This can be good or bad.

Evil West. This is a really fun game with some rough edges but it feels like a really good B game from the PS3/360 era and I love it!

Gungrave GORE. It feels true to the series' PS2 roots. That may put some people off but I love it! One of the few times I platinumed a game.

Slave Zero X. Feels right out of the PS1/Saturn era from looks to gameplay in a good way.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It felt like the true successor to Jet Set Radio Future I wanted. Technically maybe it can't run on 6th-generation hardware but it looks, feels, and sounds like it in the best way.

Now for some bad.

Too Human. I recently tried this with an open mind. This felt like a really poor PS2 game. One of those games you'd always see at a Gamestop no one bought like Death by Degrees.

Contra Rogue Corps. This felt like a shitty 2013 mobile game ported to consoles in 2019 where the MTX was removed but the progression mechanics in place for MTX are still there. A massive pile of shit game.

Dusk and Prodeus feel like they came out of a time capsule from 1997 and I absolutely adore that about them.

Same for the 2016 Doom reboot, which discarded the trappings of the shooters of its time in favour of an old school attitude that made for one of the best shooters of the last decade.

Pkaying Wo Long Fallen Dynasty now, it feels like a 7th gen game by a developer outside of any ties with the console big three. Hell, it even looks like it. It's just a solid game that feels AA by today's standards but would be right at home as a big third party release on 7th gen that'd take all the gold home.

Also, Neir Replicant. You'd swear it's a remaster of a ps2 if you didn't know it wasn't. In almost every aspect it'd be right at home on 6th gen, playing it in the mid 2000's .

Well, it is a remake of a PS3 game that is a spinoff of Drakengard on PS2 lol. Tho Replicant updated the combat to feel closer to Automata. Original combat was a bit stiff and more PS2 era.

Any Earth Defense Force game is pretty much an early 2000s game with a progressively better coat of paint.

Ys 9 had progression, town feel, sidequests, camera cuts, etc of a 6th gen JRPG. Same for 8 but that originally on the Vita so it makes sense. 10 looks like its using a new engine.

And a deeper cut, Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook. It's like a portal opened up from 2010 and spit out a PSP game, something like Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger VS Darkdeath Evilman, that runs on modern machines.


Their adherence to older design leans towards a net positive for all 3 IMO, some QoL problems aside.

Souls series. Death has repercussions, which most newer games don't have. Most games have simple check points, souls kicks you back to last bonfire and the player needs to transverse large parts of the level.

Oh I know, I followed Neir in Magazines back in the day but only played it in Replicant after Automata was so good. I'm just saying it feels like it is from the ps2, like the whole vibe and design and everything else, it wouldn't be amiss if you were playing it on PS2 with a lot of Jaggies, bloom and fog effects to hide draw distance. I'm not knocking the game, it's a great remake and looks pretty decent on PRO at 1300p or whatever it is. I'd never have played Neir, it looks so janky and basic. 

Yeah, I always hear souls design being praised as some new thing but I just think, what about Crash Bandicoot? Wasn't that souls before souls, hell even the apples are sort of like souls. 

Souls, at least to me, is a prettier NES game.  Punishing levels, tough bosses and limited check points.

I think the praise is because most of gaming was going accessibility and souls went in the other direction.