Enjoying the game but the art style.....

[Holding These Alligators Down]

I'm liking the game so far but something about the art style seems a little off for me, i think i would have preferred if they had gone with 2D pixel art sprites like Symphony of the night. That game is over 20 years old and still looks beautiful.

I know this is subjective though.

[SilentCaay]

This game looks fantastic, IMO. I don't know where people's eyes are at when they say it doesn't look good. Great models, great animations, dynamic lighting and shadows, lots of great particle effects, very detailed backgrounds and the most important factor... Something that SotN could never do... 360 degree chair-sitting freedom!

I think some folks just focus too much on it not being sprite-based. The 3D looks fantastic. They also went through the effort with the 3D animations to mimic sprite-based animations so that it looks and plays the same. The art design is 9/10 in my book.

[Holding These Alligators Down]

Originally posted by SilentCaay:

This game looks fantastic, IMO. I don't know where people's eyes are at when they say it doesn't look good. Great models, great animations, dynamic lighting and shadows, lots of great particle effects, very detailed backgrounds and the most important factor... Something that SotN could never do... 360 degree chair-sitting freedom!

I think some folks just focus too much on it not being sprite-based. The 3D looks fantastic. They also went through the effort with the 3D animations to mimic sprite-based animations so that it looks and plays the same. The art design is 9/10 in my book.

I mean don't get me wrong, it looks fine and plays perfectly but i would have liked sprites.

[dustin1280]

Games looks fine, just because OP longs for sprite nostalgia does not make the art "off," it simply makes OP partial to sprites...

[Epic_Caesura]

I admit I'm not super-keen on the art either. It feels like it's trying to replicate SotN in polygons, but the end result sometimes comes off as shiny and plastic-y to me. Given the choice, I suspect I'd have preferred high-res pixel art.

However, it didn't stop me from very much enjoying the game. I'm sure the devs considered pixel art, given how throwback-y the rest of the game is. They probably decided to go with something that scales better at higher resolutions.

[SmallGespenst]

Originally posted by Holding These Alligators Down:

Originally posted by SilentCaay:

This game looks fantastic, IMO. I don't know where people's eyes are at when they say it doesn't look good. Great models, great animations, dynamic lighting and shadows, lots of great particle effects, very detailed backgrounds and the most important factor... Something that SotN could never do... 360 degree chair-sitting freedom!

I think some folks just focus too much on it not being sprite-based. The 3D looks fantastic. They also went through the effort with the 3D animations to mimic sprite-based animations so that it looks and plays the same. The art design is 9/10 in my book.

I mean don't get me wrong, it looks fine and plays perfectly but i would have liked sprites.

the sprites were a technological short cut trying to be something like this, in the past games have had to resort to those sorts of measures to make something look good because the platform/technology couldn't support the levels of complexity in polygons and animations to use properly animated models for everything. Given that technology has reached the point where not only is it possible to animate everything, but to animate things with a level of dynamic complexity that sprite art could only dream of, there's little reason to use sprites at all out side of deliberate nostalgia fetishising.

[Dead]

I simply disabled Shadows and Post-Processing ♥♥♥♥, almost look like I'm playing a PS1 game or DS game or something.

[FauxFurry]

It would be a bit tougher to give Miriam multiple costume options were the game sprite based plus it would be much less attractive to modders since they'd have to redraw everything rather than make a new model which others could also make further modifications to.

They probably could have split the difference and gone with a more cell-shaded look like an Arc Systems Works game,though.

[Crowmanhunter]

Originally posted by Epic_Caesura:

I admit I'm not super-keen on the art either. It feels like it's trying to replicate SotN in polygons, but the end result sometimes comes off as shiny and plastic-y to me. Given the choice, I suspect I'd have preferred high-res pixel art.

However, it didn't stop me from very much enjoying the game. I'm sure the devs considered pixel art, given how throwback-y the rest of the game is. They probably decided to go with something that scales better at higher resolutions.

Agreed on the plastic look. I've been trying to figure out how to convey how strange the art looks to me, and that matches it pretty well. I've lately been settling on describing it by comparing it to bad CGI, which has a simultaneously stiff and animated playdough-like look to it.

[d_valroth]

The strength of pixel art is generally in the animation. With 3D, an artist may define keyframes and try to make the overall animation look good, but a lot of stuff gets filled in by the computer in between the keyframes. With sprites, at least non-spine-based ones, every single frame was touched by hand. Every part of every animation was tweaked and refined. Also the fixed resolution is a factor. A 3D model might be fantastically detailed, but at the distance that it's viewed in game all that detail is lost. A sprite is (generally) always drawn 1:1, with every detail on full display. 3D can be done very well, but it's often kinda half-assed. (See the 3D "revival" of Adventure Island. The NES games literally look better. But see also Megaman 11, which looks fantastic.) Sprites tend to be half-assed these days, too, largely due to the influence of Flash animation, but when done well, they are still a marvelous representation of an art form.

RotN is pretty well done. They put enough care into the animations to breath life into the characters. I do love me some sprites, but RotN doesn't bother me.

[ProfessorFrog]

Give it some time. It grew on me after 30 hours, but i never thought it was ugly to begin with.

[Holding These Alligators Down]

I think it’s because the enemies don’t look like belong in the same game together, I don’t think the art style is consistent. It isn’t bad but I don’t love it.

[Cirno Imouto]

The art-style is "fine", meaning its ok. What sucks is the lack of cohesion when it comes to level design, which makes everything feel off. Like in one second, you are in an underground aqueduct, the next in a desert temple, then again in the aqueduct and directly after that : inside a volcano. You get tonal whiplash, especially with how soft the Forbidden Underground Waterway sounds and how harsh Cursed Orphan sounds

[SilentCaay]

Originally posted by Cirno Imouto:

The art-style is "fine", meaning its ok. What sucks is the lack of cohesion when it comes to level design, which makes everything feel off. Like in one second, you are in an underground aqueduct, the next in a desert temple, then again in the aqueduct and directly after that : inside a volcano. You get tonal whiplash, especially with how soft the Forbidden Underground Waterway sounds and how harsh Cursed Orphan sounds

That was entirely on purpose. Lore-wise, the demon castle merged with the Alchemists' facilities which caused the abnormalities. Johannas mentions it at one point. And design-wise, it just means that they have a lot more freedom to make each area look unique. I thought the Oriental Sorcery Lab was particularly interesting since it's a forest area at the top of a tower.

Igavanias were always designed with each area being it's own isolated "biome". Bloodstained simply pushes the envelope a little further in that regard.