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Comment by clw8 | Hacker News Reader

Cool that your daughter is willing to play retro games (I assume), I tried to get my teenage nephews to play FF7 and as soon as they saw the blocky graphics they noped the f out. Sigh.

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The funny thing is, FF7 (and other early 3d games) aged far worse than early 2d games. There's a resurgence in indie platformers in the style of 2d games, while most of the 3d games from the N64/Playstation era just look outdated.

As someone too young to have played FF7 when it first came out, I recently tried to play the PC port, but I just couldn't get used to the graphics... I don't know of any other famous game that's that ugly. Anything sprite-based looks just fine to me, and when it comes to 3D, even Nintendo's N64 classics, while they take some getting used to, aren't as absurdly blocky-looking as FF7. Maybe I'll try again some time, but I suspect I'll end up waiting for the remake.

Yeah, I'm the same. It's a shame since I hear it's a great game, but the graphics turn me off. I still play earlier 2d RPGs (chrono trigger, earthbound, etc.) and PS2 era 3d RPGs (shin megami tensei, suikoden), but I never play PS1 era games.

I actually have just, over the past few months, been playing all the Final Fantasy/Square games that I never experienced. I played them in the following order: FF4 (USA FF2), FF6 (USA FF3), Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, FF5, and FF7. I just started FF9.

I have to agree that FF7/FF9 was a huge adjustment from a graphics perspective. The 3D-ish characters are ugly and the camera angle/distance makes certain areas feel like guiding ants around. I doubt I will continue with FF9...I may just pick up the Dragon Warrior (Quest) games instead.

The SNES era really stands out to me as the high-water mark for JRPGs

For old SNES-era RPGs, if you haven't already played them, I'd also suggest Earthbound and Seiken Densetsu 3. (And, in a completely different style, Super Mario RPG; it's Nintendo/Square, and it feels very Square-ish.)

> The SNES era really stands out to me as the high-water mark for JRPGs

Agreed.

"The SNES era really stands out to me as the high-water mark for JRPGs"

I'd have to put the high-water mark at the PS2. The PS1 era was confused, but they mostly figured things out again for the PS2.

That said, the genre remains alive and well anyhow. Once everybody but Square accepted that you don't need to try to make every single one a graphical extravaganza, they picked back up again. (I don't know what I'd call the flagship series nowadays but I can tell you it is not Final Fantasy anymore.)

I really wish jRPG developers would just give up on expensive 3D graphics and go the way of Ni no Kuni and Saga Frontier 2. Suits the genre perfectly.

It actually looks like the PS1/Quake-era kinda style might be coming in as a smaller trend. You've got games like Devil Daggers[1] and shaders like this: https://github.com/dsoft20/psx_retroshader

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/422970

The NES and SNES eras have a pretty significant enduring appeal and are in the middle of a pretty lengthy resurgence, but you don't see nearly as much mainstream nostalgia for the previous 2D generation, like the Atari 2600. The graphics are just a little too primitive for most people, I think.

A lot of the earliest 3D games feel like they're closer to the "2600" end of the spectrum for their generation. Of course there are outliers like Mario 64 that have aged much better. Mario in particular doesn't get totally let down by controls the way a lot of other early full-3d-world games do.

Developers got a hang of things pretty quickly, though. The jump in quality from the stack-of-cubes characters in FF7 to something approaching recognizable humans in FF8 is pretty stark, and they improved further from there for 9.

I agree; that's what's rough about 3D graphics that tries to be photorealistic and the uncanny valley. When it's released, it's the best thing ever, but it ages far worse than stylized animation. Cell shading seems to hold up well IMO.

Luckily, there's more to great games like the FF series than once-photorealistic now-aged 3D graphics.

IMO sprites have aged better than early 3D.

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