Niklas Jansson

More Final Fantasy Legend Stuff

Added 2024-05-29 19:46:27 +0000 UTC

I did a few more pixel-overs. It's at some 115 now – which feels like a lot but is still somehow less than Pokémon Gen 1. Speaking of Pokémon, it would perhaps be more fun to do evolutions of the depicted and recognisable SaGa designs rather than trying to draw the named ones which reuse the portraits. Sprawling out too much visually (towards generic greek/fantasy monsters) could "disperse" the soul of the setting, I'm thinking.

The map graphics proved problematic... I wanted to do varied mountains and trees, but it introduces graphical noise, somewhat reducing legibility. The map graphics often uses just 3 colours, except for landmarks (e.g. towns) which are picked out with black.

Thinking about the game itself and what I'd want to do with it... maybe it would be fun to frame it as an isekai where the player gets to pick a cheat at the start. It could be used to introduce different mechanics than the typical classes and stat-rolling. Instead the isekai god could support the player with wild gacha rolls, strange blessings, life mechanics, farming skills and any crazy idea one would normally not consider.

I haven't looked much at the player and NPC sprites yet but did notice an interesting thing – the mutated characters do not take on the exact appearance of the monsters but instead look humanoid. The later games have animated 16x16 sprites for most of the monsters whereas the first game only covers a few categories.

Oh, right, I did a little test converting some Romancing SaGa sprites, but I'm not sure to what extent the games are related. Also, the detail level and angle is different so it's not really a good match.