Although Square, now Square-Enix’s, Final Fantasy series, has been around since 1987 (at least in Japan), it wouldn’t occur to them until the turn of the millennium to develop upgraded rereleases of earlier series entries like rival Enix’s Dragon Quest franchise had since it entered the 16-bit gaming era. When Square did get into the remake game, they initially did so for the doomed portable WonderSwan system before wising up and focusing on more mainstream systems such as the PlayStation. After merging with Enix, they found a cash cow in countless ports and upgrades of older Final Fantasies, a trend that continues today. In 2021, Square-Enix announced another series of upgraded rereleases, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection, whose release was initially limited to Windows, iOS, and Android; however, they expanded it to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. Does this latest round of remakes warrant a playthrough for modern gaming audiences?
As the anthology’s moniker suggests, the primary selling point is its “remastered” visuals, which aim to be more faithful to the graphical styles of the original iterations of the first six Final Fantasies, chiefly regarding the character sprites, while avoiding appearing too dated graphically, and the results are inconsistent. While the sprites, colors, and environments are beautiful, the eponymous pixelation evokes the expression “Beauty is the eye of the beholder” since visual smoothness is rare; however, those who term old-school graphics infallible will appreciate the aesthetics. Regardless, many lazy graphical decisions from the first six games remain, like the player’s characters making no contact with the enemy when using standard attacks, the inanimate foes, and the reskins that recur throughout the collection.
Original series composer Nobuo Uematsu returned to remaster the soundtracks, a consistent high point of the collection, gloriously reorchestrated with contemporary video game instrumentation. Players can switch to the original digitized versions of the music for a more authentic old-school aural experience.
The Pixel Remasters sport numerous quality-of-life improvements that make the first six games more accessible to series newcomers. Among these are autosaving during transitions between areas, diagonal movement, and helpful in-game maps for towns and dungeons, in addition to those for the overworlds, which even indicate how many treasures remain in each visited area. Features from previous versions of the games, like suspend saving, also return.
While all six games have notable differences in their core gameplay, the collection improves them with features across all. Among them is the ability to toggle random encounters on or off outside combat and auto-battling that can speed up battles, soften the temporal burden of grinding, and shave superfluous playtime. New to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch ports are Boosts that can modify the games’ base difficulties to be lower or higher, chiefly through experience and money acquired from combat victory.
The central narratives of the collection’s entries remain unchanged (although the third game’s Pixel Remaster reverts to the plot of the original 8-bit version instead of retaining the DS remake’s), and their translations contain plenty of polish.
The collection features appeal in the form of PlayStation Trophies and whatever sidequests are within each game.
Overall, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection does warrant a playthrough from modern gaming audiences, especially the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch versions, given the added options to modify the difficulty to accommodate their skill level. Granted, those who deem previous iterations of the game to be infallible or have exhausted themselves on said prior versions won’t find much to celebrate by reexperiencing the titles. The remastered soundtracks are inarguably the highlight of the anthology, but depending on how one looks at them, the visual remastery doesn’t always excel, given the lazy graphical aspects retained from the original versions of the games. Even so, the Pixel Remasters are the definitive versions of the first six Final Fantasies, making them far more accessible to mainstream gamers than ever.
This deep look is based on playthroughs of digital copies of all six remasters purchased and downloaded to the reviewer's PlayStation 4 to their standard endings.