So I beat the FF1 pixel remaster and really liked it. I think I see what they are going for with these remakes now. They try really hard to be as faithful as possible while also trying to clean up some of the more noteworthy hang ups in the games to make them more user friendly. For example, they went back to spell charges and no saving outside of the world map, but you can also buy ethers now and use a quick save function, to name a couple of things.
I had such a good time I went ahead and got FFIII, and I see a couple of other things too. They are trying to bring the earlier games into a more uniform visual style, which I actually kinda like. FFI and FFIII look like almost exactly like FFIV and FFV, and they even reuse many assets for NPCs and environments that I recognize from the SNES games. Normally this type of thing would bother me, but I kinda get it. Playing FFIII right after FFI it feels like I continued right into the next part of FFI.
They also add a number of little flourishes that really enhance the game. For example, I just got to the part where you have to cast Mini on yourselves in order to get through a tunnel. The battle music and victory fanfare change during this section to go along with it, which I thought was a funny touch. In fact, I'm happy with all the music in these games, and I can see why Uematsu was brought back. It doesn't sound like some cheap youtube remix, it all sounds like it belonged in the games from the start.
All in all I'm pleasantly surprised. FFI somehow managed to be the most faithful version of the game I've played and it's best remake at the same time, and this is the first time I've gotten a proper chance to sink my teeth into FFIII, which I'm really digging. I have really high hopes for FFVI now, I think this will probably be the first and only proper remake that game ever gets.
