It depends on how much falls under "enemy designs" (
the general design? the art? the graphic quality...?). Here's how I feel about the enemies as they appear in general.
Although I haven't played either game in years, one of the weakest aspects of Cosmic Fantasy 2 for me was always the enemy designs and one of the most appealing aspects of Dragon Slayer has always been
its enemy designs. It was surprising in recent years to actually hear people saying anything negative about Dragon Slayer's.
I've noticed that CF2's do get dragged down by the visible background and I think that the battles would look much better with solid black bgs. Still, for every enemy in Cosmic 2 that I like or don't really dislike, they aren't nearly as memorable as all the ones I
don't like. Part of it is the coloring, I know that many enemies would look better rendered differently and the original artwork probably looks cool. The bosses tend to look better as well.
Dragon Slayer's enemies have always stood out to me for their detail and color. They are what I wanted out of 16-bit graphics and when the game came out, RPGs still had a reputation for having poorer graphics than other genres. The graphics look "perfect". They're so shaded and detailed that they looked more like nice painted artwork than pixelated graphics on TVs back in the day. I also love how the all the coloring works together instead of clashing like many CF2 enemies. I'm assuming that DS's enemies use tiles to look so good.
Separate from the impressive graphic quality, DS's enemy designs are very original while CF2's aren't. Even if a particular enemy in DS is a standard monster, like a golem, the artwork looks nothing like any other game. DS has a noticeable and consistent style, while CF2's is more all over the place. All the extra little angles and barbs and textures and clothing patterns in the DS enemies all make a big difference when compared to other games. The artist went the extra mile to make them special. It's especially impressive considering the confined space they occupy. The DS enemies also look similar to the cooler enemies in the upgraded Ys III ports and other Falcom games.
Here are the enemies from both games that appeared in screenshots on
The Brothers Duomazov-
It's not the best selection for comparing the two games directly, but they highlight many of the strengths and weaknesses to me. Those first three CF2 enemies are a good example of what I'm not crazy about. The snake wasn't too bad of a drawing, but the coloring really ruins it. The second enemy just looks ugly in general to me. When I look at its individual components they look nice, but the pose overall just makes it unappealing from a distance. That spider suffers from terrible coloring. The shading and detail may be very nice, but all I can see is a mess of clashing colors. The wolf man comes close but there's just something off-putting about it. Maybe if his eyes weren't dark green. The two-headed dog/cerberus looks
awesome in
every way
and really stands out in CF2. If
only most of the enemies looked like that. The dark knight boss probably looked much better on paper, but turned out frumpy, awkward and kinda gaudy. Galam looks perfectly acceptable, although his right hand might look confusing on real hardware. His coloring still comes of pretty dull though, especially compared to the consistent DS enemies. It's too bad his skin is colored the same as his golden armor. The red in his legs against the same coloring in his cape makes it look like he has holes in the middle of knee-high boots and you can see-through his legs.
In the end even the more average CF2 enemies looked pretty good by 16-bit RPG standards at the time. I never hated them overall, but they added to the game's overall unevenness to me. I was pleasantly surprised to find DS quality fully touched up vibrant enemy graphics in Cosmic Fantasy 3, but disappointed that they were so cartoony. If only CF2's enemy designs got CF3's treatment. I still love CF2 as a whole and always prefer uneven games that do some things special to many bland overly consistent games.
Of course, it seems that nowadays I'm considered the
crazy 
one and will likely get flamed both for questioning Cosmic Fantasy 2 in any way as well as appreciating Dragon Slayer's recently fallen from fame enemies.
CF2 could've looked phenomenal though with some touch ups.
Agreed.
CF2 isn't exactly a Lunar or Chrono Trigger like masterpiece of visual style. But the character design, town design and existence of cutscenes beyond the intro and ending make it miles ahead of Dragon Slayer.
CF2's cinemas are masterpieces compared to Lunar SS Sega/Mega-CD.
The story, pacing and localization of CF2 is decent for a 16-bit RPG. But I agree, it's not a CT or Lunar grade game in any way.
The original Lunar SS for Sega/Mega-CD is pretty shabby looking and Cosmic Fantasy 2's enemies look much better overall. The story, pacing and localization wasn't so hot either. They had a lot of great ideas, unfortunately they never got to finish the game the set out to make. The (underrated) Saturn update gave a clearer version of their vision, but isn't a perfect game either, although it is much more fun. Between the two it's a cool experience. Chrono Trigger is
at the very least majorly overrated by fanatics who won't admit any imperfections (
often the same goes for Square and Nintendo games in general). It'd be cool if those who call most/all Square and/or Nintendo games perfect gave the same respect to equal or greater games on various consoles, but they tend to to shut everything else out.
Chrono Trigger sucks.
Blasphemy.
Usually I'm interested to hear
why others have radically different views of games. Quotes like this sound completely unobjective.
Topic: Which RPG has better enemy designs? (Read 554 times)
