« | Main | »

TGS 2013 – Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster Hands-on Preview

By Janelle | September 19, 2013 at 12:00 pm

If you clicked this link expecting a detailed play-by-play of the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster demo, sorry. In true, half-assed RPGLand fashion, I will come out and say that there isn’t much to say. It’s Final Fantasy X. In HD. The end. I played X during my crack at the demo, but I also watched someone play the X-2 demo while I waited in line, and can say that that also sure was Final Fantasy X-2, in HD. The 3 main girls were obviously more detailed than side characters and enemies, and seeing them together was a little weird, like they were from different games, but that might have been just the fact that I was a few feet further from the screen than I would have been, were I at home.

Since there isn’t much to say, that means it’s some good ol’fashioned Graphical Nitpicking Time!

The game was in HD, and it looked good. Absolutely. But there were some quirks, and odd mismatches. In the opening scenes, for example, where Tidus is signing Blitzballs for adoring fans, the character models looked good, without a ton of jaggies; the foreground object textures looked very nice; the sky texture looked freaking gorgeous, with tons of pretty stars and color blending. But the layered buildings of Zanarkand in the background, lit up in the night? Those looked chunky, pixely, and oddly flat, so that their layering really looked obvious. Little moments like that were peppered throughout the demo.

So Final Fantasy X HD does still have a few graphical flaws. But I’m willing to bet that those don’t matter for 99.99% of players at all. It doesn’t look like it was lovingly rendered for PS3 hardware exclusively, using a handcrafted team of crack graphical gurus, 7 years of development time and a black-hole budget that is slowly crushing the company with its gravity as it consumes all of the dollars. But most players will be perfectly happy to play something NOW, that doesn’t look horrid on an HD TV like a regular copy of Final Fantasy X probably does. That’s what Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster is: it’s exactly what it says on the tin.

Topics: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, Previews, Tokyo Game Show 2013