The first six Final Fantasy games have been remastered for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. When playing these titles, you may notice that there is a bit of judder or stutter when you are moving your character in towns, dungeons and world map. The environmental background does not appear to be scrolling smoothly in relation to the movement of the character.
So, can you possibly fix this issue? You can find out in this article from Seeking Tech.
Why Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster is stuttering or juddering
The reason why you are seeing a lot of stuttering or juddering when playing the PlayStation 4 or Nintendo Switch versions of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games is due to a mismatch of the character’s movement with the frame rate.
The character sprites in Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI all move at 80 pixels per second instead of 60 pixels per second. As a result, the background movement does not look smooth at all.
Can you fix the stutter or judder on PS4 or Nintendo Switch?
The stutters and judders also appear in the PC versions of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection. Fans were able to create a mod to fix the issue by limiting the character movement to 60 pixels per second or increasing the movement to 120 pixels per second.
To find out more about how you can fix the PC releases of these games, you can check out a video tutorial done by Matthew Dadoun YouTube channel below:
Unfortunately, there is not much you can do if you are playing these games on your PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite or Nintendo Switch OLED. The only potential solution is to wait for Square Enix to release a patch that will limit the character movement to 60 pixels per second.
So, unless a new software update is available, you just have to tolerate this issue. Keep in mind that these visual artifacts may be less noticeable for some gamers when compared to others, who can be more sensitive to the less than smooth gameplay.
It is also important to note that the background movement is a lot smoother if you move your characters diagonally instead of just using the up, down, left and right directions. So, you can try moving diagonally more often if the stuttering is really bothering you.