It can sometimes be tempting to complain about all the remasters and remakes being produced these days. Making them does take resources, after all, and some might argue that those resources would be better spent on something entirely new. Both remakes and remasters serve an important purpose, though: keeping old favorites alive for longtime fans and creating new fans in the process.
Sometimes the best way to bring new people in is to give them a new chance to jump in at the same point that many of the old fans did. Tales of Eternia Remastered is doing just that. It’s largely the same game it always was, but with graphical and quality-of-life enhancements to help newcomers appreciate it as well. Hardcore Gamer got some hands-on time with this enhanced classic not too long ago, and this writer can confidently say that he liked what he saw.
Since this is a remaster, this version of Tales of Eternia is more or less the same as the original in all the ways that matter. It’s the same story with the same characters, with its artwork, music and sound all retained without any major alteration. Those who played the original all the way back on the PS1 or PSP will easily feel right at home in this new version. In fact, they’ll even have the option to toggle off all the new enhancements and play it as a port of the original.
This writer briefly played the demo with all enhancements turned off, and the game still looked and sounded pretty good, all things considered. Playing this way is absolutely viable for those who want the true, original experience.
For those that do want an updated experience, though, there’s plenty on offer. For starters, all the visuals have been updated for HD. All character and enemy sprites appear to have been greatly reworked and improved to take advantage of modern resolutions, but they're still pixel art sprites. So there’s no loss there. The background artwork is a bit different. It’s not exactly pixelated, but it’s also not the simple smoothing seen in other remasters such as Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games.
Music and sound effects have also received remastering, making them much more clear in quality. Character portraits during cutscenes also appear new, crisp and clean. It’s not exactly a night and day difference, but it’s still easy to appreciate. There are also a number of mechanical upgrades available, ranging from auto-battle (via High-Speed Mode) to various “Boost” modifiers that can make the game much easier and/or faster.
Boost Modifiers affect character progression, movement speed, exp gain and navigation. It even lets players decide whether they want to instantly retry battles or not.
During his time with the demo, this writer only used High-Speed Mode to get through random battles, but it really did come in handy since time was limited and random battles aren’t as exciting as they were back in the day. No Boost modifiers were used either, but there appeared to be more than enough for most players to fully customize their experience.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://hardcoregamer.com/tales-of-eternia-remastered-looks-like-the-best-way-to-play/
