Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga showcases improved textures, 60fps, and more remaster features

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Refint/Games recently revealed details about the upcoming remaster of Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga. The game will support frame rates over 60fps, multiple aspect ratios, and improved textures. It launches digitally on October 10th for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC (via Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store) in Western regions.

Originally launched in Japan for the PlayStation Portable in 2010, this unique fighting game is coming to consoles and PC worldwide next month as a digital download. A limited physical edition will also be available through Limited Run Games. You can find details about the remastered features in part one of the overview from Refint/Games here.

Hello! 

As we get ready to launch Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga, we want to share details about the work we’ve done to remaster it. We’ll be posting a series of updates focusing on the visual upgrades we’ve made to bring the game’s look up to date for modern platforms.

We’re rolling out a series of improvements that will benefit all players, not just those on PC. While a few features will remain exclusive to PC (like support for any screen size), the vast majority of updates are coming to all consoles as well. We know it hasn’t always been possible to have the same features across platforms, so we’re thrilled to be able to deliver these enhancements consistently.

With that out of the way, let’s get right to it:

Texture quality enhancements

The biggest and most obvious change will be much better texture quality throughout the game. We can break down the textures into two main areas, which we’ll discuss separately.

  • UI textures, which is what you’ll be seeing on all menus and during the story mode cutscenes

  • In-game textures refer to all the visual elements you see while playing, including the surfaces of maps, characters, and other in-game elements.

UI Textures

We’ve completely updated nearly all of the game’s interface textures, aiming for a sharp 4K look. This meant redrawing most textures and using the highest-quality original artwork whenever possible. We also re-rendered map previews at a higher resolution for better clarity.

You’ll enjoy clear, high-quality visuals not just while playing, but also when navigating the menus – everything will look consistently sharp. It took a lot of work to achieve this, and we’re really pleased with how it turned out.

In-game textures

We didn’t just focus on the user interface; we completely overhauled the entire game. Before making any improvements, we carefully identified and gathered the highest-quality versions of all the game’s textures.

  • Whenever possible, we used higher-quality map textures taken directly from the original PC versions of the games. This guarantees we started with the best possible source material.

  • For some assets, the original high resolution project files were still available.

  • Okay, so for a lot of the textures, we actually used the original, lower-resolution versions from when the game first came out. It meant we didn’t have to spend a ton of time cleaning them up and fixing things like dithering – basically, we skipped a whole step in making them look perfect, and it saved us a lot of work!

After that, we worked on improving the texture quality using a variety of methods. There wasn’t one single perfect solution; each technique gave us different results, so we carefully tested every option and picked the best one. Sometimes, even the best result had issues or wasn’t good enough, so we made manual adjustments – from small corrections to completely redrawing the texture. We even applied this detailed process to some textures used for on-screen text in certain situations.

This project used significantly fewer textures than most games, but creating them still took a lot of effort. I want to thank Vimiani, our texture expert, for leading the selection and improvement of all the textures. Thanks also to Momo and the team at Studio Pom who helped redraw textures for story elements and the user interface.

I’ve been checking out some comparison shots – they’re a bit rough since they were taken from an early version of the game, and they use the original textures for comparison. You can click the arrows to easily see the difference between how things used to look and how they look now!

   

The difference is night and day – I hope you enjoy the results while playing the game!

60 FPS support

You’ll immediately notice a smoother experience with the game now targeting 60 frames per second on all platforms. Increasing the framerate wasn’t easy, though, because the game was originally built to run at 30 FPS. We had to adjust the game’s core systems to support this change, and also carefully rebalance elements to ensure it still feels like the original game you know and love.

We explored different frame rates, but ultimately prioritized a stable 60 FPS. This was crucial for smooth and consistent gameplay, especially during online multiplayer – a central part of this release.

Aspect Ratio

PC monitors come in many different sizes and shapes, and with devices like the Steam Deck becoming popular, we’ve focused on using as much of the screen as possible, even with non-traditional aspect ratios. While most menus and story cutscenes will stay in the standard 16:9 format (with black bars on the sides when viewed on wider screens), the main game itself supports almost any aspect ratio. We’ve specifically tested it with ultrawide monitors (up to 21:9) and smaller screens down to 5:4, including the 16:10 ratio used by the Steam Deck.

21:9 screenshot)

Map Geometry & 3D assets

As a big fan, I’m so excited about the updated resolutions and wider aspect ratios! But honestly, bumping everything up *does* reveal a few little imperfections in the original models – stuff you just couldn’t see before. They even had to redo some animations, especially for support characters, to make them look smooth with the higher framerate. There was this one map, too, where they’d cleverly optimized it for the PSP by flipping a texture. It looked fine back then, but at these new, higher resolutions, it became really noticeable, so they had to fix that as well!

We used special tools created for this game to revisit and fix some of the 3D models in Blender, addressing the issues I mentioned earlier. I’d also like to thank our beta tester, Geheimen, for their help with this.

(screenshots from a development build)

Other enhancements

Alongside all of these, we’re providing other usual graphic enhancements and options:

  • Originally, distant objects that could be destroyed would disappear to help the older PSP system run smoothly. However, modern platforms are powerful enough that this isn’t necessary anymore, so objects now remain visible at all distances.

  • Anti-aliasing options – MSAA (x2, x4 and x8) is available as well as FXAA for lower-end systems.

  • Anisotropic filtering improves image quality, especially at angled views, and is now considered a standard feature in most games.

  • You can set any resolution your monitor supports, giving you complete flexibility alongside the adjustable aspect ratios.

Conclusion

This initial update focused on visual improvements to the game. The next post will cover changes to gameplay, including new modes not available in the original version. We’ll detail online and offline multiplayer options, plus support for mouse, keyboard, and controllers, among other things.

I hope to see you on the next post!

Best regards,
Adrian Graber – Producer & Lead Developer @ refint/games

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2025-09-23 00:28