Lazy Upscale or Legitimate Love Letter? Ranking Game and Anime Remakes by Whether They Actually Deserved Your Money
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There is a specific kind of betrayal that only happens when you buy a remaster. You see the trailer. The lighting looks incredible. The character models have actual facial expressions now. You feel something warm and familiar, like bumping into an old friend who looks like they've been hitting the gym. You pay full price. You get home. You boot it up.
And then you realize the gameplay is identical to something you finished in 2003, the new content is two bonus levels that feel like they were made on a lunch break, and the price tag was thirty dollars more than it had any right to be.
We've all been there. This list is for all of us.
S-Tier: These Remakes Understood the Assignment (And Then Some)
Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019) — Capcom took a beloved survival horror classic, completely rebuilt it from the ground up with an over-the-shoulder camera, redesigned enemy AI, and expanded lore, and somehow made it feel both new and deeply faithful. Mr. X is now a persistent threat that haunts your every move instead of a fixed encounter, and the atmosphere is genuinely terrifying in ways the original could only gesture toward. This is what a remake looks like when a studio respects both the source material and the audience. It didn't just justify the purchase — it became its own landmark release.
Final Fantasy VII Remake / Rebirth — Controversial for some purists, but hear us out. Square Enix made a genuine creative decision here: instead of a 1-to-1 recreation, they built a new narrative layer on top of the original that interrogates the very nature of remakes. Whether you love or hate where the story goes, nobody can accuse them of phoning it in. The combat system alone is worth discussing for hours. This is a remake that has opinions, and that's more interesting than a prettier polygon count.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy — Vicarious Visions rebuilt three games with stunning fidelity, modernized the controls slightly, and added quality-of-life improvements without stripping out any of the original challenge. For longtime fans, it was a pure nostalgia delivery system. For younger players, it was a proper introduction to some legitimately great platformers. Everyone won. This is the template.
A-Tier: Genuinely Good, With Asterisks
Shadow of the Colossus (2018) — Bluepoint's remake of the PS2 classic is a technical marvel. The visuals are stunning in a way that makes the original's ambitions feel finally realized. The gameplay is untouched — for better or worse, depending on how you feel about the camera. It's not a dramatic reinvention, but it's a beautiful one, and the source material was already so strong that "don't break it" was a legitimate design philosophy.
Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver — If you grew up on Gold and Silver, these remakes were everything. The Pokémon following you in real time. The Safari Zone revamp. The post-game Kanto content. Game Freak clearly cared about this one, and it shows in every detail. The reason it's not S-Tier is simply that subsequent Pokémon remakes have made HeartGold and SoulSilver look like the ceiling rather than the baseline, which is its own kind of tragedy.
Demon's Souls (2020) — Bluepoint again, and again, stunning. The visual overhaul is extraordinary. Some fans take issue with specific artistic changes — certain color palettes, the soundtrack — but as an introduction to the FromSoftware style for PlayStation 5 launch players, it was a masterclass. New players got a phenomenal experience. Veterans got to argue about the fog gate sound effects. Everybody had something to do.
B-Tier: Fine, But You Probably Didn't Need to Pay Full Price
The Last of Us Part I (PS5) — This is where the discourse gets spicy. The Last of Us is a masterpiece. The 2022 rebuild on PS5 is genuinely gorgeous. But the original already ran beautifully on PS4, the Remastered version existed, and the improvements — while real — don't fundamentally change an experience most PlayStation fans had already had. At seventy dollars, it felt like Sony charging the faithful a premium for loyalty. New players got the best version of a great game. Everyone else got a receipt.
Mafia: Definitive Edition — A genuine remake of a beloved open-world game, with a fully rebuilt story, updated mechanics, and a much larger map. It should be higher on this list. The problem is that some of the original's rough charm got smoothed away in the process, and the new voice acting divided the fanbase. It's a good game. Whether it's a good remake depends heavily on how attached you are to the 2002 version.
C-Tier: We See What You Did There
GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition — This launch was a historic moment in the wrong direction. Three beloved games, rebuilt by a studio with limited time and resources, released in a state so buggy that Rockstar pulled the originals from sale before the new version was ready. Rain that made the game unplayable. Character models that looked like they'd been run through a filter that misunderstood human anatomy. It has since been patched into something approaching acceptable, but the damage to the legacy was real. "Definitive" remains one of the most ironic words in gaming history.
Warcraft III: Reforged — Blizzard promised a rebuilt classic with updated cutscenes, a reworked campaign, and improved multiplayer. What shipped was an upscale with degraded multiplayer functionality and cutscenes that didn't match what was shown at BlizzCon. The community response was severe enough that Blizzard offered refunds — a genuinely rare move. This is the cautionary tale the industry needed, and apparently didn't fully learn from.
The Verdict
The difference between a remake worth buying and a lazy cash grab comes down to intent, and players can usually feel which one they're dealing with within the first few hours. The best remakes ask what the original was trying to do and then use modern tools to actually do it. The worst ones ask how little they can change while still justifying a new price tag.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Publishers know this. Some of them respect it. Others have decided it's a revenue stream.
Your job — as someone who has presumably spent actual money on at least one of these — is to vote with your wallet. And then come argue about it in the comments, because that's what we're all here for.
