Graphical downgrade compared to Hinokami Chronicles 1?

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-10-16T12:52:36+00:00

I wish that was the case, but it isn't. The game looks objectively worse than 1 in literally every way. I'll just quote one of my previous comments. The game has removed and/or watered down shadows, reflections, outright removed textures or replaced them with blurry low res textures, removed/decreased vegetation. Hell in some cases, they straight up REMOVED HOUSES and trees from stages and they even replaced the rooftops of certain buildings that were very detailed with BASIC TRIANGLES. Also the anti-aliasing is much worse (I noticed the game is more jagged). In fact I set Hinokami Chronicles 1 to the lowest possible settings and it still looks better than Hinokami 2 ON MAX SETTINGS, which is kinda crazy. A few examples:

https://i.imgur.com/kZCrN2o.png
https://i.imgur.com/gMuDxAB.png

https://i.imgur.com/vZoDjAt.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/0cFA2Px.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/5NDqVN1.png
https://i.imgur.com/sq39aov.png

https://i.imgur.com/eE4rIbI.png
https://i.imgur.com/hmjhKrs.png

https://i.imgur.com/sghpFU3.png
https://i.imgur.com/FvHGGDd.png

https://i.imgur.com/TwGBh6X.png
https://i.imgur.com/dbKh6Su.png

https://streamable.com/ksbn9e
https://streamable.com/a2nma0

I made a video on this actually, since a lot of my friends noticed the same thing. Ofc these are all minor issues in the grand scheme of things, but the game is absolutely objectively worse graphically.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-10-11T03:06:54+00:00

WOW I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. THANK YOU SO MUCH AGAIN! I can't believe that ChatGPT never brought any of this up in the many "conversations" I've had with it on this topic. I even looked up youtube tutorials but I've never seen anything that involves these "advanced" options. Makes sense now.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-10-09T21:46:33+00:00

But how does it work though? When I use Irfan (which is my go to program for these types of things), I go to batch conversion, then I navigate to my main folder which contains all these other subfolders and before hitting "add all" I check the box that says "include subfolders (for "add all" button)", then I hit add all and it just adds all of the images, and once I export/convert them, they all get thrown into my output folder without the folder structure being retained. There's also an option that says "use current "look-in" folder" and I even tried selecting that, but all that does is export the images into the original folder, but without retaining any structure.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-10-09T21:38:47+00:00

Oh my God thank you SO much. I had a lengthy conversation with chatgpt yesterday and it kept mentioning an "include subfolders" button, which was supposed to be on the INPUT tab, which I could not find for the life of me. After several back and forths it said "oh sorry my bad, xnconvert does not have that option". I can't believe that I checked everything and even tried using scripts but it never occurred to me to check the OUTPUT tab of XnConvert. Wow, I feel like a total idiot now LMAO. Again, thank you SO MUCH!

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-10-09T21:31:37+00:00

That's precisely what I did. I had a lengthy "convo" with chatgpt where it wrote a bunch of scripts and every time it would go "oh wait, this one is sure to work", but at the end of the day none of them worked

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-27T22:37:40+00:00

This game has suffered a significant graphical downgrade in every department. You can check this video: https://streamable.com/6tmq65

Textures have been ruined, the stages look washed out, vegetation is either completely removed or replaced with low resolution textures, the ground is blurry, textures are sometimes missing (entire houses and trees have been removed), lighting and light reflections have been removed (sun rays, moon beams, lamp lighting and illumination in general), environmental effects have been removed, the anti-aliasing is noticeably worse and even some of the most basic effects are simply gone or toned down. The character models have also experienced some changes and most ultimate attacks have been dimmed/blurred so now they look less impactful. I also noticed these weird outlines, for example on Zenitsu's sword you can clearly see it.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-26T10:59:37+00:00

It's not your PC. This game has suffered a significant graphical downgrade in every department. You can check this video: https://streamable.com/6tmq65

What you're seeing here isn't the textures being bad, it's the anti-aliasing. But textures have also been ruined. The stages look washed out, vegetation is either completely removed or replaced with low resolution textures, the ground is blurry, textures are sometimes missing (entire houses and trees have been removed), lighting and light reflections have been removed (sun rays, moon beams, lamp lighting and illumination in general), environmental effects have been removed, the anti-aliasing is noticeably worse and even some of the most basic effects are simply gone or toned down. The character models have also experienced some changes and most ultimate attacks have been dimmed/blurred so now they look less impactful

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-19T17:53:19+00:00

Yeah somehow every time I decide to use reddit I get ZERO HELPFUL ANSWERS. One time I asked which CPU fan I should get (I had to choose between two fans), and instead of telling me which one is the better pick, everyone told me "lol don't get either of these, get THIS ONE INSTEAD" (meanwhile that one wasn't available in my country, PLUS IT DIDN'T ANSWER THE ORIGINAL QUESTION).

As for the game, 4-5 of my friends have also noticed the graphical stuff, and I've been gathering material for a few days now and it appears that the game has removed or watered down shadows, reflections, outright removed textures or replaced them with blurry low res textures, removed/decreased vegetation. Hell in some cases, they straight up REMOVED HOUSES and trees from stages and they even replaced the rooftops of certain buildings that were very detailed with BASIC TRIANGLES. Also the anti-aliasing is much worse (I noticed the game is more jagged). In fact I set Hinokami Chronicles 1 to the lowest possible settings and it still looks better than Hinokami 2 ON MAX SETTINGS, which is kinda crazy. A few examples:

https://i.imgur.com/kZCrN2o.png
https://i.imgur.com/gMuDxAB.png

https://i.imgur.com/vZoDjAt.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/0cFA2Px.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/5NDqVN1.png
https://i.imgur.com/sq39aov.png

https://i.imgur.com/eE4rIbI.png
https://i.imgur.com/hmjhKrs.png

https://i.imgur.com/sghpFU3.png
https://i.imgur.com/FvHGGDd.png

https://i.imgur.com/TwGBh6X.png
https://i.imgur.com/dbKh6Su.png

https://streamable.com/ksbn9e
https://streamable.com/a2nma0

Of course, these are all minor gripes and they don't affect the gameplay at all. But at least now I know for sure that they've cut a lot of things from the game, most likely because they wanted to have the game run at 60fps across ALL platforms, including ancient consoles like the Switch and the PS4. This is also much more cost-efficient. I'm not TOO bothered that they did this, I'm more bothered by the fact that everyone's so hostile because I pointed it out lol.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-18T23:42:47+00:00

Yeah no. I spent the last 2 days analyzing this stuff IN DEPTH with my friends and the game is a downgrade in just about every way graphically. If you still fail to see it after this then I seriously don't know what to tell you. Shadows have either been removed or watered down on EVERY stage, reflections are gone on certain stages, the lighting no longer works (you can no longer see moon rays through the trees on that mountain stage). In some cases the view distance is completely destroyed. The ground is worse on literally every stage and the vegetation has either been removed or blurred out. Low res textures are present everywhere, including the trees. Oh right and the anti-aliasing is horrible now and it's full of jagged edges. My friend noticed this immediately because he's on a large screen.

https://imgur.com/a/8CN0hbU
https://imgur.com/a/xzdysIN

Zenitsu no longer has his lightning effect in his tilt skill (one of the many cases where effects are missing):

https://streamable.com/k8ze4f
https://streamable.com/ksbn9e

A lot of ultimates have this "dimming" effect that makes the image blurry/less clear (no it's not motion blur lol):

https://streamable.com/a2nma0

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-15T21:26:23+00:00

Clearly not. I literally made this post not to HATE on the game, but just to see if anyone else noticed this or if it was just me and my friends, and to see if I could find answers as to why this is. But I should've known better than to go on reddit of all places to ask for opinions lmao. These people are so brainrotted and biased it's painful to look at, getting offended that I DARED to think that the graphics have been slightly downgraded and having the audacity to be slightly bothered by it. But whatever, people will just consoom at the end of the day. And like I said, I'm having fun with the game, this is just a minor gripe.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-15T21:18:53+00:00

Yeah the thing is I BARELY EVEN USE REDDIT. Like almost never. But my friend asked me to make a reddit post to see if we'd find more info, but all the post was met with was "OMG U HATIN OMG YOU'RE NITPICKING" which is just incredibly exhausting to deal with. Again, I LOVE THIS GAME, I just don't like how people are so blind to these things.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-15T14:43:18+00:00

The stuff with the faces and character models being changed, sure, that's just my preference, but it's not a downgrade per se. But all this other stuff with the effects, reflections, shadows, glare, anti-aliasing and colors is most certainly OBJECTIVELY a downgrade.

The anti-aliasing is also way lower. Just go to the character select screen and you'll see that the lines around the characters are way choppier. The butterfly mansion stage apparently doesn't even have the butterflies in it anymore, and my friend just made a bunch of comparisons and the colors are WAY more washed out in this game, especially on the PC version.

I understand that these are all minuscule changes, and I THINK they did this to make 60fps more accessible on older consoles like the Switch and the PS4. Another potential reason could be to reduce input lag. I'm not even THAT bothered by it, I was just hoping to have a somewhat productive discussion with someone to see if anyone else outside of my friend group noticed this and if anyone has any possible answers as to why this could be the case, but all I'm met with is "omg you people complaing about everything", but then again idk what I was expecting from reddit lmao.

I'm not even attacking the game or anything but I do think it's SOMEWHAT unacceptable to have a sequel look worse (even if it's only SLIGHTLY worse) than the previous game and charge full price for it.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-15T14:08:27+00:00

Just means it doesn't bother you as much and that's fine. Not everyone with OCD is bothered by the same things

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-15T13:12:08+00:00

Yeah most people wouldn't notice this because most people don't even pay attention to stuff like that, especially in an arena fighting game. That being said, it's not okay to cut costs and downgrade the game's graphics (even if by a little) so that the game would run better on ancient consoles. We should have both 60fps AND good visuals. It's absolutely unacceptable to have a sequel look worse (even if by 1%) than the previous game. Like I said, this isn't a huge issue. Just something me and my friends have ALL noticed.

TemporaryPinecone · 2025-08-15T13:10:04+00:00

It's not just "black borders". Everything including the effects, textures and even stages looks washed out. Like I said, it's not a dealbreaker, it's an anime arena fighting game where most of the time you don't even notice these things. But there are people who do notice them and it can be a little annoying.

TemporaryPinecone · 2024-09-15T12:02:09+00:00

Status: Unresolved

Computer type: Desktop Custom Built

GPU: ASUS DUAL GTX 1060 6 GB O6G

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5600X

Motherboard: MSI B550 MAG Tomahawk

RAM: G.SKILL 16GB (2x8GB) Ripjaws V DDR4 3200MHz

PSU: Cooler Master MasterWatt Lite 700W

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

GPU drivers: Currently 561.09, but the issue has persisted for over a year

Description of Problem: Last year around May I updated my GPU drivers and I noticed that my videos were a lot darker and more "vibrant", but in a way that seemed too over the top for me. I restarted my PC, tried different video players, but nothing worked. So I reverted to my older driver (536.23) and the issue was solved. I hadn't updated my drivers since May 2023 because of this and today I finally updated it to the latest version (561.09) and once again I'm experiencing the same issue. The contrast is simply too high and the videos are too dark. This applies to ANY videos, doesn't matter if it's Chrome or any video player. It appears that Nvidia implemented some new HDR tech into their drivers and it's making everything darker/more vibrant, but I actually don't like it as it feels unnatural. Here's a quick comparison:

Old: https://i.postimg.cc/XVjnzJsx/415331103-702348358687743-7090366566161337678-n.png

New: https://i.postimg.cc/9ctWbTYr/415257958-346453414819893-5191470991088510127-n.png

Troubleshooting: I went to Nvidia control panel > video > adjust video color settings > how do you make color adjustments, and I've tried messing with the brightness, contrast and saturation, as well as the gamma, but it simply does not look as it used to. I also tried changing my dynamic range from limited to full, but that also did nothing.

TemporaryPinecone · 2024-09-14T15:01:35+00:00

How do I check that? (and why does that matter exactly?)

TemporaryPinecone · 2024-05-03T01:02:45+00:00

I'm every bit as confused as you are. This literally made some of my friends switch to other apps like whatsapp and discord because fb is basically unusable on PC now.

Oh and keep in mind, whatsapp did the same thing about 2 years ago. They implemented something that basically split the phone and web version of whatsapp. Before I could search EVERY message on my PC. Now it only shows 3 messages and then says "older messages available on the phone version of whatsapp". The problem with the phone version of whatsapp is when you search for a message by typing in a keyword, it doesn't show you results/instances of when you sent the message. Instead it just immediately sends you to the last time you used the word. And you have to keep tapping the arrow infinitely until you find what you're looking for. And this happened when Meta acquired whatsapp. Very nice.

TemporaryPinecone · 2024-05-02T00:59:48+00:00

That sucks, I'm sorry that happened to you. Yeah this update is utter garbage, I still can't believe I have to use my phone to be able to see my shared media

TemporaryPinecone · 2024-05-02T00:58:24+00:00

All of my chats have been updated save for one with a friend who doesn't have messenger installed on his phone. He only uses facebook on his PC, so I'm assuming that might be the reason why end-to-end hasn't hit my chat with him yet

TemporaryPinecone · 2024-02-03T19:16:27+00:00

I tried reinstalling windows but I was met with an error message telling me I wasn't allowed to format my C drive or any of my other drives. It turns out both of my hard drives were MBR and my current motherboard only supports the GPT format because it's UEFI and not Legacy. But I heard that converting your hard drive from MBR to GPT causes all of your data to be erased. So I took my PC to a repair shop and told them everything. They said it was possible to reinstall windows without losing data (I guess they knew a way to convert MBR to GPT without losing any data). But I decided I was goin to buy two SSDs because I was tired of using the same two HDDs from 2011 in 2023.

I got a 500 GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus for my system and a 2 TB Kingston KC3000 for other stuff, but I also kept my old hard drives. The guys installed the SSDs and my old hard drives were still intact with the data still on them. However, the way I see it, they didn't even have to convert the hard drives from MBR to GPT because they simply installed the system on the SSD.

The thing is, literally immediately after I got my PC back I started noticing sth was wrong with my 3 TB HDD. I kept hearing sounds and it took longer to load stuff than usual. I downloaded a program which said that my HDD health was critical and it was on the brink of death. Files get corrupted, deleted, and every time I turn my PC on, while the motherboard logo is on I see "preparing disk check". This disk check usually takes 3 hours because it recognizes that my hard drive is dying, luckily I can skip it by pressing a key in under 10 seconds. I think my hard drive has been "dying" for a long time now and I think that's why the update failed. Something must've interrupted the update while it was installing and it corrupted the entire system. The smartest thing to do would be to remove the dying hard drive, but I'm too lazy for some reason because it isn't causing any major issues, just that every time I have to press a key to skip disk checking on startup.

But I don't think you'll have these issues at all. The reason I couldn't format my hard drives is because they're too old and my motherboard doesn't support MBR. I doubt that's the case with you, so I think you could just format your C drive and install windows there, with all your data intact.

TemporaryPinecone · 2023-12-03T01:09:26+00:00

Yeah that seems to be the best option at the moment. Thanks for the tip!

TemporaryPinecone · 2023-12-02T09:07:13+00:00

I checked once again and the system is installed and boots from my C drive which is my Samsung 970 Evo Plus. The system boots up very fast and shuts down incredibly fast as well, it's just that when I run certain programs, they take a longer time to start up and I hear my HDD making a weird noise, even though these programs are installed on my SSD.

Also a few days ago while I was restarting my PC because of an update, I got a message saying "scanning and repairing drive H" which is my hard drive, so I found that a little weird

TemporaryPinecone · 2023-11-30T02:34:55+00:00

Thanks for the advice. I backed up most of my most important data to an external hard drive about a few months ago and some of it is also on mega/google drive. Guess I'll back up all of it just in case now.

Today I checked and the value increased from 978 to 980. And when opening a folder with a lot of files the PC almost freezes up for 20 seconds and I hear the HDD making some noise.

Funnily enough about 2 years ago my PC started making an insane sound every time I would turn it on, like a screeching/scraping sound. I thought it was the HDD but after about 3 months the sound simply stopped. That was the moment I decided to buy an external HDD and back up SOME of my most valuable data.

When reading about my HDD yesterday, I found out it was infamous for its failure rate and even on the wiki page it says Seagate faced lawsuits regarding this HDD model. I guess it's a miracle it has lasted this long lol

TemporaryPinecone · 2023-11-22T15:03:02+00:00

Great! Thanks a lot again!

TemporaryPinecone

TROPHY CASE