Akuma – Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo

Did you think that M. Bison from Street Fighter 2, one of the toughest bosses in any game ever up till that point, was a wuss? Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo’s Akuma is the fight for you. Accessible only by reaching the last stage quickly without any continues in Arcade Mode, Akuma will appear and waylay Bison, then replace him as the final boss. In terms of abilities, he possesses the Zankuu Hadoken (which fires two Hadoken in mid-air), a teleport for quickly closing the distance, and very quick combos that take off chunks of health. Hilariously enough, his playable version isn’t as powerful but was still considered broken enough to warrant banning from tournaments.

SPEC OPS: STEALTH PATROL – SWAPPED DIFFICULTIES

A perfect example of how the lack of post-launch patches (which is something we now take for granted) could ruin a game. Its easy, normal, and hard difficulties were dubbed private, corporal, and sergeant respectively, only in the game itself, private and sergeant were, for whatever reason, swapped. This meant that people who wanted to play the game on the easiest difficulty were unknowingly playing it on the hardest, wondering all the while just why things were as frustratingly difficult as they were. Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol wasn’t exactly the best of games as it is, and this did it no favours.

Judgment – Golden Sun

Djinns in Golden Sun were fairly straightforward but combining them wielded some devastating results. The true power move was utilizing four of the same element to bring in the heaviest of hitters. While the main difference is the amount of damage dealt by a specific element, Judgment is still perhaps the most iconic. There’s nothing quite like a winged knight with a lion shield decimating everything on the surface in spectacular yet quick fashion.

Vivi’s Past – Final Fantasy 9

Final Fantasy 9’s cast has this ineffable charisma that makes it hard to not like them. Vivi the Black Mage is one example, being relatively kind but also easy to manipulate and down on himself more often than not. However, Vivi is actually a manufactured Black Mage, created in Dali by Alexandria as a prototype soldier and accidentally separated from his ilk. Upon reaching Dali and learning the truth – that its villagers are responsible for keeping the entire Black Mage production under wraps – Vivi becomes even less self-assured. When Black Waltz 3, a winged Black Mage, arrives to recapture Garnet, the other Black Mages attempt to protect Vivi despite initially capturing him. They all fall, leading to Vivi facing Black Waltz 3 and taking the first steps to defining his purpose throughout the journey.

One of those classics will be getting a remake very soon (or, well, the first part of a remake, at any rate), when Final Fantasy 7 Remake launches on April 10, and in the lead-up to that, we (and millions of others) have been looking back on the highs and lows of the series over the years. In this feature, we’ll be taking a look at all the mainline numbered Final Fantasy games, and ranking them from worst to best.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

#16. FINAL FANTASY 14 (ORIGINAL RELEASE)

Final Fantasy 14 came at a time when the series as a whole was perhaps in the worst shape of its life. Final Fantasy 13 had been come across as something of a disappointment in 2009, and the fact that FF14 was an MMORPG meant that quite a few automatically lost interest as well. It didn’t help that when the game launched, it was utter crap (to put it mildly). Thanks to being terribly unpolished, being ridden with performance issues, featuring an interface that was a nightmare to navigate, and core interaction, exploration, and combat mechanics that were an absolute chore, the original Final Fantasy 14 was perhaps the biggest misstep this series ever made. Of course, Square Enix did manage to turn things around, to the extent that Final Fantasy 14 as we know it today is probably one of the best games in the series- but we’ll get to that soon enough.

If your wallet is still recovering from the recent Steam Autumn Sale, then good news: As leaked and then confirmed by Valve in a tweet, the Steam Winter Sale is now available. Hundreds of games have been discounted with the sale ending on January 2nd 2020.

The best part about the sale is that several games that previously weren’t discounted – like the Final Fantasy series – are now on sale. With Final Fantasy 7 Remake out in the coming months, it wouldn’t be a bad time to pick up the original game for 50 percent off. Other titles like Final Fantasy 8, both the original and Remastered version, have also been discounted.

Of course, there are plenty of other franchises that have seen discounts from BioShock and Dark Souls to Doom and Darksiders. It might be best to wait over the next few hours for the store’s traffic to calm down before making any purchases. Stay tuned for more details on other Winter sales coming up.

While Final Fantasy has always been a pretty big series, without a doubt, it was Final Fantasy 7 that helped break the series out in a way that lead to it becoming a megafranchise. That’s one of the reasons the remake of that title is so hotly anticipated. It’s influence was felt in the franchise’s future with the next game in the series, Final Fantasy 8, having its writing looked at in a very different way than the franchise had in the past.

Speaking with Weekly Famitsu, longtime Final Fantasy scenarist Kazushige Nojima said that Final Fantasy 7‘s success on the worldwide stage was far bigger than the company’s already lofty goals. Because of that, they looked at the writing and script for 8 in a much broader and international friendly way than they ever had before, particularly in how things like jokes and puns would be translated to a worldwide audience, and the type of language that could be used in Japanese that didn’t work as well in other languages (thanks to DualShockers for transcribing and translation). 

“Final Fantasy 7 was a huge success outside Japan. So right from the start of Final Fantasy 8’s development, one of our main objectives was making something that would be popular overseas. We didn’t have this in mind at all when making FF7. So I changed my way of writing. For example, in Japanese, you can make a character speak without revealing their gender. You can use that, and make a reveal later about how that character was actually a woman. This isn’t possible in English as the translation will always use either “He” or “She”. Another example would be jokes. Until then, I only thought about Japanese players, so puns were not a problem. But I heard the translators had a lot of trouble with that when translating FF7. So we tried our best to write FF8‘s scenario in a way that would be easier to translate.

While a full remake of 8 probably won’t be in the cards anytime soon (if ever), it did get a recent remaster to be introduced to a modern audience. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake is slated to come out early 2020, so we can rediscover that magic (hopefully) all over again.

2020 looks like it’s going to be an absolutely massive year for gaming, and one of the biggest games coming out next year is Final Fantasy 7 Remake. And though the endeavour to remake the classic RPG in its entirety is going to take Square Enix a while, given how the remake is split into multiple parts, that doesn’t mean we can’t dream about future entries in the series as well.

For instance, once the FF7 remake is done, will it the be time for Square Enix to give similar treatment to Final Fantasy 8 as well? Well, as per Yoshinori Kitase – who’s producing the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Remake – if it does happen, he wishes it’s handled by a younger generation of Square Enix employees. Speaking with Famitsu (via Siliconera), Kitase said he’d like Square Enix youth to “step up and do it.”

“If the youth that inherits the genes of Final Fantasy can step up and do it, then I’d like to see it made,” said Kitase. “For Final Fantasy VII Remake, the project started from my desire to make Final Fantasy VII with today’s technology while I’m still here at Square Enix. So I’d like to see it [Final Fantasy VIII Remake] done by the youth of Square Enix.”

There’s no telling when – or if – we’ll ever get a Final Fantasy 8 Remake, but that doesn’t mean the game is lost to older consoles forever. Recently, Square Enix released a remastered version of the RPG- read our review though here.

Dreams is the part game, part game maker that’s taken the creative landscape by storm. It’s been quite the feat from developer Media Molecule that’s spawned a ton of material for independent creators. A lot of levels have been recreated in the level creator, including some of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which you can see through here. But it’s not just levels that can be remade, there’s even music to be made.

Recently, Final Fantasy 8 was also remastered for various platforms. While no specific level has been made in Dreams from the classic RPG (at least not that I’m aware of), someone has recreated the Final Fantasy 8 Boss Battle theme via Reddit, which you can see below.

It really goes to show just how much creativity you can squeeze out of the game. It’s going to be something when the game gets out of early access. Sony apparently has a decade-long vision for Dreams, so there’s sure to be many creative ventures to have in the future.

I Made the Final Fantasy 8 Boss music in dreams…
byu/Techno_Wagon inPS4Dreams

With backwards compatibility on most consoles, PC being backwards compatible almost by definition, why do we even need remasters? That’s not the primary question we’re addressing in this feature, but it’s useful to keep it in mind anyways. What’s the point of rereleasing a 20 year-old Playstation 1 game on platforms that are three and a half generations ahead? Does the Final Fantasy VIII remaster live up to the high remaster bar that some games these days set?

In a word, no. But I wouldn’t term it a simple cash-grab, either. There’s a substantial amount of work that’s gone into enhancing the artwork–particularly model quality.  Would I recommend the remaster as the definitive way to play Final Fantasy VIII? No. That is a lot of back-and-forth waffling but you can see that I have complicated feelings about this particular remaster. Let’s take a look at how much has changed and how much has stayed the same since 1999.

Visual Enhancements 

The remaster enhancements make their way across to all platforms. On console, you’re talking about a fixed 1080p resolution. This is what the game renders at PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. There are no significant differences, so everything we talk about here applies equally to all platforms.

On PC, you get a bit more flexibility, with support for arbitrary resolutions. You get the option to select from FXAA and three different SMAA presets too, but the differences are subtle. While a simple resolution boost might not seem like much, it makes a world of difference when comparing the remaster to the original PS1 game.

In 1999, Final Fantasy 8 ran at an eye-watering (for the wrong reasons) 320×240. Models were blocky enough that they didn’t lose much in the way of high-frequency detail, but the pre-rendered backgrounds were clearly designed at a higher quality. Video sequences also took a hit to quality on PS1. Even though the CD format offered ample space for quality video, the 320-240 resolution output held art assets back from looking their best, even when not rendering in real-time.

Looking at the original in comparison to the remaster, it’s easy to see how much of an impact resolution has on pre-rendered aspects of the scene. Before we get into that, though, there is a caveat here, though. While the higher resolution allows more of the original artwork to come through, Square decided to implement a bicubic upscale on the background textures. While the base art assets are higher res than 320×240, they’re a far cry from the 1080p that the game renders to.

Bicubic interpolation makes the art a lot softer and takes away the jaggies plaguing the original release. But it also compromises the original game’s artistic vision. In-game artwork is often designed around the resolution limitations of the era. Modern games feature lots of high-frequency texture detail because 1080p is the lowest resolution developers assume the game will be run at. This is why eighth-gen titles tend to look a lot worse than seventh titles when running at 720p–a lot of the high-frequency information in the artwork doesn’t display properly, and the end result is unsightly shimmering.

20 years ago, art teams were working with games that outputted as low as 320×240. This had an impact on how artwork was designed. If you look at the pre-rendered backgrounds in Final Fantasy 8, you’ll see a lot of macro detailings. Incidental details like buttons, pillows, and cobblestone are all drawn with big, generous strokes.

When running at a low resolution, pixellation and color dithering actually create the illusion of additional detail. When you take artwork like that and upscale it through bicubic interpolation, it (ironically enough), loses detail. The backgrounds become so soft that some of the implied detail you’d see at low resolutions is lost, replaced by clean lines and color gradients. This isn’t to say interpolation is an entirely bad thing: there are places where addition detail nuances that were lost in the original PS1 artrwork. But overall, we see this as a slight downgrade, not an enhancement over the original.

Texture scaling issues aren’t limited to pre-rendered artwork. There’s a bigger problem at hand and that’s the game’s world map. The world map environment was rendered in full 3D in the original PS1 game. It wasn’t exactly a pretty site. But a poor draw distance, a lack of objects, and the terrible texture work were partially covered by the low resolution: when everything is such a muddy blur, pixelation actually adds some character to the output.

The Final Fantasy 8 remaster’s upscaled resolution and texture filtering make the world map look a lot cleaner. So clean, in fact, that it just looks, well empty and wrong. The higher resolution image reveals the low quality assets for what they are and the result is a horrible, blurry mess of flat-sided polygons. It looks truly awful. The original PS1 world map has a janky, pixelated charm and this is completely lost in the remaster.

Framerate is another problem area where the improvement isn’t really clear-cut. Before we proceed ahead we wanted to make a note. On the console front, we analyzed the game’s performance by taking some sample scenes from the game and running it through trdrop, an open source software. Note that this tool gives us a mere demonstration of the game’s performance, because an exact 1:1 representation of performance can only be provided by the developers themselves since they have access to vast of array of tools and profilers.  

Many older game engines have aspects of rendering tied to a fixed framerate. When you’re developing for console and expect to hit 30 FPS, no more, tying the framerate to rendering can help when optimizing. The problem arrives when you try to port the game code to platforms that could theoretically run the game at much higher framerates. Uncapping the framerate could break physics, animation, collision detection and much more. As a consequence, the Final Fantasy 8 remaster runs at a capped framerate on all platforms. We’re talking about a maximum of 30 FPS update during exploration.

This drops to 15 FPS during battle scenes. In the original Final Fantasy 8 on PS1, while battle scenes ran at a lower framerate, menu overlays ran at a full 60 FPS update. This made combat viable, even if it played out at a lower framerate. Here, both the rendering and menu selection run at 15 FPS, making combat option selections a real drag. I can see how an unlocked framerate wouldn’t have been viable but combat menus are an area where top-end PC performance is worse than PS1. That is troubling.

There’s been a lot of negativity so far. Let’s get into what the Final Fantasy 8 Remaster does right, then: the models. The Remasters re-created character models have been built from the ground up to look great on higher resolution displays. They are leaps and bounds better than the original blocky PS1 characters. Consdering that Final Fantasy 8 is a game that places great emphasis on character interactions, the boost to model quality is a big deal and it has a tangible (and positive) impact to the game’s visuals.

You just need one look at Squall’s model to see the change: individual hair strands are visible and geometry work is much more complex. We can’t emphasize enough just how much the enhanced models change up the moment-to-moment conversation experience: if you squint real hard, you can pretend you’re not playing a fifth-gen remaster, at least during certain in-game conversation sections.

The models are arguably a bit too high quality, though. This is especially true in relation to the background textures. The texture work is clearly upscaled from somewhere in the vicinity of 640×480, while model geometry renders at native resolution. Model textures are also of a significantly higher quality than the background. This creates a situation where the models don’t seem to sit well in the scene. It’s almost as if someone took Final Fantasy XII models and photoshopped them onto PS1 backgrounds. It just doesn’t feel right. We did find an interesting way to counteract this, at least partially.

Our test platform features an RTX 2070 Super paired with a Ryzen 1600. Just a few weeks ago, Nvidia released a major driver updated that introduced a new feature called Turing Integer Scaling. This allows you to use nearest-neighbor upscaling instead of interpolation. In retro games, this helps preserve pixelation where it’s part of the artistic design. I found that running Final Fantasy 8 at 640×480, with anti-aliasing off and integer scaling turned on, produced interesting results. The model poly counts are still high, but geometry’s being rendered at 640×480, much closer to the original resolution of the background textures. This allows the models to within the pre-rendered background much better. Check out how that looks.

Conclusion:

All in all, the Final Fantasy 8 remaster is a mixed bag. Pre-rendered backgrounds and cutscenes are a notch above the PS1 originals but the source artwork just isn’t high-res enough to scale well to modern display resolutions. Interpolation makes things smoother but takes away some of the original artistic intent. Framerates are a match for the PS1 original, but combat actually performs worse, with the menu overlay now pegged to the on-screen framerate.

On the flip side, this is one of the few titles where there is true platform parity when it comes to performance: Everyone gets 30 FPS in the main sections and 15 FPS during combat: no more, no less. Model quality is a tremendous improvement over the original, with models a full console generation or more improved. If the remaster’s visuals were judged on the basis of the character models alone, we’d have said its excellent. That’s not the case, unfortunately. As it stands, we see the remaster as an alternative to the 2013 re-release of the game on PC. For now, pick the remaster if you don’t have access to a PC.