Ugly character art.

[Kelryth]

did the original game have the same art style? I don't even remember this game and we usually bought everything squaresoft made back in the day...lol

[Paladin]

Yeah... well, that's just like uh, your opinion, man.

[Kelryth]

Wow! Thanks for that stunning insight. I would never have known that me thinking the hideous character art was my own personal opinion had you not told me.

[NikDanger]

Yeah, the PS2 version has the same art. The SNES version that the PS2 game is a remake of had Final Fantasy 4-ish pixel art.

[Kelryth]

It seemed like an interesting game but I can't get over the character art. It looks too much like they copied Team USA World police/Thunderbirds or whatever. If they had made the art more like Final Fantasy IX's character art, I wouldn't have an issue with it.

[ShinChuck]

Originally posted by Kelryth:

It seemed like an interesting game but I can't get over the character art. It looks too much like they copied Team USA World police/Thunderbirds or whatever. If they had made the art more like Final Fantasy IX's character art, I wouldn't have an issue with it.

Huge fan, good game. I adore the SaGa series.

The art stinks. Well, I mean, it's good, it's just... the proportions are so off-putting. Uncanny valley hardcore.

But I'd still recommend it.

[Maple]

It's undeniably jarring, but you get used to it remarkably quickly, in my experience. After a few hours actually playing the game, it's easy to forget that the characters look like bratz dolls and instead the mind can focus on the rest of the design, which is all quite strong.

I remember buying this game in... maybe around 2008? Bought it on a whim thinking it was the weirdest looking games I'd ever seen, spent my first few hours mostly laughing at it. Joke was on me, it turned out to be one of my favorite games ever, and I'm still playing it in 2022. It's wild.

So definitely recommend giving it a shot but it's also definitely understandable if the art style is a deal breaker.

[ShinChuck]

Originally posted by Benkei Kuruma:

The actual concept art for the game's characters is freaking amazing, just as it is for the rest of the SaGa games. I believe it's Tomomi Kobayashi who does the art for these games. She's a freaking beast, one of the GOATs, and I hope her artistic style actually makes it into the realized models/sprites in these games one day.

I'd love that! I just adore her style. As much as I love SaGa games, there are times where I wish they wouldn't try so hard to be different... but I suppose they wouldn't be SaGa if they didn't chuck out conventions to try and do something different, even when being "normal" seems like the obvious winning choice!

[RPG Gamer Man]

Originally posted by pkdragon:

It's undeniably jarring, but you get used to it remarkably quickly, in my experience. After a few hours actually playing the game, it's easy to forget that the characters look like bratz dolls and instead the mind can focus on the rest of the design, which is all quite strong.

I remember buying this game in... maybe around 2008? Bought it on a whim thinking it was the weirdest looking games I'd ever seen, spent my first few hours mostly laughing at it. Joke was on me, it turned out to be one of my favorite games ever, and I'm still playing it in 2022. It's wild.

So definitely recommend giving it a shot but it's also definitely understandable if the art style is a deal breaker.

lol bratz dolls...Actually i think this game was made on ps2 during square-enix's art experimental phase, where they did a couple games like this. Luckily this art style died out pretty soon.

[Bladewind]

Personally, I would much prefer if they redo the art and models like in Octopath Traveler's style, or even Saga Frontier 2. It kind of lost the nostalgia feeling with the new models and I've played this enough. So this remake is a pass.

[MangorushZ]

What a dumb topic. Get better taste.

[Ryan914]

It is a hit or miss with people. Some of the redesigns were a welcome change compared to the original, others not so much.

[Kelryth]

I've rarely played a square game I didn't like. Harvestella is AWESOME. I've been playing square games since FFII (FFIV in Japan) on the snes. I'm sad I can't get into this one. Its a bad case of uncanny valley to me. Maby its like Trypophobia. Who knows. All I know is the character art makes me feel physically ill.

[ShinChuck]

Originally posted by Kelryth:

I've rarely played a square game I didn't like. Harvestella is AWESOME. I've been playing square games since FFII (FFIV in Japan) on the snes. I'm sad I can't get into this one. Its a bad case of uncanny valley to me. Maby its like Trypophobia. Who knows. All I know is the character art makes me feel physically ill.

A fellow Trypophobe. Lucky us!

I did a stupidly long post a few months ago where I gathered up all the reviews from the PS2 release that I could find after someone said the proportions problem was just a me thing. Not a single review spoke highly of the character art. A few didn't comment on it, a few said it was strange but you'd get used to it, while the majority simply didn't care for it.

I get some people might like it, or simply be nostalgic for it at this point, but an option to toggle original or a set of new, proportionate graphics would have been awesome. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to just shrink the head and shoulders, and SE is notorious for saying "It can't be done!" (then doing it a few patches later, lol), but who knows how it was programmed on an old console 20 years ago?

It's awesome seeing SE port and update so many old games, just such a bummer to see how greatly the quality varies between the ports and how few of them really get the full service they deserve!

[Keene]

Originally posted by Kelryth:

Wow! Thanks for that stunning insight. I would never have known that me thinking the hideous character art was my own personal opinion had you not told me.

Always fun to watch someone throw a stupid question in the discussions and not expect people to give stupid answers. If you wanted to avoid stupid answers you could have googled "Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song original graphics" and got an immediate answer.

[Kelryth]

Searching is impersonal. I prefer discussing things with actual people. People have insights, a search engine does not.