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The story
A remaster of “Torneko’s Great Adventure: Mysterious Dungeon” was released on Steam and other platforms, and this thread kicked off with a post from someone who requested a refund over the poor controls. Specific complaints piled up one after another: the diagonal-movement settings, stretches where the player is locked out of input during animations, and a bug where pressing a button too early while descending stairs makes the character swing an attack the instant the next floor starts. Posters argued this wasn’t a case of “it’s just an old game” but rather problems newly introduced by this particular port, speculated that original developer Chunsoft wasn’t involved this time, weighed in on the 3,500 yen price tag, and debated Square Enix’s hit-or-miss track record with remakes.
Torneko’s controls are so bad I sent my first-ever Steam refund request.
– The overall pacing feels sluggish
– The level-up tempo is gross
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
That's odd…
Apparently there's a niche crowd out there who go out of their way to use PlayStation controllers on PC
On PC, the SNES version is the real rival
Because SNES games, even played today,
have way too good a tempo and controls
Oh yeah, fair enough
3,500 yen on Steam is pricier than most indie games, so it gets judged harshly
If it were 500 yen, people would just shrug and say "that's about right"
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4483340/_/
They're trying something unusual, huh
Plenty of people gave up on PS5 and moved to PC
They keep bringing up trophies and stuff too
There's already a base to build from — normally you'd polish it up, not degrade it
If anything, outsourcing it wholesale can make things even worse
DualSense and Pro Controllers can't connect wirelessly on PC, but there are still plenty of people out there just using whatever controller they like
That's why this happens
And Square Enix, who's supposed to be checking the work, probably doesn't know Torneko either at this point…
It's extra funny that Shiren 5-6 happen to be on sale right now too
Oh, they're not involved? Guess I'll wait and see then
With a remaster, it's pretty standard to assume the controls and content and everything else stay just like the original
It would've been fine if it had just stayed like the original…
It's worse than the original — that's exactly why people are mad, are you dumb?
They couldn't even keep it the same, that's exactly why everyone's grumbling
I had a little hope for Torneko 4, but a new entry made purely in-house by Square Enix is basically guaranteed to be garbage…
I think they cut ties [with Chunsoft] quite a while ago
Has there ever even been a success story?
Romancing SaGa was good, and FFT — which only people who never actually played it criticize — got way more playable too, it was great
The Dragon Quest remakes are trash though
RebeSaga and the Trials of Mana remake are both well-reviewed
I think those two were made by the same studio
The Romancing SaGa 3 remake looks like it's from the same team too, so expectations are high
Studio Gene's Trials of Mana and Romancing SaGa 2 are turning into an established go-to brand for remakes
Looks like they kept making games even after becoming an NTT subsidiary, so there's hope for their next remake too
Square Enix? All they can make is garbage
They probably just dump even the supervision on the players [via post-launch patches]
Babylon's Fall, Balan Wonderworld, Forspoken
Square Enix's veterans are incompetent too
Or did they just butcher it with some crappy change?
Just one example:
The diagonal-movement setting is garbage — you can switch between 3 options, but all three are trash
You keep getting locked out of input during sound effects and animations
If you're holding a button during the stairs-descending animation, it registers as a buffered input and you end up swinging an attack the instant the next floor starts
stuff like that
These clearly aren't inconveniences from it being an old game — they're new issues added by this port
That last one basically counts as a bug
If it's in-house, it's only natural to wait and see no matter how great the original classic was
If you buy it blind right away and it turns out bad, that's on you
Don't go saying it's the buyer's fault
It's because there are landmine-sniffing volunteers out there ("Lieutenant Guro" types) taking the hit for us that the rest of us get to survive
When someone who's only ever made 3D games with a 3D engine tries to build a simple 2D game from scratch, they end up recycling the dev-kit's skeleton template and churning out a garbage-quality game bloated with unnecessary overhead — probably something like that going on here
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
“Torneko’s Great Adventure: Mysterious Dungeon” is the title that launched Chunsoft’s (now Spike Chunsoft) Mysterious Dungeon series, and this remaster is believed to have been developed in-house by Square Enix, with posters pointing out that Spike Chunsoft’s involvement appears minimal. What stands out is that the complaints aren’t just nostalgic grumbling — commenters cited concrete technical flaws, including the diagonal-movement implementation, stretches where the player can’t act during animations, and a bug where a buffered input during the stairs-descending animation triggers an attack the instant the next floor begins, and stated plainly that these are new issues added by this port rather than “inconveniences because it’s an old game.” At the same time, opinions in the thread were split on Square Enix’s remake and remaster track record — while titles like Trials of Mana and Romancing SaGa 2 are held in high regard, posters also noted an industry-wide sense that most of the company’s other efforts tend to get panned.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “[Sad News] Torneko’s Great Adventure Erupts Into a Refund Firestorm Over Terrible Controls… A Port That Completely Ignored Chunsoft’s Attention to Detail“.
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