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Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

Playing through Final Fantasy VII as a kid (albeit emulated) was a great introduction to that dichotomy. The game mixes both 2D and 3D art styles to varying degrees of success, but there's definitely a reason why the game's art direction is so iconic. Looking back on it, all I see is a watercolor, handpainted haze (as opposed to games from the system that haven't quite aged as well, like Metal Gear Solid)

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I actually think of FF VII as one of the PS1 games that have aged the most, and far more to my eye then MGS. The 3d battle models are fantastic, but the overworld models are, like, laughably bad. It wasn't a hardware limitation either, because FF VIII and IX both fixed this with character models that actually look like the character, but VII looks like polygons are in short supply. They just didnt know how to fully utilize the system yet.

How much things have aged is all subjective, but think FF7 is charming with it's absurd hair spikes and fingerless cube hands. Other games that tried harder to look realistic don't feel like that.

I think this was an art choice rather than technical inexperience.

The proportions of the field models are more similar to the chibi sprites of the SNES games, so we’re seeing the gradual evolution of FF’s style with VII the first transition from 2D to 3D.

That VIII and IX used more realistic proportions is just a later stage of that stylistic transition.

Personally, I find them quite charming. There’s a fair bit of slapstick in the game that IMO works better with the low poly models.

Which is interesting because the games that combined 2D and 3D (common on console) actually now can look much BETTER on the 3D side (emulators often allow upscaling etc) but the 2D painting remains the same.

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