RECOLOURING. DISCUSS.

Sometimes recolors are used as copouts. In FF6, the Poplium monster is a recolor of the earlier Vaporite, but the Vaporite is a cloud of toxic gas while the Poplium is some sort of undead spirit. The image is just an indistinct swirl of blobbiness so it works for both monsters, but the monsters are not similar at all and it's obvious they just reused it to cut down on work creating resources. This is the sort of thing that we should try to avoid if we have time, but is admittedly a really effective time saver and is hard to resist sometimes. As long as it can be justified, most players won't really care, and as long as you don't overdo it, a lot of them won't notice.

Other times recolors are not a cop-out, they actually make perfect sense. Imperial soldiers in the later parts of FF6 are often recolors of earlier Imperial soldiers because, well, they're all Imperial soldiers. Naturally they wear the same uniforms. In I&V, my acid sharks are a recolor of my lava sharks because they are both sharks. The only difference is that one lives in a vat of lava and the other lives in a vat of acid. What the hell do you want me to do, give one of them an afro? I could make them different species of shark, but what would be the point?

Well you can also give it a different fighting stance, different weapon, different animations (if it's animated). Then it's a totally different monster. But sometimes reinventing the wheel for every monster is just utterly pointless.

In Vindication, the demonically possessed soldiers are recolors of the normal soldiers with purple skin. On the one hand this is the sort of recolor that seems to make perfect sense, but at the same time, if I had infinite resources, they would be drooping over all zombie-like or clutching their heads in pain.

Dirt Golem, Mud Golem, Clay Golem, Rock Golem, Stone Golem, Granite Golem, Quartz Golem, Marble Golem, Brick Golem, Limestone Golem, Coal Golem, Iron Golem, Metal Golem, Steel Golem, Stainless Steel™ Golem, Copper Golem, Silver Golem, Gold Golem, Tin Golem, Platinum Golem, Titanium Golem, Obsidian Golem, Diamond Golem, Crystal Golem, Meteorite Golem, Fantasy-metal Golem.
All using the same recolored graphic.

Why the hell not?

It makes sense for families of monsters or characters that are unimportant, generally, that's how I do things, Zuong is basically a green Puong & Muong a purple one.

As stated many times earlier, it's a time saver, who wants to spend weeks, months, days creating who knows how many new sprites when one could be doing more important things, like story or mapping?

author=SorceressKyrsty
Ahhh. I find a lot of people do point out if you're using recolours of NPCs or the like and discuss it negatively in reviews, which is why I brought up the concept.

I'm pretty sure these are complaints about having NPCs that are recolored versions of the heroes. It can be kind of confusing in some times of games, I guess.

I use recolors, and the recolor has similar stat allocation and abilities. It is easier than creating new sprites and breeds familiarity with enemy types and their weaknesses. I thought this was a good thing in FFX also, since you already knew you'd need Lulu to blast an enemy before wasting a few turns, though it is preferable when the enemy is a modified version of the original archetype rather than a carbon copy with a paint job. It is good to visually recognize types of enemies.

author=Jude
I use recolors, and the recolor has similar stat allocation and abilities. It is easier than creating new sprites and breeds familiarity with enemy types and their weaknesses. I thought this was a good thing in FFX also, since you already knew you'd need Lulu to blast an enemy before wasting a few turns, though it is preferable when the enemy is a modified version of the original archetype rather than a carbon copy with a paint job. It is good to visually recognize types of enemies.

It was a little too much in FFX, though, as it became very formulaic; literally every single enemy was a recolor of like, five or six other enemies before it.