Cognition Dissemination: Square Enix’s Befuddling Treatment of Classic Final Fantasy Games

Skepticism pervaded the air around Square Enix’s announcement of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series, the company’s newest attempt at remastering the first six Final Fantasy games. It’s deserved considering the treatment of prior ports of these titles and others outside the franchise. Those feelings were unfortunately slightly warranted, another sign that Square Enix either can’t create definitive ports of these games or simply doesn’t want to.

I want to start on a more positive note, because it’s not all bad news here — far from it, in fact. This is being called the Pixel Remaster collection because the intent of them is to inherit the look and content of the originally-released versions between the NES/Famicom and Super NES/Super Famicom as closely as possible. Nearly all the ports feature sprites of characters, enemies, and other background elements faithfully updated to look palatable to a 16-bit-ish level. The result is far better than the Vaseline-smoothed monstrosities that were the previous ports of Final Fantasy V and VI, but they don’t look quite as good as the PSP versions of Final Fantasy I, II, and IV that featured upgraded sprites in terms of aesthetics and size.

Instead, the team helmed by original and legendary sprite creator Kazuko Shibuya created sprites that split the difference between the two, to create the same kind of look the sprites resembled on a CRT screen. They appear to have largely succeeded, despite this making the in-battle fields look gigantic. At least the first three FF games will come with remixed soundtracks overseen (whatever that means) by original composer Nobuo Uematsu, which implies that the remixes will be different compared to those from the Final Fantasy Origins package.

I notably said “nearly” in the paragraph before last because not all the new sprites are faithful. The FFII port recreates the sprites using not the designs from the original game, but derives them from Yoshitaka Amano’s designs, a similarity to the previous updated versions. Perhaps it’s a sign that a different team is handling it, hopefully the SaGa team that worked on the original, whose efforts have straight-up embarrassed every other segment of Square Enix in terms of their port/remaster quality and platform choices. Some backgrounds are also changed in FFVI. Narshe, for one, was always present in the background of the opening, but it’s considerably easier to see this time. They’re largely faithful to the original versions, but that’s partly marketing jargon; expect more changes.

In no way will I undermine how neat it is that we’re finally getting an officially localized version of Final Fantasy III after all these years. Square Enix has thus far only released the 3D remake worldwide, which included significant changes like preset character designs and lower enemy counts. It’s tough to tell whether it will look on par with the cancelled WonderSwan Color version from two decades ago at the moment, but it won’t take long to tell.

The ports won’t be definitive, though, because they’re based on the original games. They’ll lack the content from the Game Boy Advance ports and subsequent releases based on them. Their extra dungeons won’t be present here, along with other fun features like the option to play multiple characters for the finale or FFIV, the extra jobs in FFV, or the new Espers in FFVI. There’s no way to play a not-hideous version of the updated FFV and FFVI versions outside the Game Boy Advance (and, you know, piracy), and while the Pixel Remaster versions will look better than those, they won’t have all the content.

Both of those titles, by the way, will be removed and replaced by the Pixel Remaster on Steam and likely mobile platforms at the end of the month. Square Enix might be ashamed of the reputation they’ve garnered, but these versions of the games are about to legally disappear into the ether for anyone who hasn’t purchased them, which I can’t endorse.

There is also no excuse for the games only being available on Steam and mobile platforms at launch. Any potential explanation about the company not having the resources to release them on consoles simultaneously crumbles to dust upon realizing how the SaGa team has released several ports on three to five platforms at the same time. The SaGa series is considerably less popular than FF, especially outside Japan, so there is nothing stopping the FF team from following in their footsteps outside willpower. It’s not like these will be the only ports in Square Enix’s catalog that should damn well be available on more platforms.

The SaGa team has perfected providing definitive ports of games and simultaneously releasing them on nearly every platform that can run them. They should have set the standard for the rest of the company’s releases, but this is a case of the left hand looking at the right hand and saying “whatever, I’m better and more popular.” It is all very stupid.

The Pixel Remaster ports will be good, and there may not be a better legal option to play them. But they could have been better, and there would have been few complaints (and no justifiable complaints) about the extra content also being here. There are so many elements here that I can’t wrap my head around that I’m not sure why I bother trying anymore. I’m well aware there’s no parsing a company that literally held a funeral for one of their best-selling games, or made the choices they did for their E3 2021 presentation. But there’s still something about them that makes the attempt so irresistible. I couldn’t help myself here, and I’m sure I’ll be back here again in the future. Hopefully this is for more than my own bemusement.