Final Fantasy X HD

This was one of those games I was originally raised on, my brother would play this game over and over and over again and I always loved to sit and watch with my other siblings. Recently, I finally got to play and finish it on my own because of the HD release. There were many times before that I had tried to play it, but failed to finish because I either stopped for a long period of time and started over, or because of the dreaded incident where our very first PS3 died and upon getting a new one it had no backwards compatibility. (Luckily though I have gotten my hands on a PS2, so playing those games will no longer be a problem. HEART ) Now, because of this I may be a little harsh on the HD release, but my nostalgia is so strong on this one because this game has really changed my life. After playing the game, I realized how bad the HD graphics looked compared to the original graphics, in my opinion it just seemed like they slapped the poor things on and were done with it ready to sell. I've compared the original and HD side by side many times, and they just- don't look like themselves in the HD. Sure, they're a bit recognizableee (?) but their faces just looked really different compared to their signature look that left such an impact on me. Let's not forget, upon looking at these, their expressions were hidden behind the HD. There are many examples like in one moment where Yuna is angry, in the HD she just stands there emotionless, it really took the feeling out of the whole game- as well as the color, I mean it can't just be me but it seemed less colorful. I know they were trying to make it look more- 'realistic' but the thing is, FFX didn't have that realistic style to begin with. It was colorful, and in its own style. And you have to know something is wrong when you show your brother, the one who originally introduced the game to you, the comparison and he thinks it's poorly drawn fan art. When I told him it was the remastered he said that it looked toned down and they look less recognizable. Because really, it was a shocked image of Tidus, and in the HD comparison he just stood there with his mouth slightly opened. I guess- what I was really expecting, was for them to make the fighting avatars and scene avatars look the same as they did in FFXIII but that was one thing they didn't do. The avatars still changed and looked very poorly in small scenes like it was released back in 2000 as the first was. Sure, the hair looked 'smoother'-ISH. But at least before the characters actually HAD character (and to be honest the hair still looked choppy). I'm just going to say, from now on I'm not going to play the HD release ever again. I'm sticking to the PS2 version. To be honest, for this part of it, I don't know whether or not the original had the same problem because it was so long ago when I played it- but even if it was like that in the original it seems like they should have been able to fix it in the HD release- when I played the HD the lips never matched up. Yes yes- I know the whole dubbing thing where it's difficult to match up the lips, and I mean heck- For video games with graphics like that it has to be harder because the lips move more precisely to the Japanese- but this was different- in the scenes (not CGI) the voices were only two seconds off from the lips, like the voice actors had done it perfectly fine, but it wasn't synced up correctly with the game. Again, I don't know if it happened in the original PS2 version but I had to divert my eyes from their mouths when watching because it bothered me that much, and it seems like something that could have been an easy fix in the HD release. Again, nostalgia harshness, but let's be real- this just seemed like a quick fix to get in extra cash. I still love the game, the story, the characters, and the play style with all my heart, but not what they fixed up so poorly. And I mean- COME ON- No Al Bhed language option!? They had over 10 years to work on that!