One of the first games I ever played was Dragon Warrior on NES. I fell in love with the JRPG format for world maps and turn-based combat. The first Final Fantasy that I played was the seventh on PS1, which led me to playing all the entries before it. However, that format I loved has died off for the most part. Many games no longer have the world maps in the traditional sense, including the series that introduced me to them. Final Fantasy XV has a world map, yes, and it does it well, but it’s not what I think of when I imagine a world map. Outside of Ni no Kuni, I can’t say I’ve played a new game with a classic world map in recent years on console until now.

The Alliance Alive HD Remastered is a port of a 3DS game that came out in 2018. Thankfully, it’s being brought to consoles as I’ve always had more love for the home console space than portables. Don’t ask me why, I couldn’t tell you. I played Game Boy, Game Gear, Game Boy Advance, DS, PSP, and Vita plenty. But when it comes down to it, if I can play the exact same game on the TV as in my hands, I’ll do so (thanks PS TV). It’s funny, because some games absolutely belong on a handheld, but there’s something about sitting down with a game on the TV that I find so relaxing. And honestly, who hasn’t been holding out for a console version of Game Freak’s most popular series?

Looking at this remaster, you can tell that it wasn’t initially made for a home console. The character models and environments are much sharper as seen in this comparison video, but the textures for pretty much everything are very low resolution and lacking details. To be honest though, I like that. It makes the game feel old despite just coming out, and it adds to the charm of its offerings. There’s also a painterly feel to it, which really shines in zoomed out shots of things like the village.

A big portion that adds to that classic feel is the soundtrack from Masashi Hamauzu, the composer for some of the Final Fantasy games. While it’s not nearly as grandiose, it’s understated in its beauty. Spending time in your home village as it rains to something you may hear used by the likes of Massive Attack or Portishead if they were to score a game is a really relaxing feel and left me standing there admiring it for longer than usual. The party of characters is also fairly unique from one another, although they do get into tropes at times. For the most part though, this is not a bad thing, as it again plays on that familiarity. It’s like the Tales of… series from Namco Bandai, which is for the most part comfort food. I haven’t played the last few, which appear to branch off from the normal approach for the series, but for the decade that I played them I always knew what I was getting into when I bought one. There’s also the familiarity of some Suikoden mechanics in recruitment and combat, likely due to Yoshitaka Murayama’s inclusion in story development. This feels like a game that I played when I was younger while being an all new experience – it’s a great way to take on nostalgia without relying on the usual tricks.

There’s a lot of little things that game does nicely to enhance the experience as well, such as allowing you to speed up the course of a battle, allowing you to pause or even restart a cut-scene if you miss something, in addition to skipping it altogether if you don’t care. Hard saves can only be done in certain spaces, but the game allows for quick saves anywhere, and you can continue without issue utilizing these, whether you take on a difficult enemy and die or you need to head to the store real quick. There are also some fun things done with battles, such as learning new skills actively by utilizing others and leveling them up by using them. There are no hard levels for the characters, as they’ll increase their life, skill points, and abilities randomly. Learning skills will also come at random, with the option of boosting these odds with talent points for each character. There are some other neat features it introduces such as a final strike, which destroys your weapon with a devastating move that is typically a last ditch effort.

While there’s a lot to love here, it’s not perfect. The story overall is kind of generic (surprising given the pedigree), especially once things develop later in the game. The combat, while it has a lot of unique and fun quirks, becomes very easy early on should you choose to develop your characters as I’m accustomed to in RPGs. I learned with Dragon Warrior that it was necessary to level up before going anywhere, and the way you learn new abilities and increase your skills in this begs for some time to be spent grinding with the constant reward system. However, this makes almost all the battles you face too easy, although there are some big hunts you may encounter that give you trouble early on. But even those don’t pose much of a problem once your party is bolstered in numbers. A weak story and easy combat may seem crippling to a game that focuses on both, but it manages to capture my love of the gameplay and keep me invested throughout, which is something most modern RPGs fail to do.

The Alliance Alive HD Remastered is a beautiful port of the 3DS version and captures the magic of old JRPGs. It injects enough new qualities to not be derivative, but is familiar enough that you know what you’re in for when you jump in. Without reinventing the genre, this is a wonderful callback to what made many fall in love with the genre, and you could do much worse if you’re looking for a game that captures your nostalgia while being fresh at the same time.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Suikoden Vibes
• Interesting Battle System
• Old Meets New

Cons

• Generic Story
• Shallow Difficulty

The Alliance Alive HD Remastered was developed by Cattle Call in association with FuRyu and published by NIS America. It will be available on NS, PC, and PS4 October 8th, 2019. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of The Alliance Alive HD Remastered, check out the official site.

 

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