Thread 717168836

Anon-kun... for your test exam you will make an essay on 2D-HD games.

>>717168836 (OP)
>square attempting to make Napishtim era Ys

>>717168836 (OP)
I'll start.
2D-HD originally was a novelty, a breath of fresh air. But during the near decade of it's existence it has not evolved. Compare the oldest and newest 2D-HD game and they look identical!

>>717168836 (OP)
octopath traveler was cool but then everyone caught on and I hate it now

>>717168974
Why do graphics need to constantly evolve
Every other thread I see some boomer cry that the chase for higher fidelity graphics to pander to pajeets killed gaming

>>717169814
>Why do graphics need to constantly evolve
ARTISTICALLY VARY
NOT FUCKING GRAPHICS YOU DIMWIT!
DO DIFFERENT FUCKING STYLES

>>717168836 (OP)

The houses and shit aren't even pixelized like in octopath.

>>717168919
>square attempting to make aLttP
ftfy

>>717170097
anon doesn't know what the mana series is

>>717168974
>>717169814
we're not necessarily talking about graphics, we're talking about ART STYLE.

Chrono Trigger did not look like Breath of Fire Iv.
Final Fantasy 6 did not look like Grandia.
Super Mario RPG did not look like Xenogears.
Suikoden did not look like Wild Arms.

These were all pixel-art JRPGs that came out within 5 years of eachother with extremely distinct artstyles.

All HD-2D games to come out of Square Enix look the fucking same. The same faux-SNES era Final Fantasy spritework combined with the same hand-drawn illustrator drawing in the same artstyle. Without context they ALL look like the same game, or at least, the same series of games.

>>717168836 (OP)
>3D enviroment with 2D sprites

>3D is a blurry mess
>2D sprites are SNES quality
>UI is not even in pixel art
Garbage. I hate all games that do this shit.

>>717168836 (OP)
I agree with some other anon. This effect is so fatiguing to see.
I'm playing triangle strategy right now and the game would definitely have been better if they just went back to fftactics graphical aesthetics.

The biggest problem I have with these games is the fucking blurring and bloom but apparently that can easily be turned off considering there's tons of mods on rom/emulation sites that remove shit like bloom, blurs, reflections, shiny surfaces etc from these games.

>>717169890
Why does it need to look different after 2 games
FPS games have looked the same for the past 2 decades and you still eat that shit up

>>717168836 (OP)
why are the characters so blurry
it's like having the worst of both worlds

idk i think it looks fine

>try to tilt-shift
>fail horribly

>>717169890
Mario games have looked the same since the wii, and they look infinitely worse than what square is doing.
If something works, and is appealing to the majority of the playerbase, then it doesn't need to change just because lil anon is bored.

>>717168836 (OP)
They're lazy as fuck and lack any artistic merit. They're only a notch above AI slop.

>>717170713
you may think that but it doesn't look fine at all, perchance

>>717170824
I don't think they're even trying to tilt-shift considering how fucking high the fov is on the camera.

>>717170615
Are you being fucking stupid on purpose, you dense retard? JRPGs and FPSes are a completely different genre of games from completely different regions of the world and completely different design philosophies.

One of the things that defined JRPGs and made JRPGs a powerhouse in the 1990s especially was the artistry. That's what JRPGs generally had over every other mainstream game genre at the time. Every major/relevant JRPG had a unique artstyle that made it instantly recognizable, or distinct enough to be associated with it's own thing.

This HD-2D trend to come from Square is a slap towards one of the most beloved aspects of the old-school JRPGs it's supposed to be emulating. It was cool when Octopath Traveler did it, I guess, since it was unique. And it's forgivable that continuous Octopath Traveler sequels look like that since it's the same series. In Octopath's situation, people are getting tired of the artstyle because there's no clear EVOLUTION in artstyle; These games look the same. Meanwhile Final Fantasy 1 through 6 had a clear evolution in artstyle that still stayed true to the series' identity.

It became unforgiveable when Square Enix started putting out HD-2D games that aren't a part of the Octopath Traveler series but still uses the same fucking faux-Final Fantasy artstyle and environmental design.
The Dragon Quest HD-2D remake is unforgivable. This new Adventures of Elliot just registers as more unoriginal HD-2D slop.

>>717168836 (OP)
HD2D is great. But Squeenix is overusing it. It should've stayed the signature artstyle of Team Asano. There's no reason Octopath should have its unique artstyle become generic.

For me it's Actraiser Renaissance

I dunno how square enix hasn't gone under since I'm not buying any of their games

>>717168836 (OP)
I have hated the 2DHD meme some square first started shitting it out

HD-2D is a complete slap in the face to everything that made JRPGs of the SNES and PSX era unique and varied.
It's the McDonalds of JRPGs and the fact that Square and fanboys try to sell it as a "love letter" is insulting.

>>717170962
>its gotta be something completely different every time because im autistic and associate jrpgs with artstyle innovation
there are more jrpgs that look like ff3 than stars in the universe

>>717171562
Incredible reading comprehension, as expected from the kind of subhuman who eats up HD-2D.

What do you think "major/relevant" means?

HD-2D is the complete destruction of the soul 2D JRPGs once had.

>>717171352
Wrong. The PSX faux-3D era of JRPGs is dogshit. The only games worth even mentioning from that era are Xenogears, FF7, and FF9. And even then, they all have their flaws. The art style hasn't aged well at all, but it's the least of Chrono Cross's and FF8's problems.

HD2D is calling back to the good ol' days of SNES era RPGs. A better era of RPGs. Chrono Trigger > Chrono Cross and FF4/5/6 > FF7/8/9. Not to mention the best of all Square Enix games in the 90s, Dragon Quest V

>>717172093
Look man, I understand that you love eating garbage but we're specifically talking about artstyles, not the quality of the game itself.
Everybody with a brain understands that Chrono Cross is utter dogshit in almost all regards besides it's style and soundtrack.
It's still one of the most beautiful JRPGs ever made.

>>717172093
If HD2D JRPGs were calling back to the good ol' days of SNES era RPGs, they'd actually diversify in artstyles like SNES era RPGs did.

>>717173013
There's about as much difference between Octopath and Elliot the Millennial as between Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger.

>>717172207
I wouldn't agree with that in the slightest. I've always thought Chrono Cross looked atrocious, but I never played it until the 2010s. The soundtrack is good. Not really my favorite JRPG soundtrack, I'd even consider both Octopath games to have a superior soundtrack, but the artstyle has always been ugly.

PSX era RPGs look like shit. Most early 3D things do. I don't get the nostalgia for them. It has to just be rose colored glasses from 80s kids.

>>717168836 (OP)
I've titled my essay "Team Asano's Dogshit Game Design Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Slop"

>>717173647
Asano's game design is great.

>>717168836 (OP)
the worst thing about this is that pixels don't have the same consistent size across different sprites

>>717173852
That's part of the appeal. 2D-HD games aren't constrained by system limitations so they can afford to play around with different pixel sizes, color palettes, and visual effects that wouldn't be possible on SNES hardware. It's like when musicians play around with unique time signatures or filmmakers play around with different FPS.

My essay is titled "In like 15 years of playing vidya almost every day, I realise only now I've never actually played a single 2D-HD game"
It's a postmodernist essay with a strong introduction that focuses mostly on the author's own deviant fetishes, followed by a word-salad of roughly 30k characters that keeps avoiding the central theme and contains no overall meaning nor argument
I'll collect my diploma on my way out

>>717174025
ye and it's mostly jarring
it's like having n64 models together with current gen stuff : it's a mess
I guess what you're describing can theoretically work but this really doesn't

>>717172093
>Not to mention the best of all Square Enix games in the 90s, Dragon Quest V
It's a shitty borderline walking sim.

>2D HD
"""""2D""""""
Only the characters are sprites, everything else is basic 3D models that look heavily out of place

>>717168836 (OP)
The use of blurring at the top and bottom of the screen is atrocious. They want to simulate a diorama, but they don't even want to commit to actually simulating the characteristics of a "big" camera. They just use a standard camera and blur the entire top and bottom of the screen without taking into account the actual distance of the objects from the lens.

>>717174219
I don't think that comparison works in the slightest. The differing pixel size isn't comparable in the slightest to having SM64 Mario jumping around in the world of E33.

Whether it "works" or not is a complicated question since the style is beloved by just as many people as it is hated by.

>>717174608
>I don't think that comparison works in the slightest
I disagree

>>717174737
Looks good to me

>>717168836 (OP)
I think 2D-HD games look gay and Square Enic is a shitty company that should burn to the ground. Perchance

>>717172207
Chrono Cross being "beautiful" is doing a lot of heavy lifting considering it's drenched in that muddy, pre-rendered PSX haze where everything looks like melted crayons. Yeah, the soundtrack slaps, no one's arguing that-Mitsuda cooked-but the visuals? They're like someone tried to paint a tropical dreamscape with vaseline on the lens. Comparing that to the striking clarity and visual coherence of HD-2D is a mismatch, even if you're not in love with the modern style. You don't need nostalgia goggles, you need an entire nostalgia visor to call that mess "beautiful."

>>717171137
because I still buy some of them

>>717170991
I really want to play 2 again but there's so many games I haven't played yet.

My essay is that I like them thank you for reading :)