GuestLog in

Having played the original, I have to say that these changes in colors schemes improves character appearance in any way that is very cool and works well.

In technique, style, colour, and animation, the new sprites look worse than the original's in almost every way.

As advertised, this hack changes the palettes of several character sprites, but the real stars of the show are the 6 playable characters. Even though a few of the NPCs are changed, I think the best way to review this hack is to break it down by individual character.

Duran's new palettes mostly look good, but I don't know how many of them I'd say are better than their original counterparts. The new palette for his base class, Fighter, looks excellent, and I'd say that his secondary classes both look pretty good, too. It's the top-tier where things start to get a little iffy; they don't look bad, aside from maybe Sword Master - which mixes colors that don't quite go together - but the Paladin's colors don't make him look like a holy knight. I also really liked the original colors for Sword Master and Duelist, but the new ones aren't quite as good.

Angela's an interesting case in that the comparison between old and new is pretty much the same for every class: the old color scheme is a bit dull, and doesn't really pop out; and the new color scheme is very bright, and doesn't have enough contrast in each area (especially her hair), and it makes her look almost like Easter candy. I love bright colors, and her hair looks great in her secondary classes, but the others look almost like they're smeared. I'm also not a big fan of her new bikini.

Hawk's old palettes were sort of a mixed bag for me, and I wasn't really in love with any of them, aside from the Night Blade. The new palettes, on the other hand, aren't quite as bright as most other characters' new palettes, instead going more for bold colors, and a lot of them are great. I especially like the Wanderer and Rogue, and his base class, Thief, looks fantastic! Ranger mixes some questionable colors, and the Night Blade's new outfit could use a little contrast, but has a great hair color.

Reiss has the same sort of problem as Angela, but I actually like most of her original palettes, so her new colors are mostly not an improvement for me. Also, like with Angela, the addition of different eye colors looks a little weird on her face, almost like an outline is missing somewhere. I'd love eye colors for these characters, but their faces are too small for it to work well, I feel. The secondary classes look pretty good, though; the Valkyrie has a nice mix of colors, and the Rune Maiden has a great matching armor color for her beautiful new pink hair. I also like the Dragon Master's new armor and the Star Lancer's new hair thingies.

Kevin's old palettes had some weird color combinations, but the new ones do, too; they're just brighter. Unlike some of the other characters' new palettes, these have a little contrast to keep them looking a little sharper, but a lot of the actual color combinations don't work so well together. With a little tweaking, these could've been good, but I don't know that I prefer any of them to their original palettes.

Carlie looks like a tiny clown in her new colors, but she always sort of looked like a tiny clown; she's just brighter, now. As with Duran's Paladin class, a lot of these don't pay any mind to what they actually are, so the colors don't fit the class, itself. I suppose that a Sage could look like most anything, but Bishops don't usually wear fuchsia and fluorescent yellow, nor would I imagine an Evil Shaman wearing bright orange. The new palettes do fit Carlie's character better, but not her actual classes.

Although I do tend to prefer brighter or bolder colors in general, they don't seem to fit very well into this hack, for the most part. You have a few hits, but far more often, you have misses, and since this game doesn't have a very bright visual aesthetic - especially with its full day-night cycle - they don't go well with that, either. It's fine to make your characters pop out, but here, I feel that they pop out a little too much. These new palettes might've gone a bit better in other Seiken Densetsu games, such as Secret of Mana or Sword of Mana, but here, something a bit more muted would likely have worked better. A theme would also have helped, such as having darker base colors for some of the darker classes, maybe throwing in brighter hair or something to provide a good contrast, as Duran's original Duelist palette did, if you want something brighter. Though I love the concept, I think the original game looks better overall than this hack.

(Review for version 1.4)

The colors are too bright for the game style; they don't really match. To be honest, I didn't have high expectations because of your SD2 color patch, which also had this same problem.

For example, Angela's hair. The brightness of it diminishes the outline, so it all just blends together. Also the skin of each character seems too bright to be the color of skin.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this patch.