Some of the visuals here are a definite improvement that make environments feel more immersive and give more of a sense of volume to big objects.

But then in other places the game looks downright ugly. In particular in the shade. A lot of the textures are still flat, and the new lighting system makes them look even flatter than before. But then you come out to sunny outside areas and the brightness of the bloom is just insane. And still, even there, some objects are brighter than others. It all looks so inconsistent.

It's weird because SS3 uses the same engine, but looks amazing. I guess they put more work into that game. I even ran this at higher settings than Sam 3, but it looked much worse. Idk, maybe if I ran it on ultra it'd look nice? But I can't afford that right now.

But even if it weren't for the aforementioned problems, this remaster really butchers the original art style. It replaces skyboxes that had landscapes in them extending into the distance and creating a sense of a bigger place with just simple skies. The water that used to be vividly blue in the original, here is just transparent, often looking grey because it just tints the texture in the background. A lot of assets were made to look more realistic which clashes with the whimsical style of the original. Even if you select the vivid color profile in the settings, the game just looks visually inconsistent.

After a little bit of playtesting, I decided not to use it for my new playthrough of the original and only played the Legend of the Beast DLC on it (which was awful). I'll stick to Classics: Revolution.