So after playing a while I thought the menus and UI looked off. Not how I remembered. They seemed too much like XIII to me. And so I looked it up in google. And as soon as I saw a pic of the old menus I was like, yep thats the good stuff. I don't care too much for the new one. I mean, ya it looks nice, decent. But they completely removed the character from it. Its lost all its pzazz dammit. They seem dull. Too many blues and greys. Take a look and decide for yourself.

Maybe its nostalgia. But I like that old menu. Everything stands out more. I know this might sound odd. But I find it taking away from my enjoyment of the game.

And here is an example of the music changes.

Original:

Remixed:

So I didn't play Final Fantasy X at all until last year. When I first put the game in, I thought that I had somehow picked up a bootleg copy used from Gamestop because the menus looked so terrible. I know that was a stupid thing to think, but I actually had to go look up videos of Final Fantasy X to confirm that yes, those were the menus released in this early PS2 game praised for its graphics and aesthetics. I just couldn't believe that the menus would look that bad, especially when later PS2 releases like Final Fantasy XII and Digital Devil Saga had much better menus.

Yeah, I think the new menus look pretty great, comparatively.

yowza!!! Per Pixel quality

I must be completely missing the appeal of the original menus (which good observation) but I think the new ones unequivocally look better.

I don't know, the old design always seemed kind of sloppy to me. It does have pizzazz, though haha. I think it's just a matter of preference.

Maybe its not really the menus. Maybe its the remixed music. Its probably the remixed music. Because something about the game just feels off.

I feel like they should have probably just made a HD version of the old menus. I have no problem with clean and simple menus, but the new one just looks kinda overly bland and unfitting to the game.

Unrelated note: I just recently started playing FF XII for the first time and I have to say, this game's menus look really great. Really slick looking. I hope if they ever remaster it they keep these menus. But maybe get rid of the dumb CG portraits and use the vastly superior drawn ones that are used in different parts of the menus and in all of the old games.

I thought in the quick look the menus looked new. And that they looked much better.

I'm definitely biased to the nostalgia view of most things in the game. But you are crazy sir. The new menus are a lot better.

Now if we are talking the weirdly sharp and FF13 font choices and floating numbers in battle.... Or the music...

@tobbrobb: Ya I think it is more the music than the menus. Especially that Mi'ihen (high road) music. WTF did they do that.

Added music compare to the OP. I mean the new is good in its own right. But its not as good as the original.

@sterling: I hope you enjoy the chocobo riding music.

I sure didn't.

Man fuck this game is so good, I hate being this hung up on the soundtrack....

@tobbrobb: But that original sound track was also so good.

I personally prefer the new music. /shrug

I should probably first mention that FFX is one of my favorite games of all time. I played it as a young teenager and fell in love with it. I've always hated the menus but the new ones look much better. Especially considering how TV's have grown in the last few years. Putting that old menu screen on a 50" TV? No thanks... I think they really did a nice job with the menu screen, feels very similar but fitting for this day and age.

I haven't played the HD remaster so it's a bit harder to comment on the music. I did however listen to both versions of the song above and while I loved the original and it has tons of nostalgia tied to it, I really think the new one is better. It just sounds much smoother and the guitar part that starts around the one minute mark sounds really good. Still the old one was also really good, so all in all I don't think it matters a whole lot.

Could it be possible that they don't have the old recordings in quality good enough for an HD release?

@cloudymusic: agreed. more "orchestral"

music or menus aside. the battle system is terrific and still holds up so who cares

I just dislike the Arial-ification of all fonts these days. Even if the old fonts look kind of turdy, a lot of the game's character was in them.

I couldn't care less about either menu, but the new music I've listened to just sounds odd to me. Obviously my reaction is informed by nostalgia, but some of the new stuff just sounds muddy to me. It's such a visceral reaction, that fact alone is enough to dissuade me from purchasing, since I still have easy access to the PS2 games.

I've now listened to a few remasters and freshened up on some of the old versions as well and I still feel like the remasters are generally better.

The new version of Aurons theme is however not nearly as good.
Old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyyqKg3wDbg
New: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsc3wwwpBBg

Assault sounds much better:
Old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTwQYCjWDVM&list=PLEE9B8E4750CB344A&index=63
New: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb9SqrSNTmg

Movement in green has also sounds much better:
Old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-1zWQOzhbw
New: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVvqIgldbbc

Besaid Island is also a just amazingly beautiful in the new version:
Old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxJE6SSX-aw
New: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTjsokp7f4A

I think that a lot of the new versions (especially Besaid Island above) sound more inspired by eastern culture, which of course is where a lot of the game's inspiration comes from. I think it's very fitting.

ugghhh

the new design... not digging it.

Really like that old design.

Also very bummed to hear about music changes. The FF8 HD music suuuucks ultra hard and stopped me from replaying the game.

First off, Final Fantasy X is my favourite game ever made and I'm fairly certain at this point that nothing will top it (I used to play at least once a year since it came out - though I held off once the HD release was announced in 2011). It also includes some of my favourite music ever written (I say "some of" but actually "Besaid" is my favourite song of all time).

As such, I was very tentative of how this Remaster would turn out. I bloody love it. While I do still adore the original music (in most cases, more than the new ones) I still really like the updated music. There's so much depth built into it now that clearly they couldn't allow the original PS2 to play. It's fantastic.

Last year I went to the Final Symphony (Final Fantasy Music) event here in London which had Masashi Hamauzu and Nobuo Uematsu present at the event along with the London Syphonic Orchestra to play music from FFVI, VII and X. In the brochure thing (the thing that welcomes you and mentiones the order of the music that will play) there was a message explaining why Hamauzu had decided to rewrite his own piece for the FFX section (rather than letting the main people behind the event/London Symphonic Orchestra write them). He said how he had always felt like the music in X was unfinished, that he had so much more to say about the world (he specified Spira - saying he believed the music properly reflected the characters) in the music than he ever got across.

That seems like the reason that X's music was altered and X-2's wasn't: because Hamauzu had more to say and was using the HD remaster as the opportunity to properly get it across.

I think it shows. And I think it makes the entire game better for it (despite how I'd probably prefer to listen to my album of the original).

Maybe it's because I've always been the kind of person to be intrigued by remixed music (usually enjoying the originals more due to the emphasis that a good remix can tell on the original) but I genuinely think the updated music is a better and more striking than the visual changes. Heck, I've just played the Bikanel Island-Home section and the key moment in that place actually hit me hard (brought out a fire inside me that I haven't felt from that scene since the first time I played it). And I'm fairly certain it was due to the music depth building on the scene.

If anyone is shying away from getting this because they're unsure about if they want to play it with altered music, it's your loss.

Also, the menus look vastly superior now to the originals (too bad they're just as slow as they were before - maybe next time).

Just started playing X-2 for the first time ever, and uh, did they not update the menus for this one or something? It looks suuuuper PS2-ish (actually, it's almost looks like something out of a PS1 game) and it takes a second to pop up sometimes even. Really ugly menu design.

Despite really liking FFX, its soundtrack never clicked with me like a lot of FF soundtracks did.

I will stand by my theory that the reason why many people don't like the new music is because of how you're listening to it. With the original PS2 game, TVs weren't really that great and the sound that came out of them was comparatively pretty shitty. I'm willing to guess that most people played this game in their rooms and a smallish TV and the sound in TV back then wasn't too good - so the music needed to be optimized in some parts for that. With the new version, the sound design in the music I find is extremely subtle and listening to the music with or without headphones makes all the difference in the world.

For instance, I was told to go listen to some songs from the original and then the new remixed versions. I listened to a few, just over my laptop speakers, and i just thought they were a little noisy and too jumbled. The I put headphones in. It made such a huge difference, I could hear so many layers in the music that the originals simply were not able to convey.

Go listen to Challenge and compare them. You can hear the really cool bass in the background, the drums are clear, the speed up section around 2:20 is defined and gives a nice taste to the overall song. That's one of the reasons I'm picking this up on Vita - headphones for music quality. All of the HD remixes so far are just phenomenal in my opinion. I don't have a very good sound system for my TV and PS3, at least it's not good enough to sound as good as headphones.

As for the menus, I'm getting a huge Lost Odyssey menu vibe from them. Which is a good thing. The old one looks like complete shit, actually. Too many weird colors and the spacing is terrible.