Big_Fudge"surely you have to take into account the work that went into the original game, not just the port" To achieve the quality standards and offer an optimal gaming experience, Microids decided to entrust the development of XIII Remake to the French studio Tower Five ( Lornsword: Winter Chronicle ). Hard at work for more than a year on a major update for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC versions, the studio has also worked on the multiplayer content as well as the Nintendo Switch port of the game. This update, the multiplayer content and the Switch version will simultaneously be released on September 13 th . You can watch how this reveal unfolded on the official EVO Twitch channel. It takes place around the 09:15:20 mark.

And as I was pointing out, the forms in which these remasters take can drastically differ. From dumping the game with minimum effort, to complete overhauls of the graphics and sounds, game play tweaks and even much larger scales. The latter obviously taking up far more effort, money, and time to complete. In a world where cheaply and haphazardly dumping three games on to a disc and calling it a day can be called the same as a total overhaul of a game, then why should devs even bother trying? They might as well poorly re-release all titles, because you'll have fanboys defend the low effort, and any potential bugs and issues because "yeah but the original releases were great titles, so I'd pay an arm and a leg for any version". The combat system is where the game has lost people, and to be completely frank, it doesn’t get exciting until 10 hours in. That’s a long tutorial. However, it does provide a more strategic system that keeps you on your toes. Greysun Morales from Twinfinite, when I DM’ed him about why he likes Final Fantasy XIII, said, “The combat system isn’t technically amazing, per say, but it does create an inventive mechanic that keeps your team on the ropes and keeps the player thinking ahead. Instead of having those JRPG tropes such as a warrior and a healer, every character in the game was capable of pretty much taking on whichever role they needed to be, which I appreciated. You can even see these combat ideas take play in FF7 Remake too such as the staggering system.” The heavily criticised remake of 2003 first-person shooter XIII will receive a major update later this year, alongside the release of a new Switch version, publisher Microids has said.Paris – June 29 th 2022 – Microids is delighted to share that a major update for the game XIII Remake as well as the Nintendo Switch version of the game will be released on September 13 th 2022. As a reminder, the game is the remake of the iconic cel-shaded FPS from 2003, and is the adaptation of the 5 first volumes of the Belgian graphic novel of the same name by artist William Vance and writer Jean Van Hamme. Nintendo or Bethesda paying a handful of guys to port over legacy titles does not equal the same amount of work or production cost as, say MS hiring 5 different studios to work on a collection of 4 games with one of those games being remastered. The development studio reworked the entire game from the art direction to the AI and added numerous technical improvements,” Microids said. Alas, it looks like this XIII remake its just a prototype for a studio who wants to show they can handle new tools. Not an actual remake by folks who respect the original and want to bring it to modern audiences.

We are fully aware and terribly sorry that the initial launch of XIII Remake on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC did not reach players’ expected quality standards,” Microids CEO Stéphane Longeard said in a statement. “A bit more than a year ago we took the decision to hire the studio Tower Five to finish the development of the game. Tower Five worked with us in the past, notably on the great port of Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders on Nintendo Switch. We really wanted to take the time to fix the game and offer owners of XIII Remake a free update paying the best possible tribute to the original game we all love.”Microids and PlayMagic apologised for the state of the game in November 2020 and said they were committed to fixing its issues. Yasuyuki Oda: “Yes, obviously if you have a Switch, you have a lot of our retro content, you can play almost all of SNK’s fighting games, and we investigated this issue even with King of Fighters XIV and even XV. One of the biggest problems with KoF is that you have three characters and you have to load all the resources between rounds and so on. It really didn’t go well with the hardware specs and the technical limitations of the Switch. It was something that really bugged us, we would love to do it and we are always thinking about it, but at the moment there are no plans."

Here's what SNK producer Yasuyuki Oda had to say in a recent interview with Gamereactor (courtesy of Google translate) - mentioning how as much as the team "would love to" release these games on the Switch, there are admittedly "no plans" right now: This remake shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, given XIII Remake’s extremely poor reception. Critics weren’t positive about the changes — it has a 33% average rating on Metacritic — and fans weren’t pleased either, giving it an “Overwhelmingly Negative” average review rating on Steam. On top of that, the remake was originally supposed to come out on Nintendo Switch. At the end of 2022, Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy PIxel Remaster, a collection composed of revamped versions of Final Fantasy I through VI, would finally be making its way to Nintendo Switch, putting to rest many months of speculation from eager fans. It’s big news, as its release means that FF-loving Switch owners will soon be able to enjoy every mainline Final Fantasy game from the very beginning of the series all the way to the 12th entry, minus MMOPRG Final Fantasy XI.

Overview

The XIII remake, when it was released in 2020, was a disaster. Players complained of poor AI, bugs, missing multiplayer and an art style that abandoned the iconic, cel-shaded look of the original. After almost two years of further work by a different developer, the remake of the XIII remake is now live. Originally developed by PlayMagic, the PS4, Xbox One and PC remake shipped in 2020 with numerous bugs and changes to the game’s iconic cel-shaded art style which fans weren’t happy with. Cult classic XIII received an HD remake in 2020 from developer PlayMagic. The project attempted to update the game for modern platforms, but it fell more than a little short. Which is why, just two years later, publisher Microids has announced that it has handed the game over to a new studio to give XIII Remake a remake of its own. msvt Fun fact: The King of Fighters series was created because fans love the idea of dream matches. This idea was first introduced in Fatal Fury Special where Ryo Sakazaki from Art of Fighting appeared as a hidden playable fighter in the game. The reason why this is a dream match was cause both Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury took place in the same universe but in different time generation so Art of Fighting took place around 10 years prior to the first Fatal Fury. By the time the FF cast appeared, the AoF cast would had been in their 30s or 40s thus why the match with a prime Ryo going against a prime Terry would never happen.

We are fully aware and terribly sorry that the initial launch of XIII Remake on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC did not reach players’ expected quality standards. A bit more than a year ago we took the decision to hire the studio Tower Five to finish the development of the game. Tower Five worked with us in the past, notably on the great port of Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders on Nintendo Switch. We really wanted to take the time to fix the game and offer owners of XIII Remake a free update paying the best possible tribute to the original game we all love. The Nintendo Switch version of the game will of course benefit from all the work done to improve the game as well as the multiplayer mode, which will mark the end of the game’s development. We can’t wait for players to put their hands on this improved version of the game and (re)discover the classic adventures of Agent XIII, as soon as it’s released after the Summer.” declares Stéphane Longeard , CEO de Microids .Watching the trailer above, the remake does look better than it did before, although I'm still surprised that so much effort has been put into revising a remake to a game that was just-okay when it was released nearly twenty years ago. Update [Thu 10th Aug, 2023 17:15 BST]: Physical versions for The King of Fighters XIII Global Match have been revealed by Pix'n Love. At EVO Japan 2023 this weekend, SNK announced it would be releasing The King of Fighters XIII Global Match for the Switch.