1614: Remastered

One thing I’m growing to quite dislike about the new generation of games consoles is the number of times it seems they’re going to try and sell us the same games we’ve already played under the pretense that it’ll somehow be a new experience to see them in slightly higher resolution and at a better framerate. (Pro-Tip: if you played them on PC — obviously impossible for exclusives, but for everything else, a viable option — then you have already had this “new” experience.) It’s already happened with Tomb Raider, it’s happening soon with The Last of Us, Halo and numerous others.

There’s a sound argument for these releases, of course: some people might be coming to video games with the new generation and thus may have never had the opportunity to play things from the PS3/360 era — so why shouldn’t they be able to play these games in their “definitive edition”, as Tomb Raider called it? In the case of Halo, the upcoming Master Chief Collection will bring together games from two generations of consoles on one platform and allow players to jump straight to favourite moments rather than having to play all the way through four games. (It also misses out the two games widely regarded to be among the strongest installments in the series — ODST and Reach — but never mind, eh.)

I do find myself resenting the idea of a game that didn’t come out all that long ago — The Last of Us — getting a “remastered” release, though. As I say, I understand the reasons for it, it just feels a little… I don’t know, cheap. Particularly given that most of the truly exciting, original titles for PS4 and Xbox One aren’t coming until next year at the earliest — this leaves 2014 as, as one of my soon-to-be-former colleagues put it, The Year of the Remaster.

Twist: At least, I thought I resented the idea of a remaster. Until I purchased a copy of Atelier Rorona Plus recently — a remake of a game that didn’t come out all that long ago that hasn’t even jumped generation: it’s being released on the same platform it was originally released on!

Atelier Rorona Plus is, as the name suggests, a rerelease of Atelier Rorona, the alchemy-themed RPG/strategy game from Gust that I started playing a while back then had to stop due to review commitments. But this is far from a straight remaster — there would be little point rereleasing it on the same platform otherwise. No, Atelier Rorona Plus instead rebuilds pretty much the whole game in a number of ways.

Visually, it’s had an overhaul. While the environments and 2D art are mostly the same, the 3D polygonal characters have been totally revamped to be more in line with their 2D counterparts — in the original, the polygonal characters looked far too young in comparison to the hand-drawn art and, while it wasn’t a dealbreaker by any means, it was a little distracting. The new character models look gorgeous, and bring the game much more in line with its more recent sequels.

But, notably, it’s not just the visuals that have had an overhaul. The gameplay has been tweaked and adjusted, too, with a whole ton of nice little features that make the whole experience more streamlined and smooth to play without sacrificing any of its depth. The battle system has been redone, the crafting system around which the game revolves has been revamped, the quest system is clearer, there’s less aimless running around… basically everything that needed fixing has, so far as I can make out, been fixed.

Now that’s how you do a remake. Full review coming soon as one of my last pieces on USgamer.