[Dreamcast] Pier Solar

• Pier Solar and The Great Architects
• Dreamcast
• 2015

Pier Solar (sometimes referred to as Pier Solar HD) is an enhanced remake of Pier Solar for the Megadrive. The original game was a Kickstarter funded project, eventually released in 2010. The Dreamcast, Linux, Windows, Wii, PS3 and PS4 remake added high-resolution, high-colour depth graphics (640×480 in the case of the Dreamcast), expanded soundtrack, added in extra story segments that were cut from the Megadrive release, and generally polished a lot of the content.

It's a traditional J-RPG game; text-driven story sections, interspersed by top-down map/town navigation and turn-based battles.

Visuals

The graphics are a mixture of styles; clearly most of the sprites have the most resemblance to their original 16bit versions on the Megadrive, but the backgrounds are much higher resolution and colour depth. The character portraits in dialogue boxes are higher resolution than the Megadrive and are also in a hand-drawn style, much like the animated sequences. It sounds as if the various styles would clash, but it meshes together nicely; especially the 16bit sprints on top of the newer, higher resolution backgrounds.

Audio

Gameplay

Intro

Early game dialogue