recently with BZ. I already paid for BZ so I'm gonna get my mileage out of the game. However, UWE, after many many many requests still didn't give us basic things, like the ability to make a map. That's ok. I'll wait for the map mod to work again and then, once they've updated it, I'll play BZ again. I can wait. Just an example.

Or how about FF7? FF7 looks like trash until you download Tifa's 7th Heaven and get the associated mods. Then it looks great. Who plays unmodded Skyrim anymore? Or Starbound? Stardew Valley?

There are reasons why the best way to play games is the PC, and one of the biggest among them is the Modding Community.

[Elegnaim]

Originally posted by maestro:

A release on PC means that modding is possible, and much easier to do than attempting to mod a Playstation .iso.

In theory, but that's entirely dependent on what the port's written in.

I'm really interested in making a revised version of my combat hack for the PC version . If it's written in Unity it looks like it might be possible to decompile the C# stuff in a fairly readable way. If it's... something where all the meaningful guts are in normal x86 assemble that you can pick apart with IDA Pro or Cheat Engine, I've... got experience doing assembly-level hacks on LoM and it's not /that/ bad (... or at least the... whatever flavor of MIPS the PSX uses wasn't that bad).

If it's written in something that's really walled-off/doesn't compile to normal bytecode/is otherwise not amenable to hacking (or if it has some DRM that gets tripped by modding it) that's a problem.

[Neiro]

Originally posted by maestro:

I know you guys hate this suggestion/mentality, but again:

A release on PC means that modding is possible, and much easier to do than attempting to mod a Playstation .iso. That, and the art is redone, which removes a lot of work modders would have to do if you wanted the absolute best way to play LoM.

So outside of perhaps some spritework for the people who are that bothered by it (I notice it, but I'm not complaining), who knows maybe they'll fix some of these bugs. Just looking at a 1 and some minute video and going "oh they didn't fix _____" is silly. Maybe the pets in the party weren't fed anything yet. Maybe the golems only have the starter logic block.

Who knows. I'd say wait until release, and wait until some people give it a try and even if not, here's the thing:

Wait for modders to mod it. There are diehard fans out there, and I'm sure they WILL figure out how to mod it and fix this stuff if SE didn't. Then, when they do.... then, it might be on sale, and you can buy it.

But, all of this would be impossible if the game weren't remastered and released at all. Getting a game company to actually remaster some obscure game that hardly anybody talked about for years like LoM is a miracle in of itself, and it opens lots of doors. It's something that should be celebrated. They could have just as easily chose not to, like the many other games that have yet to get re-released. Xenogears, anybody? When are we getting that? Xenogears was way more popular than LoM ever was, but LoM got a re-release and XG ... not yet, that I've heard of. Or, how about this? Final Fantasy Tactics. I would kill for a PS1-faithful FFT, maybe with the optional WotL content thrown in, as long as they kept stuff faithful to the original. I could sit here all day and rattle off games from my childhood that are still on the "I wish they'd rerelease this for PC..." list.

EDIT: Hey, I'm a huge fan of Subnautica despite what UWE has done recently with BZ. I already paid for BZ so I'm gonna get my mileage out of the game. However, UWE, after many many many requests still didn't give us basic things, like the ability to make a map. That's ok. I'll wait for the map mod to work again and then, once they've updated it, I'll play BZ again. I can wait. Just an example.

Or how about FF7? FF7 looks like trash until you download Tifa's 7th Heaven and get the associated mods. Then it looks great. Who plays unmodded Skyrim anymore? Or Starbound? Stardew Valley?

There are reasons why the best way to play games is the PC, and one of the biggest among them is the Modding Community.

you're getting into a puddle again. believe me, there are enough people who play skyrim without a single mod. and your obsession with modifying the lom looks really strange

[maestro]

Originally posted by Neiro:

you're getting into a puddle again. believe me, there are enough people who play skyrim without a single mod. and your obsession with modifying the lom looks really strange

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Skyrim players on PC have used at least 1 mod.

This is coming from a person who, for years, played Skyrim with minimalist mods. Usually the Unofficial Patch + one or two small mods. For example, Fallout 4? The only mod I use there is weightless junk.

For years I played Skyrim off-and-on with a custom faster leveling mod for certain skills that were just too annoying to skill up otherwise.

Back during Oblivion? Same thing, I made a tiny mod that just speeds up some skill gains.

Point is. They are still mods.

And it doesn't "look really strange"; everybody has their own preferences which might differ from what the developers think is best. I can play Subnautica with a map. A purist might not want a map. With modding, I can have my map, and the purist can be happy without a map.

I love modding. It lets you play the game the way YOU want.

Originally posted by Elegnaim:

Originally posted by maestro:

A release on PC means that modding is possible, and much easier to do than attempting to mod a Playstation .iso.

In theory, but that's entirely dependent on what the port's written in.

I'm really interested in making a revised version of my combat hack for the PC version . If it's written in Unity it looks like it might be possible to decompile the C# stuff in a fairly readable way. If it's... something where all the meaningful guts are in normal x86 assemble that you can pick apart with IDA Pro or Cheat Engine, I've... got experience doing assembly-level hacks on LoM and it's not /that/ bad (... or at least the... whatever flavor of MIPS the PSX uses wasn't that bad).

If it's written in something that's really walled-off/doesn't compile to normal bytecode/is otherwise not amenable to hacking (or if it has some DRM that gets tripped by modding it) that's a problem.

It seems a lot of these re-releases are built with some kind of engine, I think it should be a fair possibility that it should be hackable/moddable.

[Neiro]

Originally posted by maestro:

Originally posted by Neiro:

you're getting into a puddle again. believe me, there are enough people who play skyrim without a single mod. and your obsession with modifying the lom looks really strange

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Skyrim players on PC have used at least 1 mod.

This is coming from a person who, for years, played Skyrim with minimalist mods. Usually the Unofficial Patch + one or two small mods. For example, Fallout 4? The only mod I use there is weightless junk.

For years I played Skyrim off-and-on with a custom faster leveling mod for certain skills that were just too annoying to skill up otherwise.

Back during Oblivion? Same thing, I made a tiny mod that just speeds up some skill gains.

Point is. They are still mods.

And it doesn't "look really strange"; everybody has their own preferences which might differ from what the developers think is best. I can play Subnautica with a map. A purist might not want a map. With modding, I can have my map, and the purist can be happy without a map.

I love modding. It lets you play the game the way YOU want.

Originally posted by Elegnaim:

In theory, but that's entirely dependent on what the port's written in.

I'm really interested in making a revised version of my combat hack for the PC version . If it's written in Unity it looks like it might be possible to decompile the C# stuff in a fairly readable way. If it's... something where all the meaningful guts are in normal x86 assemble that you can pick apart with IDA Pro or Cheat Engine, I've... got experience doing assembly-level hacks on LoM and it's not /that/ bad (... or at least the... whatever flavor of MIPS the PSX uses wasn't that bad).

If it's written in something that's really walled-off/doesn't compile to normal bytecode/is otherwise not amenable to hacking (or if it has some DRM that gets tripped by modding it) that's a problem.

It seems a lot of these re-releases are built with some kind of engine, I think it should be a fair possibility that it should be hackable/moddable.

what modding will be available? are you so sure of that? did the developers tell you that? all your assumptions from the price to the modifications are questionable and crumble to dust on closer inspection.
PS you're talking about the wrong topic. the conversation about the mod is elsewhere