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Looking at my past few years of reviews for GameSpot, I’ve noticed a trend: I’ve looked at a lot of remakes and remasters. A lot of them have been good–great, even. It makes me happy to see games that had a big impact in Japan in their heyday, like Live A Live and Romancing SaGa 2, finally make the journey overseas.
But lately, I’ve been feeling like these remakes specifically are lacking something. While I enjoyed many of these titles, there was just something I couldn’t put my finger on that felt off. I thought that maybe I was experiencing a sort of odd fatigue from having gone through so many of them over the past few years, but when I played through Dragon Quest I and II HD recently, I was finally able to figure out exactly what’s irking me.
So many remakes lack ambition.
In entertainment media, familiarity and name recognition carry a lot of weight. If you watch or play through a new entry in a legacy series, like a Star Wars film or the latest Call of Duty, you generally know what to expect. Remakes tend to be even more predictable: the characters, setpieces, story arcs, and themes are
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