Final Fantasy IV GBA remake

[CritiqueMyWork]

I like the final fantasy remakes on the GBA. From the aesthetic point of view, it feels like they managed to do a lot with so little space. IV is specially great at this. Consider these sprites:







As a newbe, i'd like to understand how did the remake looked so good. Seems like it uses much more colors, which seems strange because is always discouraged in pixel art.

[eishiya]

Unnecessary, redundant colours are discouraged in pixel art. Well-used colours are not. Every colour should serve a purpose and benefit the artwork, and colours which are not well-distinguished from other colours often serve to just make things look blurry or muddy and make it more difficult for the artist to control their work, which is why they're discouraged.

The main changes between the two environments are:

• reduction of reliance on outlines. The new bricks and cobbles rely much more on shadows and highlights to define their forms, whereas the original had a poorer sense of form and everything was defined as shapes with very little sense of form. This change also has the benefit of making the rocks read well without overwhelming the sprites.
• better hue-shifting. The original rocks are all one hue, the original door is just about one hue. The remade rocks have hues ranging from yellow to red (and some pure grey), the remade door also has a broader range of hues, plus the added grey details.

In addition, the remake avoids banding and adds more subtle details with the new colours the GBA allows that the SNES didn't.

[CritiqueMyWork]

Thank you for your answer. Didn't catch the shadow vs outline thing. The water for example does exactly what you describe. But when it comes to the grass, it looks magic to me, how much of a difference a pixel here and there can produce.