{"id":465,"date":"2021-06-26T14:55:32","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T14:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=465"},"modified":"2021-06-26T14:55:32","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T14:55:32","slug":"final-fantasy-viii-remastered-pc-technical-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=465","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy VIII Remastered \u2013 PC technical review"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

For pretty much as long as I\u2019ve been writing about games, I\u2019ve wanted to write a massive critique of Final Fantasy VIII<\/i>. It\u2019s probably the single most divisive game in the series, and with some of the weirdest mechanics since Final Fantasy II<\/i> (the NES one, not the American release of Final Fantasy IV<\/i>). And, hell, one of the strangest and most surreal plots of the series too.<\/p>\n

It was the first Final Fantasy<\/i> for many; for some, it\u2019s certainly their favorite. For me, it\u2019s a mish-mash of clever and fascinating ideas, implemented with all the skill and finesse of a toddler with a jackhammer \u2013 and the result is just as broken as that implies.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t the sprawling, deep-diving critique of Final Fantasy VIII<\/i> I\u2019d love to write, so my opinions on the game itself don\u2019t matter a great deal. This is a look at the brand new Final Fantasy VIII Remastered<\/i>: a shinier, better version of the game.<\/p>\n

Or that\u2019s the theory, at least.<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

Even Squall can\u2019t remain stoic with that wound.<\/p>\n

The specs<\/b><\/h2>\n

Minimum:<\/b><\/p>\n

Processor: AMD A-Series 2.2GHz \/ Intel Core i3 2.2GHz
\nMemory: 2 GB RAM
\nGraphics: AMD Radeon R7 240 \/ Nvidia GeForce GT 730<\/p>\n

Recommended:<\/b><\/p>\n

Processor: AMD A8-Series 3.1GHz \/ Intel Core i5 2.8GHz
\nMemory: 4 GB RAM
\nGraphics: AMD Radeon RX 470 \/ Nvidia GeForce GTX 960<\/p>\n

Writer\u2019s System:<\/b><\/p>\n

Processor: Intel Core i7-3820 3.6GHz
\nMemory: 16 GB RAM
\nGraphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

Looking at those specs, Final Fantasy VIII<\/i> Remastered<\/i> should run on basically anything that can still be called a gaming machine. Considering the target frame rates that\u2019s probably true, but not without caveats.<\/p>\n

By \u201ctarget frame rates\u201d I mean that Remastered<\/i> runs at exactly the same frame rates as the original did. General wandering is locked to 30 FPS, while both FMVs and combat are stuck at 15 FPS. This isn\u2019t something I expected to change \u2014 there\u2019s a lot synced to the frame rate, so I imagine it would\u2019ve taken a hell of a lot of reworking \u2014 but it\u2019s also probably the one thing I wanted<\/i> to change. While the FMVs are built for it and work around it just fine, (That intro is still a thing of beauty.) 15 FPS combat is more than a little jarring.<\/p>\n

And by \u201ccaveats,\u201d I mean that my computer had difficulty keeping those frame rates constant at times. We\u2019ll get into that in a moment, when we examine the options.<\/p>\n

The options<\/b><\/h2>\n

There are actually two sets of options in Final Fantasy VIII Remastered<\/i>, and they conflict slightly. There are the ones in the launcher and the ones in the game itself.<\/p>\n

\"Ff8\"Ff8<\/p>\n

As you can see, the launcher gives you a maximum resolution of 1920\u00d71080. The in-game options, on the other hand, gave me the option of going up to 2560\u00d71440. I\u2019m not sure whether even higher resolutions are supported or if it is limited to what my monitor can handle, but that\u2019s all I\u2019ve got. There are also anti-aliasing controls, but in terms of graphical options that\u2019s about your limit.<\/p>\n

\"Final \"Final\"Final<\/p>\n

Note that Final Fantasy VIII<\/i> only runs in 4:3, so at any other aspect ratio you\u2019re going to have giant black borders. Again, a mild shame considering a lot of the screens pan horizontally or vertically, but this probably would\u2019ve been a giant pain in the ass to code around and could\u2019ve caused problems with event flags. You only really need to look at the high resolution mods for games like Fallout 2<\/i> to see that happen. Again \u2014 a shame, but not unexpected.<\/p>\n

So, frame rate. At 1920\u00d71080, it ran fine. When I decided to up it to 2560\u00d71440 Borderless Windowed\u2026 it sometimes didn\u2019t. The first scene I tried this in \u2013 the initial gathering in the Balamb Garden classroom \u2013 instantly saw frame rate drop from 30 FPS down to anything between 10 and 20. Later scenes didn\u2019t have this issue, but it still happened from time to time.<\/p>\n

The graphics<\/b><\/h2>\n

And now, something that\u2019ll prove to be as divisive as the game itself: the graphical upgrades. Honestly, most of the upgrades here are to the major characters, and they do look good. This is part of the problem.<\/p>\n

See, nothing else has really been changed, and shiny new characters on pre-rendered backgrounds designed for resolutions close to 640\u00d7480 really<\/i> stand out. And not in the sense of \u201cThey look outstanding,\u201d but rather \u201cThey look very out of place.\u201d It doesn\u2019t help that there\u2019s almost certainly some smoothing work going on here too.<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

Comparison time! One of these has anti-aliasing off. Can you tell which one?<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

A screenshot from the Remastered<\/em> version.<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

And one from the original release.<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

Remastered.<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

Old.<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

Remastered.<\/p>\n

\"Final<\/p>\n

Old.<\/p>\n

\"Comparison6<\/p>\n

Remastered.<\/p>\n

\"Comparison6<\/p>\n

Old.<\/p>\n

\"Comparison4<\/p>\n

The world map is ugly as sin in both versions.<\/p>\n

\"Comparison4<\/p>\n

No, really.<\/p>\n

This can be mitigated by playing Final Fantasy VIII<\/i> at a lower resolution, but that\u2019s somewhat missing the point. It also doesn\u2019t fix everything. The world map, for instance, is a horrible blurry mess of eye pain no matter what. On the plus side, the menus generally look lovely as they\u2019ve been redone nicely.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a graphical thing, but another plus side is that we actually have the proper music now. No more MIDI-quality stuff: This is the real soundtrack.<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered<\/em>, not so fantastic?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Which leaves us with the other bits and pieces. Unless I\u2019ve gone blind (blame the world map), we\u2019re missing the classic visuals mode from the original release, which basically turned off all the background smoothing and so on.<\/p>\n

Sure to annoy more people, we\u2019re also missing Chocobo World, the little PocketStation minigame that could give you items. This was previously included in the PC release, but here it\u2019s gone, with the items it could grant you now available via the Angelo Search command.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For the record, there are times when it looks bloody gorgeous, regardless of the backgrounds.<\/p>\n

In its place, we have some cheats \u2014 or quality-of-life improvements, if you like. Battle Assist gives you maxed out ATB and HP and lets you trigger Limit Breaks at any time, making battles a cakewalk. No Encounters disables all random encounters, which is actually kind of a boon<\/i> because leveling up in Final Fantasy VIII<\/i> can be a bad thing.<\/p>\n

Finally and most usefully, there\u2019s 3x Speed, which triples the speed of the game. This includes things like screen transition loading times, world map walking speed, and the incredibly<\/i> lengthy summoning times, so I\u2019m vastly in favor of this option.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m still left with incredibly mixed opinions on Final Fantasy VIII Remastered<\/i>. As with so many \u201cremasters,\u201d it\u2019s a case of several steps forward, several steps backwards. The speed boost is very welcome, the new models look nice, and we\u2019ve got the good version of the soundtrack. But the graphical improvements look very out of place next to the old-school stuff, some elements have been excised, and the frame rate drops on higher resolutions are more than a little worrying. All of this means it\u2019s hard to say this is in any way the \u201cdefinitive\u201d version of Final Fantasy VIII<\/i>, and regardless of my feelings on the game itself, that\u2019s a crying shame.<\/p>\n

But hey, Escape brings up a menu and doesn\u2019t instantly quit to desktop. We\u2019re staying consistent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For pretty much as long as I\u2019ve been writing about games, I\u2019ve wanted to write a massive critique of Final Fantasy VIII. It\u2019s probably the single most divisive game in the series, and with some of the weirdest mechanics since Final Fantasy II (the NES one, not the American release of Final Fantasy IV). And, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[641,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}