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.
