Improved by the Re-Cut

It took four years to get real justice.

"In May of 2003 I walked out of the press screening of Vincent Gallo's 'The Brown Bunny' at the Cannes Film Festival and was asked by a camera crew what I thought of the film. I said I thought it was the worst film in the history of the festival.... But then a funny thing happened. Gallo went back into the editing room and cut 26 minutes of his 118-minute film, or almost a fourth of the running time. And in the process he transformed it. The film's form and purpose now emerge from the miasma of the original cut, and are quietly, sadly, effective. It is said that editing is the soul of the cinema; in the case of 'The Brown Bunny,' it is its salvation."

— From Roger Ebert's review of The Brown Bunny^note The original review savaged the film; the review of the recut gave it three stars out of four, though Ebert maintained that the Cannes edit was still the worst thing he'd seen at the festival.

Occasionally, a work turns out well. Often, a work turns out bad. Sometimes, a work turns out good, but not quite good enough. That's where the concept of a Re-Cut comes in. On many occasions, the Re-Cut is considered superior to the original cut.

The inclusion of one or more Re-Cuts is often one of the selling points of a Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition. If the recut is shorter than the original, if exposition bloat and long-winded speeches were removed, it may be a more fast-paced, satisfying film. On the other hand, if the recut is longer, some interesting backstory that's crucial to understanding the characters, or R-rated sexy fanservice or gory violence that the studio cut in the original may have been put back, pleasing the fans. Sometimes, the meaning of the film may be changed by the director putting back their preferred ending, which studio executives changed to please focus groups.

The Video Game equivalent is an Updated Re-release, which is when a bigger and better version of a game is released after the original. Common features include more game modes, new gameplay segments, shinier graphics, harder difficulty settings, new costumes and weapons, an added epilogue, a Bonus Dungeon (especially for role-playing games), improved performance due to being designed to run on a more powerful later generation console, and so forth.

Often occurs when the original cut was the result of Executive Meddling. Compare Salvaged Story and Enhanced on DVD. See also Remade and Improved.

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Examples:

• The Lord of the Rings

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball Z Kai was released to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Dragon Ball Z, and was explicitly meant to be a more faithful adaptation of the manga. Among other things, many of the Talk Break and filler/padding sections and episodes were removed, leaving Kai with 167 episodes to the original DBZ's 291. As a result, Kai is a much tighter, more action-packed viewing experience compared to the original DBZ and considered the far superior product.^note Part of the reason the original DBZ had so much filler and padding was that it was being produced while the manga was still ongoing, resulting in the anime crew being forced to try to pad the anime so Akira Toriyama could move the story along in the manga.
• Episodes 21 to 24 of Neon Genesis Evangelion were recut for the LaserDisc release with new footage taken from The Movie Evangelion: Death and Rebirth. The new footage fleshes out the lore, worldbuilding, plot and character development more than the original airings of the episodes. Some of the more Egregious moments of Off-Model and Limited Animation have also been fixed (Asuka twitches her nose and blinks during the infamous Uncomfortable Elevator Moment now!) on top of linking the penultimate episodes of the series better to the alternate ending movie The End of Evangelion. These Home Video episodes (labelled Director's Cuts internationally) have been released internationally with some remastered DVDs alongside the original episodes and have since superseded the original episodes for international releases on Netflix and Blu-ray. Nowadays, Japan is the only country where the episodes as they originally aired can easily be found.

Films — Animation

• Rango: Though the theatrical version is a fan favorite and Oscar-winning film, many consider the Extended Edition far superior, with the addition of more jokes and, most notably, an epilogue that wraps up the characters' stories instead of ending immediately after the climax.
• The Thief and the Cobbler: The theatrical cut of the film was hastily made by the distributor Miramax after taking over the project from its creator, Richard Williams, resulting in something extremely different from Williams' original vision and generally negatively received. However, a fanmade re-edited cut of the film, titled the "Re-cobbled Cut", used unfinished storyboards and animation to tell Williams' original vision, which is far more positively received than the Miramax cut.

Films — Live-Action

• The Special Edition of The Abyss is widely considered to be the superior version — except for the climactic music being utterly borked.
• Alien:
  • The extended cut of Aliens restores Newt's backstory, where her father was the first colonist who was infected, and Ripley's subplot of her heartbreak over losing her daughter during hypersleep, thereby adding a much deeper dimension to her relationship with Newt. These additions do interfere with the film's pacing and tension (they give away exactly what went down at the colony and that someone from the company set the colonists up to die), however; it's up to the individual viewer's opinion as to whether or not the trade-off is worth it.
  • Alien³ is an interesting case, because the Assembly Cut is technically the original cut, but it wasn't seen by audiences until 2003 when it was released as part of the Alien Quadrilogy box set. Both cuts received mixed reviews, but the Assembly Cut is generally seen as superior thanks to its more focused narrative and increased character development.
  • Alien vs. Predator's Unrated Cut doesn't add much in the way of plot or character depth, but many fans prefer it over the bloodless theatrical cut due to the more graphic violence.
• Apocalypse Now: The 2019 Final Cut is widely considered a major improvement over the 2001 Redux edition and even the 1979 theatrical cut, taking the content that was added in Redux and trimming it down by shortening some scenes and removing others outright. Consequently, while the theatrical and Redux versions respectively hold critics' scores of 98% and 93% on Rotten Tomatoes (with audience scores similarly coming in at 94% and 91%), the Final Cut holds a solid 100%.
• The extended cut of Big goes even further into elaborating why Josh really wanted to be "big".
• Both the 1992 Director's Cut and the 2007 Final Cut version of Blade Runner are considered better than the theatrical cut for remastering several scenes that more effectively push the film's Film Noir atmosphere, removing the theatrical's loathed voice-over narration, and replacing the studio-mandated happy ending with the more ambiguous Bolivian Army Ending that Ridley Scott wanted. Which of the two cuts is better is up for debate.
• When The Brown Bunny premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, responses were extraordinarily negative: many viewers booed and walked out, and critics severely panned it, to the point that director Vincent Gallo got in a verbal feud with Roger Ebert. However, when the film was officially released for distribution, it was reedited to remove a whopping 26 minutes (including most of the motorcycle sequences and the infamous unsimulated blowjob). Ebert's review (quoted above) gave the theatrical release 3 out of 4 stars, saying it should be shown in film schools alongside the original as an example of the difference good editing can make to a bad movie. At the same time, he still upheld his claim that the original cut was the worst thing he'd seen at Cannes.
• Like any number of films produced by The Weinstein Company, The Current War was heavily edited by the Weinsteins. Having been rushed to make its premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, the version screened received largely unfavorable reactions, scoring a terrible 32% on Rotten Tomatoes. Shortly afterwards, however, the Weinstein Company imploded as a result of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, halting the film's impending release date. In the aftermath, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon discovered a final cut clause in producer Martin Scorsese's contract and convinced him to allow for reshoots and re-editing. A new cut of the film, titled The Current War: Director's Cut, was the version that was finally released to theaters in 2019; while still not especially well-received, it was largely considered a significant improvement over the Weinstein version, scoring 61% on Rotten Tomatoes (and with a 6.3/10 average score, compared to 4.9/10). Despite the Director's Cut name on the second cut, the first cut was ultimately never released.
• Daredevil (2003)'s reception markedly improved with the release of the Director's Cut, which restored 30 minutes of footage, including an entire missing subplot, and placed emphasis on aspects of Daredevil's character that went underrepresented in theaters, particularly his Catholicism and his skills as a lawyer. As a result, the movie gained far more defenders than it did the first time around, and has effectively replaced the theatrical cut as the definitive version, with Fox not even bothering to bring the original to Blu-ray.
• The theatrical release of Dark City infamously included a Spoiler Opening with an Opening Monologue that explains just about every major twist and mystery that will be revealed over the rest of the film. This was mandated by Executive Meddling because they believed viewers would have been confused. Naturally, the very first and biggest change the Director's Cut made was to completely nuke this narration from orbit, allowing the plot twists and surprises to be revealed organically. First-time viewers (at least, those who enjoy unspoiled plot twists in their stories) are strongly recommended to start with the Director's Cut. As a bonus, it also removes an overdub for Jennifer Connelly's singing voice so we can hear the actress's own vocals, which are quite good.
• Darling Lili was an infamous Box Office Bomb widely panned for its extraneous musical numbers, Padding and tonal shifts with regards to comedy and drama. The theatrical cut wasn't Blake Edwards's vision, and he re-cut the film in the 90s. 29 minutes of footage was cut, improving the pacing somewhat.
• Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist: This chapter of The Exorcist remains one of the most bizarre troubled productions in film history. Originally Paul Schrader was brought to direct a psychological horror movie in the vein of the original; he did his job and almost completed what was called Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist. However, as the movie was being marketed, Morgan Creek Productions decided it was not scary enough to fit expectations, so they tossed the unfinished film into a vault and brought an entirely new director, Renny Harlin, to direct an entirely new movie. This was the final result, a retooling named Exorcist: The Beginning that only shared Stellan Skarsgård in the main role and the outlines of its plot. Only after it failed with critics and at the box office did they allow Schrader to finish and release his film, edging out the previous one in success and giving birth to the strange event of two films in one. Both versions received mostly negative reviews, but Dominion is generally considered to be the better (or less bad) version.
• Escape Room: Tournament of Champions went through significant rewrites and recuts before release. Eventually, the original version was released as an "Extended Cut", and was met with significantly more praise for revealing more about the origins of Minos and having more effective plot twists compared to the Theatrical Cut's borderline Ass Pull ones.
• Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald was heavily criticized on release for its confusing and crowded plotting. However it’s now known that the film was the product of a studio mandated 2 hour and 15 minute run time that was presumably handed down late in production. An extended cut was included on the Blu-Ray and is widely considered a vast improvement over the theatrical cut. No major subplots were cut like most of the examples on this page but rather the fourteen minutes of added screen time is mostly expositional in nature to help smooth out the edges. The biggest improvements are the pacing (especially in the second act which is widely considered the weakest part of the film), giving the characters whose plots were the biggest victims of the compressed runtimes more time to shine, and adding to the backstory to make it more accessible to casual fans. The most baffling omission of exposition from the theatrical cut is an extended version of Newt’s discussion with Dumbledore that only clocked in at 40 seconds which had the latter explain why he’d sent the former to New York in the first place- Grindelwald had a vision of an obscurial killing him and he wanted Newt to get there first. Credence and Nagini’s subplot in particular massively benefits from having more time dedicated to it. The most common criticism of the theatrical cut is that it’s poorly written but the extended cut makes it clearer that it’s more likely due to a combination of poor editing and Executive Meddling. The extended cut is by no means seen as a masterpiece but fans of it believe that the foundation of the story is not the issue. It’s still considered a bit over edited but it at least comes together to form a whole, cohesive story rather than the sequence of events strung together that the theatrical cut comes off as.
• Fantastic Four (2005) had an extended cut on DVD that adds in 20 minutes of footage that includes a romance subplot between Ben and Alicia and some character development for Johnny. It even has an Animated Credits Opening. This version is better received than the theatrical cut.
• Rob Zombie's Halloween II. The theatrical version was reviled by critics and series fans and, while not an outright flop, disappointed at the box office. The Unrated Director's Cut released on DVD and Blu-ray, while still controversial, is a very different film with much more focus on character depth and development, extended suspense sequences, and a totally different ending. It's generally better-received, with some fans calling the Director's Cut one of the best movies in the franchise. Zombie and/or the studio certainly think so, as the Theatrical Cut hasn't even been made available on Blu-ray in the US.
• The 216-minute Director's Cut of Heaven's Gate was widely praised for restoring the film's many Scenery Porn scenes and making the plot easier to follow, and helped play a significant in the film's reevaluation from a cinematic disaster to an underrated masterpiece.
• This is a persistent phenomenon for the films in the Highlander franchise.
  • The original film, Highlander, has a Director's Cut which restores several cut scenes. The scenes are minor, but they strengthen the story in a number of ways.
  • Every single release of Highlander II: The Quickening past the first-run VHS cuts out all references to the immortals being aliens from the planet Zeist. None of them are considered good, but this is still generally a massive improvement.
  • The version of Highlander: Endgame aired in theatres had some unfinished special effects and was missing several plot critical scenes. This was all fixed in the DVD and VHS releases.
• The extended cut of Jurassic World Dominion has been met with a warmer response than the theatrical cut, adding back the original Distant Prologue as well as several scenes that fleshed out the characters a bit more.
• The extended version of Kingdom of Heaven is generally considered much better than the theatrical cut due to adding way more character-focused scenes and context. It probably helps that the extended version was the original intent all along, with Ridley Scott only delivering the theatrical cut on the condition he could release the extended one later.
• The VHS release of The Lawnmower Man reinserted deleted scenes that offered more character development, making the film more than just a demonstration of (now incredibly dated) CGI. The DVD just relegated them to separate menu options in the special features.
• The Director's Cut of Legend (1985) adds 25 minutes of material and retains Jerry Goldsmith's score.
• Little Shop of Horrors is an interesting example. As originally shot, the film ends with the man-eating plant killing the two leads, reproducing, and taking over the world, just like in the stage musical it's based on. Due to negative reception from test audiences, the ending was reshot so that the heroes defeat the plant and live happily ever after, and this ending was the one used when the film was released in theaters. The version with the original ending, now referred to as the Director's Cut, is much better received today.
• The Director's Cut of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels most notably explores the backstory between Harry and J.D.'s rivalry and why Harry wants the bar so much.
• The Professional: An extended version of the film, sometimes called Version Integrale, was released that incorporates a number of scenes that had been cut from the film due to testing poorly in Los Angeles. In the short version, the 12-year-old Mathilda never actually participates in any murders, while in the extended version, Mathilda does help kill people with Leon. Some audiences like the darkly comic scenes, while others don't think they align with the film's climax, where Mathilda can't bring herself to kill her enemy and ends with a clean conscience. The extended version also adds a scene where Mathilda overtly propositions Leon for sex, while in the original her interest is limited to an obvious crush. Some audiences think the scene adds more context to the pair's relationship, while others thinks it's unnecessary and strays too close to writer/director Luc Besson's own accusations of sexual impropriety.
• The Ring Two: While most "Unrated" versions of PG-13 horror movies are nothing but marketing hype, this one actually includes seven minutes of new footage, including extended suspense sequences, more character moments, and some new and alternate scare scenes. In addition, some existing scenes have had special effects redone or new music put in.
• The Director's Cut of Robin Hood (2010) adds 15 minutes of material and fills in a major Plot Hole.
• The 103-minute director's cut of RoboCop is generally seen as superior to the theatrical cut due to the increased violence, which does more to showcase Paul Verhoeven's intention of satirizing action flicks though Black Comedy.
• The Director's Cut/Uncut versions of most Saw films are generally considered superior to the theatrical versions due to having new scenes, longer versions of some already-present scenes, and more detailed dialogue. The only exceptions are arguably Saw IV, whose theatrical version is notably more polished with exclusive shots that make some scenes more coherent (such as Hoffman actually being seen untying himself from his chair at the end), and Saw VI, whose Director's Cut ending received backlash for adding a connection between the two unrelated outcomes that happen (namely, the trigger of the Acid Room also starting the timer for the Reverse Bear Trap 2.0).
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • Spider-Man 2 has a recut, known as Spider-Man 2.1, that was released concurrent with Spider-Man 3. The cut contains eight minutes of extra scenes, as well as some alternate takes of scenes that were in the theatrical cut. Among more notable cases is an alternate take of the elevator scene (in the theatrical cut, the man thinks Peter's just a guy in a Spider-Man costume. In the extended cut, the man thinks that he is the real thing, and starts suggesting ways he could improve his public image), a scene of J. Jonah Jameson romping around on his desk in the Spider-Man suit when he thinks no one's watching him, some alternate dialogue during the pizza delivery at the beginning of the movie, and a little bit of additional action during Spider-Man's fights with Octavius at the bank and on the 'L' train. The scene of J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man suit alone has caused the 2.1 cut to be considered a slight improvement on an already-great film.
  • Spider-Man 3 had an altered yet shorter and improved version called Spider-Man 3: Editor's Cut with restored music and better focus on character development. It reinforces the belief many hold that there is a good movie buried inside here, it just got bogged down with all the Executive Meddling.
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The long, slow, dull theatrical version was the result of the filmmakers running out of time before the movie's absolutely non-negotiable release date of December 7th, 1979; when director Robert Wise returned to supervise the Director's Edition in 2001, he stated that he was finally finishing a movie he'd left incomplete. The Director's Edition is near-universally considered an improvement: it's a few minutes longer but with much better pacing, trimming the infamous Leave the Camera Running-style visual effects shots and restoring several deleted scenes which greatly improve the film's plot progression and character development. Some visual effects were also replaced to more closely match the original storyboards.
  • Earlier, there was also the "Special Longer Version" of the film, originally broadcast on TV in 1983 before being released on VHS. This version dropped 12 minutes of deleted scenes back into the film: the restored material helped a great deal in making the plot easier to follow and in humanizing the characters with the addition of some philosophical musings and quirky humor. However, the "Special Longer Version" also includes some blatantly unfinished visual-effects shots.
• The Director's Cut of Troy is widely considered to be superior. It includes more sex and violence, more Character Development (especially for Odysseus and Priam) and there's more of the actual Sacking of Troy.
• Walking with Dinosaurs 3D has people feeling that the tacky voice-overs brought the movie down a notch. Then a Blu-Ray feature called Cretaceous Cut came along, and this lets the viewer see the movie with none of the dialogue (though it does still feature scenes including dinosaurs information, songs in the background, and the rewinding scene when Patchi falls into the river).
• The Wolfman opened to unenthusiastic reviews and bombed at the box office. On home video, the film is almost always available with its Extended Cut, with 17 minutes added that provide a little more substance and weight to the characters before the horror action begins and allows the audience to soak in the inspired Victorian atmosphere, whereas the theatrical cut was a shorter film, but one with a story that felt as if it went through the motions. Opinions on the film have since become much more lukewarm.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • The Wolverine has an Unrated Cut that adds a bit more character development and extends the Wolverine vs Black Clan fight. It is generally preferred over the theatrical cut.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past has The Rogue Cut, an alternate version of the film with 17 minutes of additional footage, released on Blu-ray/DVD in 2015. It is generally considered an improvement over the theatrical cut due to adding a subplot involving Rogue and giving other characters a bit more development.
• Zack Snyder's films are often altered by studios' interference, leading some of them to become this.
  • Watchmen held up well in theatres, but the extended DVD release weaves the "Tales of the Black Freighter" plot back into the narrative. Alas, many of the other subplots aren't returned because they simply weren't filmed.
  • Sucker Punch in its Extended Cut form is much darker than its PG-13 theatrical version, mainly due to a stronger emphasis on the sexual harassment that the characters endure, which was notably absent from the regular cut. We also get an extra musical number featuring Oscar Isaac and Carla Gugino's characters, which is seen as something as a highlight for some viewers. Both cuts received mixed reviews at best, but the Extended Cut is generally seen as an improvement.
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice got a Director's Cut, a la Watchmen, referred to as the "Ultimate Edition". The film's runtime went from two and half hours to three and quite a few things were changed from the theatrical version, such as a stronger focus on characters like Superman and Lois Lane, a better grasp on Lex Luthor's motivations and his involvement in the subplot in Africa, Jena Malone appearing as a S.T.A.R. Labs member helping out Lane, an R rating and more. The R rating actually caught Snyder off-guard, as he didn't make the film with that rating in mind. While reviews for the theatrical cut were negative, the overall response has improved thanks to the Ultimate Edition, which rearranged certain scenes back to their original order to fill in plot holes, among other things.
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League, because of its nature, is something of a George Lucas Altered Version. The theatrical version of Justice League was a two-hour film composed of almost 50% new footage by Joss Whedon (who took over the film during post-production), whereas this version is a four-hour movie consisting solely of Snyder footage (and also uses Junkie XL instead of Danny Elfman as composer) that was mostly scrapped in the making of the theatrical cut, plus 4-5 minutes that Snyder filmed in 2020. While the theatrical cut, nicknamed Josstice League, received mixed reviews and was considered a box office disappointment, the Snyder Cut received mostly positive reviews, and many praised it for spending more time fleshing out and developing the characters, having better VFX, and generally feeling more coherent, among other things. Even those who aren't fans of Snyder's version generally consider it to be better by comparison.

Live-Action TV

• Arrested Development: The original run of Season Four has the show use a markedly different structure. The cast have separate long-winded adventures, barely interact with each other, and the Anachronic Order has the story make no sense until the last third of the season where they finally explain a lot of the Brick Jokes and plot points. In 2018, A Re-Cut of the entire season called "Fateful Consequences" attempts to assemble the season into a more chronological order, placing more emphasis on developing two or three plotlines in each episode, while also being quicker to reveal certain twists (Lindsay and Tobias both going to India for a retreat is covered in the same episode, rather than revealing Tobias was also in India two episodes later). This, in addition to shorter episode runtime but more episodes total, makes it more in line with the style of the earlier seasons, and fans of the show consider it better than the original release as it fits closer to the prior seasons.
• Doctor Who:
  • The mini-episode "A Fix with Sontarans" was part of the British series Jim'll Fix It, where children wrote in to have their dreams come true ("Sontarans" being the result of a child writing in to ask if he could meet the Doctor and go inside the TARDIS). After presenter Jimmy Savile was posthumously outed as one of the most prolific sexual predators in human history, the mini-episode became a Banned Episode. In 2022, for the Blu-ray box set of Season 22, a new unbanned edit was released which divorced the mini-episode from Jim'll Fix It entirely, replacing Savile's fourth wall-breaking appearance with a new Bolivian Army Ending via CGI and a new recorded line of dialogue. The new cut is considered much better not only for the obvious reason that it no longer has a sex offender in it, but also because the new ending does not shatter the fourth wall into bits, meaning one can easily fit this version into their personal definition of Doctor Who canon.
  • The story "The Curse of Fenric" got a DVD extended version that recuts the four original episodes into a continuous "movie" format, adds back some deleted scenes, and slightly changes the order of some other scenes. It's generally agreed by fans that the plot is much easier to follow in the recut than in the original episodic version.
• Red Dwarf: The 2009 miniseries "Back to Earth" was released on DVD as a "Director's Cut", which edits the three episodes together for a 60-minute run. The consensus is that this makes it better than the original version, as it cuts out several minutes of inconsequential stuff, which improves its pacing.

Music

• David Bowie: The original 1987 release of Never Let Me Down is almost unanimously considered Bowie's worst album, but general understanding is that its faults lie mainly in its cluttered production rather than its songwriting. The 2018 remix, Never Let Me Down 2018, replaces the abundance of synths and effects with newly-recorded, more rock-oriented backing tracks, and was largely praised as an improvement upon the original, better showcasing the strength of the songwriting.
• Kanye West: The Life of Pablo originally released in an incomplete state and drew mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike thanks to its slapdash quality. After a series of "updates" within the first four months of its release, the "patched" version of the album is looked at more favorably than the version that released in early 2016. A number of critics even re-reviewed the fully updated album and found it to be a vast improvement over the original version.

Video Games

• Sonic the Hedgehog: While Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are considered to be good standalone games, many fans consider the combined recut of the game, Sonic 3 & Knuckles (which you get by locking Sonic 3 onto Sonic & Knuckles) to be the superior version of the game, due to it combining both games into one seamless experience (which was what Sonic Team intended until they were forced to split it into two games due to time and hardware constraints), on top of fixing numerous bugs in Sonic 3 and having features not found in either game, such as upgraded Super forms and the ability to save in the Sonic & Knuckles zones. It is likely because of this that more recent re-releases of the game, such as the Steam release in 2011 and the port in Sonic Origins, opt to have Sonic 3 & Knuckles instead of the standalone titles.
• Final Fantasy XII's original release was met with modest success, but the International Zodiac Job System released only in Japan on its original Playstation 2 release is far more enjoyed than the original version, as it forces the player to have characters be more specialized in their roles, rather than have the same License Board for everyone. It also removed mechanics like the damage cap, which made certain bonus marathon bosses a lot more manageable. As a result, all rereleases of the game since the IZJS have used the IZJS version as a base. The Zodiac Age version released on Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch was considered an even greater improvement because its two-job system corrected the main criticism of the IZJS, which is that jobs made characters too specialized. It also removed "effect capacity", hardware limitations forcing spell animations to be "queued-up", making high-level spells far less Awesome, but Impractical. A further update to the game in 2019 added the ability to create and edit up to three Gambit setups and allowed players to reset their character's Licence Boards, further solidifying fans opinion that this was the definitive FFXII experience.
• The 1999 Shadow Man game had an Updated Re-release in 2021 (for PC; released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2022), Shadow Man Remastered, created by Nightdive Studios, that has been generally received positively for not only a few gameplay improvements (tweaking the movement controls, easier camera movement and adding a weapon wheel to streamline combat), but also integrating extra levels that had to be scrapped for time from the original game, as well as including a second copy of the Violator weapon that had previously been exclusive to the Nintendo 64 version. Due to these factors, it's seen by some as the definitive version of the game.

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