Final Fantasy X HD Remaster (Vita) out now! Impressions/genuine screenshots

FFXHD/FFX-2HD are now out in Japan. I opted for the Vita version. I've played around 4 hours. Just made my way through the jungle that separates Kilika from the the nearby shrine.

I was a little worried about the Vita version as SE has been very tight lipped about it (at times making us even question if it still existed). After playing for a few hours I can't say that it is perfect, but what I've played shows mostly good news; this is a competent higher resolution conversation of the PS2 game with some sensible design choices having been made along the way and just a few niggling issues.

I'm going to show off some screen from the game along with some interesting points I noticed whilst playing (click to expand).

Launcher Menu

This is the first thing you see upon starting FFXHD: the dedicated launcher menu from which you can select FFXHD, The Eternal Calm bonus goodies and other bonus extras. You can also check your game saves from here without booting up the game itself. There is no option to get back into the launcher from the game but you can jump back at any time by pressing L+R+Start.

CG Screenshots
These are captured directly from the Vita and should give you some idea of what the CG looks like. There doesn't seem to be any noticeable compression/upscaling artifacts from what I can tell.

What is also noteworthy is that transition between in-game and CG is really smooth (as is CG playback). There is little in the way of awkward pauses and unlike the PS2 you won't hear your disk drive whirring into action to telegraph a CG sequence.

Tidus Crying Face

Auron pose

Auron pose close-up

Dark Colours Test

Light Colours Test

GRAPHICS (FIDELITY)
The quality of the conversion here is better than that of the MGS HD Collection. Characters exhibit fewer jaggies upon closer examination and even scenes that zoom out on architecture hold up quite well.

Zanarkand Skyscape

The character models in this HD remaster version also exhibit extra details not present in the PS2 version such as the leather effect on Tidus's not-quite-overalls. These effects are often cut from Vita ports (the leather/silk textures in games like Hatsune Miku/DOA5+) but are present and well here.

Smell that leather.

The game also appears not to have taken any shortcuts with shadows. All characters (including NPCs) exhibit correctly shaped shadows. There is no pixelation or flickering readily apparent in the shadows either.

Blitzball's cast shadows :CONFIRMED

The same goes for enemies big and small.

 However some of the graphical limitations from the PS2 version are also apparent here. In the PS2 version the VFX layer used for item/spell effects was the same one used for some of the environmental effects. Long story short sometimes environmental effects disappear for a split second whilst the item/spell effect animates. So far I've only noticed this in underwater segments of the game where the water shimmer will disappear for a split second and making the scene look flat and less convincing for little while.

Also almost none of the objects in the world that look like they should be light sources actually illuminate characters as they pass-by (though baked environmental shadows shade correctly). I can't remember if this was the case with the PS2 version or not (and I don't know if the PS3 version includes this). But something to keep in mind.

Generally speaking the game looks clean, sharp and colourful.
With the exception perhaps of one in-game location I've taken to calling 'Shimmering Hill':

Shimmering Hill

The lack of texture filtering on this scene in the PS2 version made it easily the ugliest spot in the entire game. The shimmering effect is still in the Vita HD version but the smaller screen makes it a little harder to make out.

The pre-rendered sequences in the game also look a little flat (though that was always the case) and not 100% pin-sharp but they don't appear to be a blurry mess either.

Don't go outdoors...it be three-dimensional out there:

Edit:  Graphics Consistency

[Having now completed the game] Other things that have bothered me is that the presentation in the game is inconsistent.  In the original FFX there were 3 types of character models (field, battle, cutscene), whereas in the HD version there are only 2 (field/battle and cutscene).  

The problem is the game mixes and matches them; sometimes you will have one frame in a cutscene with character models of two different qualities standing right next to each other.  In another scene, hilariously enough, I found that the game would alternate back and forth between low-poly fish-eyes Rikku and high-poly green eyes Rikku everytime the camera switched back to her...well, to its credit the game is impressive when it comes to loading different character models in and out but a bit of consistency would be nice here.

Performance

MGSHD was an interesting collection in that it improved the graphics and framerate but the loading times actually increased over the original game (which was near load-less).

FFXHD performs well on the Vita for the most part. The game maintains a solid 30 FPS almost all the time and when coupled with the smooth animations and pretty colours it looks great in motion...99% of the time.

Occasionally the game will hiccup just for a split second whilst it does something new. Sometimes it will be the way 'screen-crack' animation before battles appears to be a little rougher than normal. Once I got a really minor snag when I attempted to summon Valefore. There really isn't any rhyme or reason to it; it happened once under conditions x and I simply couldn't replicate it.

The frame-rate is mostly a smooth 30 but in one scene where there were a lot of NPCs on screen (the scene where Yuna does her first summoning) the game chugged, only to go right back again to a smooth 30 during a close-angle when fewer NPCs were around (and then back to chugging again for a second when it returned to a wide-angle with all the NPCs). I've not seen that happen in any other scene so far and nothing like that during exploration or battle. If you are worried about it being a Jak Trilogy all over again though you can put your fears to rest.

edit: After the first four hours of the game there are actually many sequences where the framerate drops into the 20s. It happens mostly when your entire party plus a few NPCs are all gathered in one place (which in the story is every other scene).  Revisiting the choppy areas in the end-game (when there are fewer NPCs) was silky smooth though.  When there are fewer characters around (highways, battle) the framerate is mostly solid with the exception of when you use the Good Luck move.

The load times are also universally better than the PS2 version (battle-to-field/indoor-to-outdoor/cutscene-game) and actually some of the snappiest loading I've seen on the system. Even loading and saving save games is pretty much instant. There is just...one minor grievance. This thing:

The thing I was am grieving over

This loading screen animation is new to this version of FFX. This animation will appear seemingly at random during scene transitions or when moving between places (never during the field/battle transition). Some of the loads are so fast you'll only see this thing flash up for a split-second and then you are loaded into the next part...making you doubt if you saw it at all. At other times the animating icon will appear during the entirety of the load and at other times it simply won't appear at all and you'll get a graceful black fade-out instead. You can sometimes even pass back and forth between the same doorway having it only appear sometimes but not at others. It is really random. Given how fast the load times are I am not sure why they just didn't stick to a simple (and consistent) fade to black.

Sound

FFXHD is based on the International version of FFX (complete with the advanced sphere grid) but has had the Japanese voices added back in. There is no option to change the text or voice language for the JP release of FFXHD. The game is around 3600MB so maybe they felt they couldn't cram in dual-audio. That also means the game has the same uneven presentation as the original, where NPCs sometimes voice but sometimes don't. It would have been nice to see NPCs get voices added at the very least.

The game also has a reworked soundtrack (with no option for the original) which uses real instruments. It's a mixed bunch but they tend to evoke the right emotions. Parts of the game that didn't hit me the first time I played them (the gunner begging Yuna to allow him to protect Kilika) definitely got me this time around.

There are no options to alter the balance between SE/BGM/Voice but the game seems to have done a good job of balancing them anyway.

Sound effect quality is also mostly good. Even in stereo through headphones it is possible to hear from which direction the deep humming of the podiums in the 'trials' is coming from. Attacks hits such as Tidus's sword attack sounds as convincingly slicey as Yuna's staff swing sounds whimpy. The only sound effect that sounds odd to me so far is the sound of picking up spheres during trials; they make a sound that is a little too high pitched and I detected a bit of cracking.

There is one pretty big fault with the sound though; lip synching. It appears the voice audio and lip synching are ever so slightly out of sync (maybe by a 1/5 of a second). It's pretty distracting. This isn't the first game I've experienced this either (Time Travellers) but given no one else has said anything so I'm inclined to believe this is a quirk of playing the game off a memory card (IIRC Vita memory cards read/write is slower than a Vita game card). I hope that a patch is released for this. It does make me worry a bit about the digital only FFX-2HD Vita release for the English speaking markets though. Get it sorted SE!

Gameplay

It's mostly the same...well, mostly. So it is a shame that there is no option to disable or skip tutorials (come to think of it you can't skip cutscenes either. Don't worry, you'll beat Yunalesca first time...probably).

The biggest change is the 'swipe menu'. It hides off the left side of the screen. Swipe the touch screen right and you pull it out. Swipe left and it slides back out of view.

Swipe Menu

You can summon this menu in the field:

When used in the field you get two options which allow you to insta-heal your entire party in an automated way and so removing the bureaucracy of post-battle healing. You can select to heal using:

1. Healing magic: The game attempts to heal everyone whilst trying to keep from wasting MP.

2. Items: the game prioritises using low quality healing items (potions over hi-potions for example).

After you tap the icon you get a text box in the middle of the screen saying who did the healing (and the MP cost to them) or the items used.

You can also summon this menu mid-battle (screen below) but here it does something different; it lets you toggle between long/short summon animations mid-battle (no skip option unfortunately):

Battle UI

My favourite part of this conversion has to be the battle UI. Many Vita games simply shrink down the UIs of their console counterparts 1:1 with no regard for legibility. FFXHD Vita does not make this mistake. The Vita game has a jumbo-sized UI that makes everything easily readable without cluttering things too much.

The only gripe I have with the battle UI is that there is a split-second period between moving the cursor between menu items that makes it harder to quickly move through lists. This is only in the battle UI and nowhere else (and doesn't appear to be caused by frame issues). Weird. At the moment it isn't a big deal as I don't have many things to choose from but later on in the game it could be a pain.

Edit: After completing the game I found that because I relied on the memory cursor this wasn't a big a deal as I thought it might be.

The rest of the game UI is not quite as jumbo sized. But given that FFX is not text heavy it isn't as big a deal as it could have been (and the UI isn't super tiny either). You can see the examples of the UI here:

Party Menu

Pressing Triangle calls/dismisses the party menu smoothly. It doesn't feel like the game is doing something heavy to get the menu to open at all. It's strange that this particular part of the UI is so plucky when the battle UI isn't.

Sphere Grid

Sphere Grid zoomed-out

Well, those are my impressions so far. If SE can get the lip-synch issue sorted and give us an option to banish the loading-animation I'd say this would be a pretty close to perfect.

Digital Importing: Mandatory game installs a game changer?

I don’t celebrate Christmas, but if I am sure many of you who did got some boxed games as presents.  We love displaying our possessions and having something tangible to claim ownership of.  This goes double for avid importers because just having a game that won’t be out in other parts of the world makes you the envy of those around you (and in my humble opinion, superior to them in almost every way).  You can’t do unboxing porn of a digital game after all.  And owning something marked with scrawling foreign characters just looks cool.

But I have to wonder if, going forward, opting for digital might not become a more popular choice for importers.  I know many people who choose digital as their preferred way to get access to Japanese games on the Vita.  This is thanks in part to the system and network not locking people out from accessing Japanese content.   In addition importers can get access to the games they want on the day of release rather than waiting up to a week or having to contend with pricey mark-ups from dedicated import resellers. 

There are increasingly fewer downsides to importing digitally as the services become more robust; during the PSP days and the inception of PSN many titles never made it to digital; some titles like Crisis Core and Kingdom Hearts are still conspicuously absent.  This is still the case with PS3 games today.  However Sony has taken efforts to ensure that games for the Vita (and PS4 going forward) all get digital counterparts.  Digital versions of games are also coming packed with their own pre-order goodies (FFXHD coming with FFXIII-3 DLC for example) meaning that you don’t miss out as much by not going for a boxed copy or retail; retail being problematic when your closest Yodabashi Camera is an ocean away.  Pricing for games on the JPN PSN has also been quite fair with prices being around 1000 yen lower for digital copies and cheaper in real terms (cheaper than retail).

I’d say the biggest hurdle that puts importers off digital is the poor cost:value ratio for Vita memory cards (read: they are insanely overpriced) and the relatively small size of many PS3 HDDs.  It’s true; storage space is a concern for digital importers who don’t want to deal with the inconvenience of moving content onto their computers or PS3s.  But this got me thinking…given that the PS4 requires all games to be fully installed (including disk based games) doesn’t that make space a non-factor in choosing whether you import physically or digitally?  That 40GB digital game sitting on your HDD is ultimately going to take up the same amount space as the physical version is after it finishes impressing the shape of its install arse-print into the HDD upholstery.  Some people might have capped download limits which make going digital impractical given that PS4 games are in the region of the tens of gigabytes.  But assuming you don’t does this impact your choice to choose digital for importing?

I look forward to the release of Ryuu ga Gotoku Ishin! for the PS4 as right now there isn’t a whole lot to play for the system.  It is going to be the first big Japanese PS4 release and one that looks like it will be a lot of fun going by the trailers.   This I think would mark the first time the RGG series has had a digital release on a home console (given that a digital release is all but a foregone conclusion).

Sure, I don’t get resale value but I’d imagine for many importers selling their games on isn’t something they ever had in mind.  And for those collection enthusiasts who love to display their games physical might still be their preferred choice.  For many though, between the convenience of downloading, the increasingly wider availability of digital games and the fact that storage is not going to be a consideration, they might well start opting for digital importing.

At least, for home console releases I know I will.

Now…if we can only see about getting Sony to work on allowing us to use Paypal to pay off our purchases on the Japanese PSN so we can do away with the points cards middle-men.

Import: Ryuu ga Gotoku 5: Yume Kanaeshi Mono (PS3) Review

Import: Ryuu ga Gotoku 5: Yume Kanaeshi Mono (PS3) Review

So you know the deal, Ryuu Ga Gotoku/Yakuza is a Japanese take on the open world game that is primarily narrative focused.  The open world acts as a setting for various distractions and mini-games rather than a sandbox that lets you chaotically have your way with it; the world is not your oyster but there are plenty of oysters to be found. 

The newest entry is for better and worse a Yakuza game through and through.  It still has the same bizarre mixture of comically absurd machismo and borderline implausible scenarios for side-quests but at the same time the formula is beginning to show its age; it's become obtuse with dozens of game systems that require too much up front explanation, the story and game elements exist (almost) in two different universes and this time around there are a host of technical issues as well. 

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Ryuu Ga Gotoku 5 is a massive game; 5 cities, 5 protagonists and a 40-50 hour story (making the game around twice as long as any other entry in the series).  Each protagonist has their own 10-ish hours long story which details what they have been up to since Yakuza 4 and pushes each of them towards a fateful reunion in Kamurocho.

The Kiryuu and Saejima stories in particular are the highlights of the game.  In Kiryuu’s we get to see him having realistically moved on from the orphanage to living alone under a pseudonym.  His struggle to keep his old identity a secret and just move on means he keeps everyone at arm’s length and it makes for some very interesting character drama; Kiryuu’s stoic character is transformed into something more interesting simply by the change of context.   This culminates in a brilliant battle royale of Dynasty Warriors’ proportions. 

Saejima’s story sees Saejima turn himself into the police to continue serving his sentence from the last game; a kind of self-imposed trial by fire that Saejima sees as necessary to toughen him up before he assumes a big role in the Tojo Clan.  He spends the majority of his time paired with a new character who acts as a little brother to Saejima; this character pairing provides Saejima with the sounding board necessary so that his convictions, acceptance of the Yakuza way of life and sense of honour can be explored.  

Akiyama’s story feels somewhat forced in because…well, I guess you have to find a way to fit someone in when you accidentally make them a fan favourite. 

Newcomer Shinada is one of the most interesting characters of the bunch and his back-and-forths with the antagonistic loan-shark Takasugi makes for some really great screen chemistry between the two.  Unfortunately his story arc is only tangentially related to the core story and it wouldn’t have been that strange had it been entirely omitted.  Shinada is a character you will definitely want to see more of the future though.

Each character has their own fighting style and…well, it’s Yakuza, you know the drill right by now.  There is very little in the way of new game mechanics here that fundamentally mix up how you approach the game; you now have Climax Heat moves (which you can activate after building up a bar powered by regular Heat moves), you can learn how to turn meals into enduring buffs (going over 100% health, ATK up etc) but all of these things simply add more layers onto the same game you’ve been playing.

Fortunately the above changes to the game systems don’t detract from the game itself.  In other areas however, it feels like the side-content and main-content are at war with each other.  For example you get desperate call for help, the music changes to something high tempo and you rush to aid the caller…only to have your route cut off by an obnoxious unavoidable side-quest/new mechanic tutorial. The tutorial in question also happens to be comical, and totally at odds with the serious situation it just interrupted; making it not only pace-killing, but mood-killing as well.

But it gets worse.  NPCs often spend ages unnaturally explaining the mechanics of an upcoming section to you (and in some sections the mechanics are never used again).  Upon entering the gameplay segment the game spits out the same advice again but in the form of a formal text tutorial.  In one section I was tasked with delivering ramen on behalf of an old-man that had slipped on some ice; this was an unsolicited mini-game that I could not avoid.  After receiving an unhelpful double-layered explanation I proceeded to fail at the mini-game (which was over far, far more quickly than the tutorials/explanations) and the side-quest ended with no option to retry.  The whole thing came of as clumsy and over-engineered.

The level of explanation is so great (and cumbersomely presented) that the developers even included the option to toggle the level of text-hints.  And even at the lowest level you are bombarded with them.  This really begins to bog the experience down when you get to take control of Haruka mid-game as all her mechanics and gameplay systems are new which necessitates tutorial after tutorial after tutorial.

It’s perhaps not surprising then that one of the best sections in the game is Saejima’s story; there are almost no side-quests because there are no NPCs to act as side-quest triggers.  The moment he enters a town though, all that goes out of the window.  This is made worse by the huge number of arbitrarily placed invisible walls which limit where you can cross streets (making navigation a chore).  In addition the large number of NPCs in these areas not only drag the framerate down, but make navigation slow and awkward; it is hard to feel immersed in the world when you have to resort to knocking NPCs over like dominos to be able to move along the narrow pathways.

You can’t help but play the game (after it’s mammoth 8GB install) and feel that it is a technical dinosaur.  The NPCs crash the frame rate, indoor and outdoor areas are still separated by load times, and the transition between fights and exploration is awkward.  The developers talked up the new smoother shift between the two but it only works sometimes; you walk into an NPC, the NPC turns around pissed and walks up to you demanding a fight, fists go up and start flying; that is how it is supposed to work and 1/10 times that is how it goes down.  More often than not though you will trigger a fight, the game will freeze for a second and then an NPC will approach you looking angry, the game will freeze again whilst the fight loads, and the NPC will take that opportunity to awkwardly switch to their default expression (normally a really awkward smile), you wait for the HDD and disc to finish chugging the necessary data out and when the game is ready to progress, the NPC, having finished their aggro-break, returns to their fighting expression.

It’s not just from the technical perspective that the seams of the game are really apparent.  Different game mechanics (chasing someone down, fighting, driving) feel like they all exist in their own self-contained boxes and each part feels like it was made separately from everything else.  There are times during the story where events unfold unnaturally so that they inevitably culminate in either a fight or a chase sequence because…well, that’s all the developers have as far as gameplay goes.  Whereas many games these days allow for smooth switching between running, gunning, fisty-cuffs, driving and so on, Yakuza has a different rule set for each style and feels awkwardly outdated for it.

The game feels like it was assembled piece-meal with little regard for how all the pieces would fit together in the end.  If I had to describe Yakuza 5 to someone it would be tell them that it plays the way people who don’t play videogames think videogames play: it’s awkwardly game-y with different ‘game’ elements (exp, button prompts, UI elements) that have all been put together rather haphazardly.  

This is one game that doesn’t need to be localised and makes for a great allegory on how Japanese game development has fallen behind the west.

SCORE: 5/10

The game has some really interesting parts on the story that just about stop it from being an outright bad game, but the technical issues and increasingly outdated presentation drag it down from being good either.  You can probably find something better to do with your time.