EVO Differences.

[Yekkusu]

So, I'm just creating a silly little thread here to tell you all, all of the new things added or changed in the Evolution version of the game for PS Vita. O played the third game there up to the final chapter, but sadly my Vita decided it was time and started the GPU Crash nightmare.

So, this is not a shewt-post about the Evo version, listen I know it's maddening we can't have that version here, I know it's frustrating when you add the mods on Steam and that the original versions hold themselves very well. I do believe the original Persona 5 holds itself waaaaaaaaaaay better than the original Persona 3 and 4 for example. Good games will be good no matter what. However, the Evolution games are more than another version of the game game, they are essentially the Persona 5 Royal of this series, they add so damn much for the Sky trilogy in all sides that it's hard to play them and then go back to the original and replay it. That's just how good they are.

So let's go, before someone comes here and starts throwing bones at me:

What's different from the PC version:

Visuals:
The in-game visuals are mostly the same, sprites and 3D envrioments haven't changed, but due to the screen size, there is a loss of shaprness on the sprites.
There is also a lack of black screen happening in this version as well since they fixed the screen ratio to not show the end of the screen even if the game is wide-screen.

Battle:
+ During battles they changed a lot of things;
+ Outside of battle, being caught by the genemy off-guard will give an Enemy advantage.
+ Catching the enemy from behind will give you a full turn and 1.5x exp,
+ Hitting an enemy from the front, if he stops brefly and you start a battle the same result as above happens.
+ Hitting an enemy from behind putting him into a Faint state will give you 3 turns, with the first turn being all critical or Zero arts turns and a 2.0xp multiplier. Making grinding way easier and faster.
+ Most of the UI during battle was changed to look more like the Cold Steel versions.
+ HP from monsters has a slightly changed visuals.
+ The turn order on the left side of the screen has changed and it has better icons to identify who is enemy and who is ally.
+ The icons for the changes in turn, such as more seppith or bonus item are now better to understnad.
+ By holding Trinalge, you can select your S-Craft quickly like in Cold Steel by pressing one of the D-Pad buttons.
+ By pressing Start during an S-Craft you can entirely skip it like in later games.
+ By holding X you can fasten most Arts and battle animatons by 2x.
+ The entire arts and crafts menu are changed to look more like the older games (more of that on the UI and menus below)
+ During an S-Craft the Cut-in is a full body cut-in like in Cold Steel instead of being just their eyes like Persona 3 when evoking a Persona (and like the original games).
+ Most Arts are changed in this game, making it more close to what we have on Cold Steel, while still maintaining the system of quartz combinations with different outcomes of the original game. More quartz were also added such as the Bell quartz which are much needed in a few battles.
+ Almost all of the animations for arts were changed in this version too.

Menus and UI:
+ The main menu was redesigned to look like the Cold Steel games making it absurdly easier to equip stuff on your entire party, and see their individual stats too.
+ All of the menus are more organized than before, especially the Crafts and Arts menus.
+ On battle, your crafts are separated between Normal Crafts and S-Crafts like cold Steel.
+ On battle, your arts menus is divided into four sections: Attack Arts, Support Arts, Healing Arts and Debuff Arts. Making the huge menus for arts to be way easier to navigate.
+ During cutscenes and story, there are a LOT of extra artwork that suddenly appears while a story is being narrated, what comes to mind right now is Anelace talking with the mayor of bose with her maid or Kloe talking with Lecter on the rooftop, for example. All artwork are top-notch.
+ The characters status on HP and CP below are also re-worked to feel more in sync with the rest of the game, modernized.
+ All of the maps are hand-drawn and way better to understand.
+ There are quartz that allows you to see all chests in the map while opening the full thing, making exploration way easier.


Music, voice and Dialogue sprites:

+ There are two options for music, the Original and the Evolution version, however the Original version is a DLC.
+ The Evo music is very good, on most cases it completelly replaces the originals for me, the only exceptions meaning that it doens't replace the original but is equally as good as the originals for me right now are the Libel Ark theme (the liberl ark original theme is just as awesome as the Evolution) and Phantasmagoria (the final dungeon for the third both versions are absurdly awesome).
+ The voice acting is on par to Cold Steel Voice acting, remember that I'm talking Japanese voice acting (I don't think the budget they spent on Cold Steel 1 through 4 was big enough to make all of the characters in english to sound good, and no, just because ONE character sounds good ---rean---, doesn't mean the entire VA cast did an stellar job, especially if compared to other games out there, and again, no: I don't care if this game is not a triple A game and doens't deserve or can't support a triple A budget for voice acting, the fact is: The japanese VA for those game are as good as other triple A games with good voice acting on Japan, if Falcom can spend that much money on the VA, I want something as good in english. Sadly I never let the english VA turned on, in Cold Steel I through IV for long).
+ Most Voice Actors for these games are the same ones for Cold Steel, so Olivert voice is the same. Also, the Voice Acting gives this game a lot of life, even when we add them on the original game. It makes it so much more enjoyable.
+ The spirtes are all redone, both on the Menus as on the Dialogue boxes. There are two kinds of sprites though: One for the normal dialogue and another for when skipping-fast forwarding the scenes. You see, once you start fast Forwarding the scenes the sprites will default to the initial frame of the expression, usually with the smile open or mouth closed, those sprites are the ones you can put on PC. The default state of those sprites though is a 4 - 5 frame animations of the expression with their mouth opening and closing, while the VA is being played.
+ All of the sprites are good, no matter what people say, all of them are wonderfully drawn and the animations on them is equally as good if not better sometimes.
+ When an enemy is first shown or the scene requires it, the sprite will go out of the Dialog Box to be put half body on the screen, while their mouth still animates when the VA is playing.

Videos:
Opening and Endings are newer in these versions. They are fully animated. Are they better than the original? That's up for debate, I do think that they are good though. They are full of spoilers but it's always out of context, so in a way, it's the way they have to show you what will happen in another perspective. Out of context spoiler without text for example doens't matter to me, especially since I'll forget what is in the opening untill the scene happens in-game XD.


My final thoughts: First, it was absurdly difficult to write this and remember all of the changes, because it's a LOT of changes. Most of them elevates the game to the later games, while still giving you the same story and gameplay, it makes the battles less annoying, it gives you more options, and to me, the more the merrier.

Also, the changes and ballancing they did on the game are visually good and gameplaywise, it's so good I'm having trouble to play the third chapter right now. That's just how good it is.

A certain thing still annoys me, such as your party won't get exp together like it happens on later games, you need to level them up individually but it's faster than the OG game.

You lose a little quality on sprites and evrioment for some reason however that's not much at all.

You also gain a LOT of extra content.

What do I think it misses: I think that removing the old artwork at all is silly, they could have added options to retain the old artwork AND old OST on the game for free, like Legend of Mana does with it's sound track. This way they would make most people happier because a lot of people have fond memories of the original spritework and OST.

That being said, I really think the Evolution stands out so much as their own games they could be released here on Steam as a separated game and they have the potential to sell way better than the original games. No matter how many small changes are added in these games here, it's impossible for XSEED to just throw the extra content of Evolution here without changing internal code, by, a LOT. But it's totally plausible for them to bring the evo content. Their original scrip contains 90% of the text of the EVO, and the last 10% is a few cutscenes and mostly menus and new descriptions for quartz and menus tutorials.

I doubt they will ever bring us the EVO versions, and I do see a lot of people shewt talking these games a lot, such as sayng the spriteworks are dead but I found them way better, they work wonders as animated sprites and they modernize the game to artwork closer to the Azure Zero games.

So yeah, if you guys are reading this XSEED, you could have a pretty good money on your belt, especially with Nisa bringing the Zero/Ao to PS4 and switch too. If you guys grab the Evo version with the permission of Falcom, and bring it to us with the voice acting and even if you wand add your own English VA and give both Voice actings to us (As much as I don't like the English VA from Cold Steel, there's always a chance this one could be better AND the more options we have, the better. I want more, not less).

But of course, you guys can wait untill Falcom re-releases the sky as a 3D games (their CEO already said he want to do that), and discover that since those 3D games have a different title and different IP for some reason you won't be able to release them because it's another game entirelly, even if it has the same story. Then it will be too late to release any version of the sky you guys still has the right to do.

But hey, maybe I'm totally wrong, and XSEED did lose all of their rights to release any Falcom games apart of the games they already did (meaning they can only re-release games they already have not newer ones), if that's the case, well, too bad I guess.

I do think the Evolution games are way better for people who started on Cold Steel, it's way less of a shock to go backwards on the system and getting angry at the annoying gimmicks the originals made us put through while still being the exact same game but with a ton of extra content. IT's like eating a sandwich, but with a ton more fillings of the best quality ever. It tastes better, it works better and it makes you way more satisfied in the end.


Note: There's a lot of mispelling here, I'm sure. I'm tired though, so I'll go through them eventually. If you don't like Evolution games, that's fine. Just don't advocate agaisn't them just because you think they are trash. Especially when they are way better for newer players than the original releases, so let people at least have their opinions after they tested the Evo games.

And if you can test a Evo Game on a hacked Ps Vita (because English patch needs a Jailbroken vita), be my guest. Apart from the visual of models in 3D being a little different in the garden specifically, the rest is exactly the same.

[Tario]

Glad you made this post. To be fair i dont like many changes vita brings (some can be modded onto current pc version though) and to be serious - i like that progression and feeling that gameplay is not stellar with each game having upgrade after another; being it quartz changez or some gameplay novelties

I have to say i really like standard trilogy with only voice over mods and few bugfix here and there (yea Josette buff mod is a must for me). With Sky trylogy i spent 300 hours to finish it just on normal and i would not trade that for anything else.

Also - i think that they could try to release evo as dlc for normal Sky games, dlc that is started from separate exe. Some companies did that and its okay.

About artwork - some of it is really good thats true. But... I actually dont like those changes to portraits. Im thinking that oryginal ones are way more expressive and less stellar even though they are not animated.
Menu and ui changes - like i said i like that ui is improved game after game it's not boring this way.
Openings and endings - yea they are spoilerish but the worst offender is cutting out heroes from them (where is zin, where is Agate?) also they have some inconsistencies in them too but i will not focus on that.
Music - i like Evo versions for most part. Still i like originals more since they trully feel like they were crafted for these particular scenes. With evo some of them just dont have the same impact, even if track is better alone.

[Dragon]

In the Crossbell games, I found the EVO music to be much worse versions of the original music for almost every track, and once I realized that, I never wanted to turn on the EVO music in the Crossbell games, except for on maybe one or two tracks where the original song was quite bad, and the EVO versions made it slightly more bearable (but that was the rare exceptions; in general, the EVO versions of the songs were really bad).

I'm not sure if that is different with the Sky games since I never tried the Sky games with EVO music.

What do you say about that, OP?

Do you think the EVO music in the Crossbell games is better than the original music in the Crossbell games?

[bhoqeem]

I am currently playing the Evo version of FC, SC, and Zero on my Vita. I LOVE and enjoy them so much. Now at the Final Chapter of SC. I cant wait to get to Zero. Too bad there's no english patch for Azure Evo, I have to resort to the PSP version.