The GBA was certainly capable of decent music, but developers did seem to have to make the choice between graphics and sound more often than not. See also, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (great soundtrack, but ugly) and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (looks pretty good, but terrible soundtrack). Go figure.

If you’re able to run the PC version from Steam, it’s worth pointing out that version is identical, content-wise, to the GBA version (and actually superior to it in terms of musical quality). The biggest problem is that the sprites have been put through that godawful bilinear filter than Square Enix loves so much, so…

Bravely Default was a more or less direct successor to the DS game Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, which had the same aesthetic, and similar job system and battle system (minus the brave/default concept). The team that made FF:4HL, and later made the two Bravely games, had not worked on the classic franchise,…

Ah, memories. Way back when, I compiled a guide to blue magic in the game. It’s probably still out there on GameFAQs somewhere, although since it was based on the RPGe fan translation script, it’s probably not particularly useful to anyone playing the more recent official translations.

The only thing I hold against the GBA release of the game (Final Fantasy V Advance) is that the soundtrack suffered for the conversion. Same problem with Final Fantasy VI Advance, actually.

Amen. I’ve been a fan of the series since the NES days. Final Fantasy V is my third favorite. Final Fantasy VIII is my first.

Just to clarify something: the mobile/PC release of the game is identical to Final Fantasy V Advance, both mechanically and in terms of content. It has the two new job classes, and the bonus dungeon. The only real difference is the graphical “upgrade,” which are... unfortunate, I’ll agree, but, on the other hand,…

I kind of enjoy the PS1 version in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way. Mainly due to the translation. The game script isn’t the worst thing Square ever produced (though it is dry and awkward in points, it’s still better than Final Fantasy Tactics and probably on par with Final Fantasy II for the SNES and Final Fantasy…

I disagree. There’s definitely a marketing angle to Snoopy’s increased prominence in later strips, but I think he’s actually a more effective character for getting at some of the themes that Schulz tackled in Peanuts. All of Peanuts’s characters are deeply, almost existentially dissatisfied with their lot in life, and…

FFI: (Based on NES version, not remakes)
1) Add save points to dungeons

-Patch to wake up Yang and replace Edge as the fifth final party member

I love VIII. It’s up there with III (the Famicom original, not the travesty of a 3D remake) and Tactics as one of my favorites in the franchise. But, yeah, the orphanage scene was terrible. To make it worse, it felt like an afterthought. The overall plot doesn’t require it, and, in fact, it complicates things…

I don’t hate FFXIII as much as everyone else seems to do. I actually find the battle system interesting, even if it took me quite a ways into the game to really get a hang of it. And the characters aren’t completely without merit: even if some of them start to grate on my nerves after a while, at least they all have a…

It’s a combination of technical incompatibilities and Sony’s corporate culture. The PS4 uses a proprietary texture and audio format. The texture format used by the other versions of Fallout 4 purportedly works on the PS4, but at a significant performance hit, and the audio won’t work at all. Since Sony’s formats…

It may not improve anyone’s opinion of the game, but the localization of Castlevania 2 is perfectly fine. It wasn’t mistranslated at all. All that talk about looking in to the death star or whatever aren’t mangled clues that made more sense in the original Japanese. They’re direct translations of deliberate red…

While I’d rather see it on the 3DS, I’m tentatively interested so long as Square Enix builds in proper Bluetooth controller support. Their recent games have been improving, but their earlier releases didn’t have it and are nigh unplayable for me.

There’s a bit of a... history between Bethesda and the developers of Skywind (and Morroblivion before it) that may complicate it ever coming to consoles. Also, given the size of the project, it may not even fit within the size restrictions imposed by the consoles (2 GB for XB1, 900 MB for PS4). Honestly, I wouldn’t…

I believe that mod is a simple retexture. At most, it’s a new texture and a new model. The point is, it doesn’t include an actual plugin file. The model and texture format is mostly unchanged for the special edition of the game: it’s only the plugins that need to be modified to work in the new version. Most, if not…

There’s a technical side to it as well. I’m not an expert, but, as I understand it, Sony uses a proprietary format for both textures and audio files that they’re not willing to open up for Bethesda to include with their modding tools for Skyrim. You can use standard formats for textures, at a significant performance…

The game really doesn’t have any reliable way to tell whether or not the mod you’re using is a cheat or just a bug fix, so I understand why Bethesda/Microsoft/Sony would err on the side of keeping their achievement/trophy system “clean,” so to speak. Really, sometimes it’s not even clear to a human observer what the…