The Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters for Final Fantasy I, II, and III on Steam are finally available and reviews are starting to roll in. The majority of reviews say that they’re extremely well done remasters, but there are some complaints about the font choice. The font is an easy fix, but what’s odd is that while official reviews have been mainly positive the fan reviews have so far been extremely negative on sites like Metacritic. While fans and media don’t always agree on a game it’s rare to see Final Fantasy games score this low on reviews.
Turns out there’s a reason for that. The majority of fans that are posting reviews on Metacritic are likely doing so because they can’t play the remakes on a console. Right now, the Pixel Remasters are exclusive to Steam and mobile devices, while this isn’t the first time they’ve been ported to those devices there were a lot of fans complaining about it when the remakes were announced over the summer.
Word must have gotten out about the remasters receiving a low Metacritic score because it’s been slowly rising as actual positive reviews are starting to make their way over. These new reviews also include text associated with the score, unlike the negative ones. Originally, a since-deleted comment complaining about the remaster not being available on consoles was the only negative review that had actual text attached to it.
This appears to be a Metacritic only problem because the Steam reviews are overwhelmingly positive with over 800 positive user reviews and less than 100 negative ones. However, the negative reviews on Steam are unrelated to it being unavailable on console and are actual critiques such as the removal of content, a few complaints of stuttering, and one mentioning screen tearing.
This should go without saying, but review bombing a game on Metacritic is not going to get the game ported to consoles. If anything it’s more likely to encourage developers to not port the game at all because of low scores.