To my great shame...

Just put it on a console. Literally any console, I don't care. It belongs on a console. Seriously, just...just take my money SquareEnix. Take it!

Ok, obviously I didn't mean any console.

"Dignity and an empty sack
is worth the sack."

-Rule of Acquisition # 109

What am I talking about? You ask. Well, ok, fine, I'm a huge dumb gullible idiot. How's that? You say. Oh, you didn't say that? You just accepted my statement at face value? I see. Well, I'll explain anyway. To my great shame I just gave SquareEnix money for a mobile game. Specifically Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, despite the fact that I've repeatedly complained about this publisher re-releasing classic 16-bit RPG's as mediocre mobile ports. Well, twelve bucks and my dignity later I've done it again and it actually isn't that bad. In fact, it's good enough to make it infuriating that it's only on mobile.*

I'm critical, but not a critic. Critics have a
skill, I just complain. It's a distinction I
 think more people should embrace. 

And to be clear, I'm not a critic. I don't know what I'm talking about and the last thing I want is to influence you in any way about anything. This isn't me saying go participate in consumerism, this is me voicing my opinions about SquareEnix's policy of re-issuing games with some completely unnecessary flaw, some caveat, or some monkey's paw nonsense that's evidently just there to annoy the fans. Because like I said, this version is pretty dang good, and I'm a hard-to-please, traditionalist, curmudgeon when it comes to early 90's SNES JRPGs. But there's always something, right?

Wha-why would...who
thought this was ok? Who?

There sure is. But the good news first: the graphical style in this version isn't the weird, cheap looking mobile game art style of the previous re-releases. While not the 8-bit of the original 1990 release, the graphics here are in the gorgeous 16-bit era pixel art style. As it was meant to be. The aspect ratio is landscape and not the baffling portrait mode of the Dragon Quest ports. And the new, arranged sound track, uh, slaps? Are the kids still saying slaps? Because it does. The game itself has the quality of life improvements we've come to expect--which, I guess is really just the option to save without having to hike back to an inn. Really we Final Fantasy fans are pretty easy to please. So what's the problem? Because you know there's going to be a problem. The problem is that it's a damned mobile game and all that entails.

Because the controls. Oh, the controls. Instead of an onscreen d-pad (an idea that's never worked) there's a picture of the player character that takes up like 20% of the screen and you sort of roll around it to guide the party. 

I've circled it in orange here, but you're not going to miss it.
Unless of course it's under your thumb, which you know,
it is, so why is it even there in the first place? I ask you...

The NGage was an unmitigated shitshow
with its vertical screen, side talking and
cartridges you had to remove the battery to
swap. But at least it had physical controls. 

And ok, that's mobile games for you. But for reasons passing understanding, the game doesn't support physical controllers. Which, I think it's pretty standard now. Like, there's an entire industry of third party manufacturers making controllers and mounts specifically for mobile gaming. Making the omission even more glaring is the fact that they've increased the movement from four directions to eight, which combined with the vagaries of touch controls means you'll spend much of your time trying to keep your character from veering off in some weird direction or trying to line them up so they can talk to NPC's. 

Never was there a tale of more woe, than a
grown ass man whinging on about video games.

The tragedy here, if that's the word (it isn't), is that the flaws of this re-issue (and, I presume, the other five games that are part of it) that keep it from being great would all be solved by either implementing controller support or, and they should have done this in the first place, putting them on a real game console. I mean, the target audience here is olds like me who find games made after 1999 off-putting and often a source of motion sickness.

And look, I get that there are obviously bigger concerns. I mean, climate change, idiots refusing to get vaccinated, billionaires wasting millions of dollars on dick rockets. But this, this is something we can actually fix. 

Pictured: the only correct way to play a video game.

(source: objective fact)

*Ok, mobile and Steam, but only on PC so if you have Mac, it might as well be mobile only.