[HN Gopher] The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
___________________________________________________________________
The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
Author : tosh
Score : 167 points
Date : 2025-12-09 09:48 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.segasaturnshiro.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.segasaturnshiro.com)
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| I am determined to play this on Saturn at some point. I had the
| Playstation version as a kid and I didn't notice any of the
| flaws, it was just a brilliant game with a much more interesting
| and fun battle system than Final Fantasy. But now I see all the
| mismatched textures which have been ported right up to the modern
| HD "remasters".
|
| Great to see that there's an English patch. Christmas is coming
| up..
| tosh wrote:
| It would be great to have the saturn version + translation as
| well as the improved movie sequences
|
| maybe there is a way to port them using the saturns mpeg add-on
| (?)
|
| otoh probably fine to watch them on youtube in parallel
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| I've tried so many times to play the classic JRPGs only to be met
| by loooooooong cutscenes before even allowing me to control the
| characters. Grandia is unfortunately no exception: 10-13 minutes
| if I remember correctly from booting the game to actually being
| able to do anything besides mash buttons to try and skip the
| cutscenes.
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| This is very frustrating, but I'm not sure it's a problem only
| with classic JRPGs - recently I sat down to play Bayonetta 3
| and it had a similar problem (along with.. others).
|
| FF7 really had this nailed - flashy, mysterious cut-scene to
| first battle in, what, 3 minutes?
| ozbonus wrote:
| Most of the Final Fantasy games have been like that, which is
| why I've (most of the time) been a fan since since FF4/2. I
| can't remember how many times I've been turned off by a game
| when it starts with the protagonist being woken up by his
| mom, followed by endless wandering around town.
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| It the same with Spiderman: Miles Morales. There are some cut
| scenes you cannot skip. Worse they they are cut scenes that
| don't actually affect the main story arc.
|
| This makes replays painful as the story isn't particular
| interesting and in some places actually quite nauseating to
| watch (Miles is constantly conflicted on very straight
| forward things), but the game play itself is quite fun. I've
| looked for a mod for this game where you can skip all cut-
| scenes but it doesn't seem to exist.
| kokada wrote:
| > FF7 really had this nailed - flashy, mysterious cut-scene
| to first battle in, what, 3 minutes?
|
| Except when you use the Knights of the Round summon, then you
| go grab a coffee while waiting for the animation to finish
| :).
| jeppester wrote:
| Play the game in an emulator that has a shortcut for fast-
| forward. It makes a world of difference when it comes to
| "enduring" overly long cut-scenes, load screens, repeated spell
| animations, endless combat encounters, etc.
|
| I wish modern games would have the same feature!
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| Fair point, I was playing on MiSTER.
| nottorp wrote:
| > 10-13 minutes if I remember correctly
|
| Mmm played any Kojima games? :)
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| You can typically skip most dialogue and cut-scenes in the
| MGS games. Also quite a number of the cut-scenes are
| interactive and can actually help you in game play (codec
| numbers are show, clues etc).
|
| MGS-4 though is has ridiculous cutscene length.
| phantasmish wrote:
| MGS4 would be like 10% shorter if you had a mod that just
| cut every line in a cutscene that's someone repeating
| someone else's previous line, but as a question.
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| I never finished it. So I wouldn't know.
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| Nope, MGS was big on Playstation when I was growing up and
| the whole stealth gameplay does not appeal to me.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| I haven't seriously tried playing it again since it came
| out but it didn't appeal to me either and my friends all
| thought I'd lost it. I also remember the clerk at
| Electronics Boutique being gobsmacked when I wanted to
| return it.
|
| I do generally find stealthiness to be engaging and great
| fun _as a component of game play_ but as the main draw and,
| especially, from the jump I just found it to be frustrating
| and annoying. Maybe I'd feel different these days, though.
| I'll try it again some day.
| kouteiheika wrote:
| > 10-13 minutes if I remember correctly from booting the game
| to actually being able to do anything besides mash buttons to
| try and skip the cutscenes.
|
| Genuinely curious - if you don't care about the story then why
| play an RPG? When you're speedrunning - sure, skip all of the
| cutscenes, but when you're playing casually - why would you
| want to do that?
| opan wrote:
| I agree with your take here that he should care about the cut
| scenes/story if bothering to play, but this has gotten
| especially bad in newer games where they try to shove you
| right into the game before you can tweak settings. I never
| played through Bravely Default on 3DS because the opening
| scene used the English dub instead of the original audio, and
| I had to skip it to access the settings and change languages,
| then there was no way to rewatch that opening scene. I've
| similarly avoided their other games like Octopath Traveler as
| I suspect they have the same issue. It seems like an
| accessibility issue. I don't think they should ever stop you
| from getting to the settings first thing. I am not
| entertained by them trying to be overly cinematic. I don't
| think it would kill them to wait until you hit "start new
| game".
| xandrius wrote:
| I could ask you a similar question: why play an RPG if you
| don't care about playing? Go watch a movie.
|
| The point of many posters, I imagine, is that there is too
| much non-playing parts all at once, it's not strictly about
| them not being skippable.
|
| This is especially damning when the long unskippable cutscene
| is during a boss fight or something which you might fail
| afterwards and cannot save.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Unlike a movie, when done well, the combat/grinding add to
| player engagement because it places the player in direct
| charge of the characters' growth from a nobody to a legend.
| You can't get that from a movie.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > This is especially damning when the long unskippable
| cutscene is during a boss fight or something which you
| might fail afterwards and cannot save.
|
| Some games have started to get this right, either by making
| cutscenes you've seen skippable, or by just automatically
| skipping straight to the battle if you've already been
| through it once. I suspect one reason it _didn 't_ happen
| on older games was the need to explicitly save, rather than
| autosaving.
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| Oh I do care about the story, but please don't front-load the
| credits and make me sit through them.
| rkomorn wrote:
| I play RPGs for the fun of turning time and grind into more
| advanced abilities (eg going from getting slaughtered by
| dragons in Skyrim to being the one doing the slaughtering).
|
| There are few games where the story has mattered to me, and
| even basically no games where the cutscenes did.
|
| Edit: the presence of story and cutscenes in a game I enjoy
| is basically correlation and not causation (for me).
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Starting off with 10min of exposition is too much and it's
| lazy. You don't even know if you're going to like the game
| yet. Do some en media res story telling and get on with it.
|
| Most games I don't care about the deep exposition. I'm fine
| with a vague notion and then starting from the main
| character's insertion into it where the gameplay starts.
|
| Not letting the player skip it is just hubris.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| 10 minutes is a long time now? Is this what TikTok does to
| a person's brain? Cartoon Network typically had 11 minute
| episodes, so you're complaining that you don't even have
| the attention span of a child.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| For me, it isn't about not liking the story, but about having
| to watch a movie when I want to play a game. Don't show it to
| me. Let me do it.
| butlike wrote:
| Dopamine only hits when the numbers go up. So no min/maxing
| when the cutscenes are playing
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| It often gets worse. I stopped playing Final Fantasy X (on the
| PS2) because there was a boss battle where there was a 10
| minute un-skippable cutscene between each stage of the battle
| and if you died you had to re-watch each one.
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| I think at that point I'd call it and mark that one as
| "finished it".
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| I don't think I will ever play a JRPG again. In fact it was
| the last one.
|
| These days I want my games to be actual games.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Look, complaining about unskippable cutscenes is one
| thing. Everyone has that complaint about FFX, I even know
| what boss you're talking about because it's so infamous.
| But saying that JRPGs aren't "actual games" is
| ridiculous. They _are_ games, whether or not you
| personally enjoy them.
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| I am not saying they aren't games. What I am saying is
| that I enjoy stuff now that has basically no plot and
| let's me get on with the game.
|
| Half of Final Fantasy X (and I think a little later they
| released a movie both for Final Fantasy VII and the
| standalone movie the Spirit Within) was Square showing
| off how good their CGI animation was, which at the time
| was very good.
|
| CGI cut scenes went from "this is a cool thing I see
| between levels" on the PS1 to "this is a tedious
| interruption".
| phantasmish wrote:
| FFX's balance is awful if you go straight from point to point
| and don't take some long grinding breaks. You'll hit exactly
| the kinds of boss-walls you mention, and yeah, the cutscene
| placement is simply abusive.
|
| Last couple plays I've used zig-zag approach when traveling
| through random encounter zones, effectively ~doubling
| distance traveled, and encounters. Stretches those out, but
| removes most of the separate, dedicated grinding.
|
| (Not defending the game design that makes this necessary,
| mind you)
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| The boss battles weren't that hard. The issue was the un-
| skippable cut-scenes.
|
| Generally. I don't like playable dream sequences or
| artistic filler sequences in games. I feel like there are a
| lot of people that working in gaming that couldn't get into
| Movies/TV and as a result try to insert that sort of story
| telling into a form of entertainment where it doesn't
| belong.
|
| The best in game story telling IMO was the Doom 2016 game,
| where the physicality of the character was done through the
| short sequences where control was briefly taken away.
| Unfortunately they undid this (mostly) in subsequent
| sequels .
| Izkata wrote:
| On the switch there were only two of those walls that I
| hit, I didn't really do any grinding outside of those
| points. It turned out the first one had a trick to beat it,
| grinding didn't actually help that much, and the second was
| the final boss...
| erfgh wrote:
| JRPGs are like movies that you can interact with. If you don't
| enjoy the cutscenes then it will be a drag.
|
| I did play FFVII when it came out and I was extremely impressed
| and couldn't get enough of it. But I could never get into other
| JRPGs later.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Yes, and for as much as that's an annoyance, games are far
| worse now. This has infected everything AAA, not just JRPGs.
| See: the God of War reboot, Tomb Raider, etc.
|
| Narrative is one thing, but at least with 90s JRPGs you could
| go through dialog on the field screen at your own pace,
| generally. It doesn't take long to get to the action.
| spondyl wrote:
| I was just about to go to bed and what a surprise seeing Grandia
| trending #1 on Hacker News of all places.
|
| For myself, Grandia is one of those games that was part of my
| childhood so despite having flaws, it transcends ratings in a
| sense.
|
| It was the first game I ever got on the first home console I ever
| had, the PlayStation 1. I would only have been about 9 or 10(?)
| (31 now) and the intro to the game is burned into my mind because
| I never had a memory card for quite some time so I'd replay the
| opening hour or two over and over until it was time for dinner or
| bed.
|
| Eventually I got a memory card and my next entry was Digimon
| World 2003 and I wonder to what extent that lead to me being
| interested in computers generally and ultimately becoming a
| developer as a day job.
|
| To this day, I've still yet to finish Grandia. I picked up the HD
| Collection on Switch and I'm about halfway. Every time I go on
| vacation (or particularly during the Christmas holidays), I'll
| progress a bit. There's no real rush though in that once it's
| over, it's over. I don't really tend to replay titles,
| particularly long RPGs.
|
| It's also kind of weird actually seeing the rest of the game too.
| For the longest time, I had no idea where the story was going.
| I've still mostly managed to avoid spoilers as well so I
| conceptually don't know where the story ends up which is nice,
| given years of reading Wikipedia synopsis only to regret it
| later.
|
| > A total joy... but one that demands an intense time commitment.
| A player Justin's age surely has the time
|
| I found this part funny because I was Justin's age when I first
| played Grandia and never found the time then let alone now
| triwats wrote:
| Nice comment! How is the HD collection?
|
| Hmm, I think the flaws are what generally make games.
|
| I played thousands of hours on a bunch of Quake 3 engine games
| (Q3:A, RTCW, ET)...
|
| If you moved your mouse in a certain way you would go faster,
| and as a result there were a class of players that were speed
| demons.
|
| These flaws are often ground out now, and I think that limits
| community-driven creativity. Especially since most games are
| impossible to mod now.
|
| Eventually we found ways to limit this (limit fps in
| competitive configs as an e.g.) to prevent those with the best
| PCs have an unfair advantage.
| vikingerik wrote:
| I agree, on where the flaws often make the games.
|
| My example of that was Heroes of Might and Magic 2 vs 3. 3 is
| the legendary one that everybody remembers, but I actually
| liked 2 better. Sure, 3 is far superior for balance and AI
| and content... but for me, the unbalance of 2 was its charm.
| Trying to win with the underpowered knight castle, or against
| a far superior force with tactics like the blind spell that
| the AI wouldn't counter... that was the fun of the more
| primitive Heroes 2 and wasn't quite the same in the more
| developed 3. Less development in a game can actually make for
| more fun factor.
| Izkata wrote:
| > Nice comment! How is the HD collection?
|
| I bought my Switch because I found out about the HD
| collection, so this is remembered from 6+ years ago and may
| be fixed now, but two problems stuck out with Grandia II: One
| video crossing the Granacliffs didn't play (with the flying
| ship), and several magics turn out to be multiple videos
| played on top of each other - and they messed up the aspect
| ratio in a few (stretch vs center) so the visuals don't line
| up.
|
| Other than that it was what I remember on Dreamcast. Oddly,
| even the snowy area lagged in the exact same way as on
| Dreamcast.
| layer8 wrote:
| Did they ever fix the HD version?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UokSL_j7Ot8
| qingcharles wrote:
| It warms my heart knowing that there's others that enjoyed
| Grandia as much as I did. It always felt very underrated and
| forgotten.
| KolibriFly wrote:
| It's kind of poetic that you've been slowly chipping away at it
| over holidays, bit by bit
| robin_reala wrote:
| Worth pointing out that a Grandia 1 & 2 HD bundle came out
| earlier this year: https://www.grandiahd.com/
| qingcharles wrote:
| Are they garbage? All the videos I've seen say the remasters
| are dogshit and ruin the game :(
| robin_reala wrote:
| Honestly, I've not tried them. PS Store has the unremastered
| Grandia 1 available, which is what I've been playing.
| Marazan wrote:
| Grandia is a beautiful game. Both visually and from a story
| telling perspective. A simple, sweet coming of age tale told
| without cynicism.
|
| Justin, Sue and Feena feel like old friends.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Site's currently down, here's a snapshot:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20251209110317/https://www.segas...
| sentrysapper wrote:
| looks like the host is getting too many requests, anyone know of
| a mirror?
| nticompass wrote:
| I never played the 1st Grandia, but I had Grandia II on the
| Dreamcast and I absolutely loved that game. I'll admit that I was
| never the best with (J)RPGs and never played it for that long
| per-session as a kid, but I did eventually finish it. Though, it
| did take many years to finally get to the end and finish the
| game, but I enjoyed it! (I also enjoyed Evolution 2: Far Off
| Promise).
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Oh I rememeber in one of the games, one of the girls would say
| ganba ganba something at the end of each battle. I didn't
| understand it back then but I loved it.
| pnut wrote:
| I read that as "playing Grandma" and thought that was a pretty
| clever game concept.
| komali2 wrote:
| I've been getting more and more into retro gaming lately, and
| something that really made it click for me is leveraging shaders
| (or overlays) to simulate period-accurate displays. For a Sega
| Saturn, that'd be some kind of CRT. The art direction in these
| games are designed to take advantage of the quirks of the CRT,
| and often look significantly better on a CRT. Noodle just did a
| decent video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC-8y2R6IxI
|
| I strongly recommend anyone getting into retro gaming, try some
| CRT shaders (or lcd ones for portables)!
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Or get a CRT if you live in a populous area, have the space,
| and a strong back! It's gotten harder since Covid when they
| were seemingly everywhere, but if you're lucky you'll find a
| good curbed unit. Gave my buddy a 24" trinitron recently I just
| couldn't keep around anymore and he is having a blast playing
| his PS2 on it with component cables. FFX really sings as do
| racing games.
|
| That being said there are a lot of emulators and little pieces
| of hardware now that simulate it really well, which is a very
| viable option, especially when space is at a premium (or if
| your poor pet hates the whine of a CRT like my dog did ha)
| komali2 wrote:
| Hah, I wish I had the space for this and original hardware!
| For me it's hard to justify the space and cost when I can
| just have all the videogames ever made on a couple SSDs and
| run them on emulators.
|
| Then again, I seem to have accidentally started a small
| GB/GBA cart collection...
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| it would be a terrible shame if you learned about all the
| various ways you can mod a gameboy
| throwaway613745 wrote:
| I almost always try to play on original hardware on an
| appropriate display (CRT) whenever I can. The deluge of remasters
| and remakes we've been getting can be nice - but I find a lot of
| the time that they can be hit or miss. They often feel like
| they've lost a lot of the magic created when the developers of
| the era had to work with the limitations of the hardware of the
| era. Pixel art on those old CRT's vs pixel art on new games with
| modern displays is a good example, when working on those old CRTs
| you just had to create your art in a specific way that just
| doesn't look good when you slap it onto a modern OLED display.
| Even the modern pixel art that's designed FOR the new displays
| just doesn't quite capture the same feel.
|
| I recently played Panzer Dragoon Saga on original Saturn hardware
| and I have to say that was one of the most profound experiences
| playing an RPG I've had in my life and playing it on the Saturn
| itself was a big part of it.
|
| It doesn't help that some of the porting studios sometimes just
| do shoddy work. Aspyr, for one, can be hit or miss. The Deus Ex
| remake that's coming out, from what I've seen, is particularly
| egregious. Just based on the footage I've seen the artistry of
| the game is completely ruined.
|
| On the flipside - Nightdive doesn't miss. They're the only ones
| that I will buy their remasters without researching the port
| quality because they just "get it". The Nightdive remasters of
| Turok, System Shock, Rise of the Triad, Blood and even some of
| the more niche ones like Powerslave and Killing time have all
| been fantastic. Even their full remake of the original System
| Shock is phenomenal.
| garciansmith wrote:
| Panzer Dragoon Saga is a great game: some cool gameplay
| elements that later games didn't really ever seem to pick up to
| my knowledge. Really tight too, not long and grindy like so
| many JRPGs in the '90s. The solitary main character means it
| skips a lot of the RPG-with-several-party-members tropes too.
| It's too bad it never got a rerelease of some sort to make it
| more accessible to people (plus it was stupidly rare even when
| it was released; Sega even put out baffling magazine ads about
| how hard it was to actually buy), though as you point out so
| many of those are terrible anyhow.
|
| Definitely agree with you about CRTs. I wish I had the room for
| one. It's fun to use a MiSTer hooked up to one and a modern
| flatscreen at the same time to compare.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > It's too bad it never got a rerelease of some sort to make
| it more accessible to people
|
| IIRC, the source code for it was lost, so all they could
| really do is glorified emulation.
| Grazester wrote:
| Do any remastered games actually use the original source
| code from the OG games?
|
| This game was basically a limited release if you will and
| therefore I don't think Sega thinks it's with the effort to
| remaster anyway
| klaussilveira wrote:
| Finding a good CRT locally has been pretty difficult. I think
| everyone is caught on the "this is worth gold now" trend.
| deadbabe wrote:
| It's not worth gold, a lot of CRTs are dead or dying, the
| tubes have limited hours. After that, they just become junk.
| Most have been disposed, so you're going to struggle to find
| a local one.
|
| Shipping them is annoying and expensive, no one wants to lug
| around heavy ass CRTs and larger ones probably have to ship
| on pallets.
|
| Small CRTs that are easy to carry will get snatched up
| quickly, but mostly by retro gamers who have no alternative.
|
| The difficulty of finding CRTs is mostly a logistics problem.
| Not because they are so valuable that people horde them.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Where are you located? I've been grabbing them whenever I see
| them (roadside, e-waste, yard sales, etc.) for years and
| honestly have too many. Some of them, like my 36" Trinitron,
| have become an albatross.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Nightdive's Blade Runner Enhanced Edition is pretty infamous,
| so they've had a few bombs here and there. But not often.
| KolibriFly wrote:
| There's something fundamentally different about playing these
| games on the hardware they were designed for
| wicket wrote:
| > Game Arts subsequently ported Grandia to the PlayStation,
| dropping it in Japan in the summer of 1999.
|
| When I grew up, "dropping" something meant "excluding" it; you
| might drop a player from a team or a feature from a product to
| exclude it. It turns out that Grandia did actually release in
| Japan for the PlayStation in 1999.
|
| Am I the only one who struggles with this new, fangled definition
| of the word "drop"?
| gilrain wrote:
| It's a natural extension of the older term. "A [whatever]
| dropped right in front of me" conveys the original and new
| meanings just fine.
|
| "A [whatever] was dropped in Japan. Where is [whatever]?"
|
| "In Japan, for one."
| phantasmish wrote:
| I thought it was from some music subculture. I first
| encountered it in the context of albums, around the early or
| mid 2010s.
|
| I think it's kinda lame in its escaped-containment form, and
| am surprised it's been one of those things that stuck around
| as long as it has, but would place it low on my list of
| language gripes, personally.
| garciansmith wrote:
| I feel like I heard it used in that way since at least the
| '90s.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Try thinking of it in the sense of "airdrop", which is not a
| new usage of the word "drop".
| triwats wrote:
| My sister picked this up from a random supermarket in 1998/1999,
| and I sank 100s of hours into watching her play it through.
|
| She does this thing where she wants to start games over and over
| again from the start, play them for a bunch of hours, then start
| it again.
|
| The soundtrack and the challenge of beating the game at that age
| was wonderful.
|
| I beat it a few years ago for the first time all the way through
| again. Really enjoyed it, but never played the sequel.
|
| I find a lot of modern games unisnpiring. Too much focus is on
| creating a general great game, rather than focusing on story /
| mechanics.
|
| Thanks for the post!
| lukan wrote:
| I only know the second part of grandia, but it is great!
|
| (There does not seem a story connection, though)
| Izkata wrote:
| There's a fan theory that Grandia II is a prequel to Grandia
| set in the far, far, far distant past. I think the main basis
| is from one of the final scenes in Grandia II, involving two
| people with wings - possibly be very first Icarians
| (Grandia's ancient nonhuman civilization).
| qingcharles wrote:
| The soundtrack to Grandia lives rent free in my head. I've not
| heard it in 20 years but I can still play it back.
| triwats wrote:
| Happily found out on Monday that it is available on
| Spotify!!111
|
| Sent it to said sister. Strange how something can exit your
| life then re-enter it heavily in the same week (soundtrack,
| and now HN).
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| The site appears to be a Sega Saturn fansite, so obviously they
| have a slight bent towards playing it _on the Saturn_.
|
| But for anyone else who's interested in trying the game, the PS1
| version was fine, and is more readily available on modern
| consoles.
| grimgrin wrote:
| in that vein,
| https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/grandia-hd-collec...
| qingcharles wrote:
| It's bad though, isn't it? I saw some videos saying they did
| a really low effort job on it.
| grimgrin wrote:
| maybe, but the blog post mentions it, sorta:
|
| "Additionally, the first Grandia was recently remade for
| modern consoles with the release of the Grandia HD
| Collection."
| wffurr wrote:
| They really didn't cover at all why this game is better
| specifically on Saturn than PS1 or any modern remake /
| emulator.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Shrug, if I blog about the joys of driving down route 66 in a
| '57 Chevy, I really dont have any obligation to give equal
| time to what its like in a '57 Packard. Its a Saturn fan
| site, so its just going to be Saturn-centric.
| wffurr wrote:
| You could spend a little time singing the praises of your
| '57 Chevy and what makes it particularly joyful to you.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| ...which almost always ends in flamewars with people
| arguing over something that's entirely down to nostalgia
| and personal preference.
| rendaw wrote:
| Immediately after mentioning the Playstation port, the
| article explicitly states (in bold, on a line on its own)
|
| > Grandia is Best on Saturn.
|
| If you specifically blog about how driving down route 66 in
| a '57 Chevy is better than driving down it in a '57
| Packard, I think you have some responsibility to try to
| justify your claims. Otherwise it's just trolling.
| yesb wrote:
| IIRC it was originally built for Saturn and there were a
| number of graphical downgrades in the conversion to PS1 along
| with reduced sound quality. Loss of shadows on 3d buildings,
| loss of various 2d effects, issues with textures, less stable
| frame-rate, maybe more that super fans have documented
| online. It also came with a couple minor upgrades e.g. better
| video bitrate. Nothing is different enough to affect playing
| the game. The completion of the English patch is relatively
| recent so that probably explains the renewed interest in the
| Saturn version.
|
| The HD version spruces up the PS1 version but didn't go as
| far as restoring everything lost from the Saturn one.
|
| So none are really definitive but the Saturn version is
| usually said to be the best. The PS1 has the advantage of
| greater availability and can be emulated on a potato. And the
| HD one is on sale for modern consoles.
| devinprater wrote:
| Thank goodness for emulation. With OCR, and now AI screenshot
| descriptions, I can know what menu I'm in, what menu option is
| selected, dialog on the screen, stuff like that. Case and point,
| Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the Playstation 2. On
| original hardware, I had no idea what I was getting when I'd
| finish a battle in story mode. Now, with NetherSX2 on my phone,
| after a battle, I can have TalkBack describe the screen, listen
| to the description of what I won, press B to exit the
| description, press A to advance the game screen, read the next
| thing I won, and so on. Of course, the app has to have an
| accessibility element that TalkBack can grab onto to describe, so
| ironically, Retroarch doesn't work for this, and either does
| Lemuroid, but I mean it's a start, and hopefully one day TalkBack
| can grab the _entire_ screen for a screenshot without needing an
| element onscreen to latch onto.
| anthk wrote:
| Dragon Ball it's one of these games where for the blind it's
| much better to be played in a MUD (and some of them describe
| scenes in an incredible way) that you will get almost the same
| as a sighted reader with the manga. Parries, locks, grabs, ki
| beam exchanges, magical techniques... everything it's there.
| KolibriFly wrote:
| Emulation isn't just about convenience or preservation, it can
| literally unlock experiences for people who were previously
| shut out
| rootsudo wrote:
| I find it a bit of a course - Grandia, released on sega saturn,
| remastered due to the saturn failure.
|
| Grandia 2, released on Dreamcast, released on PS2 due to
| Dreamcast failure. Same issues for the remakes, the ps2 works
| great but when compared to the dreamcast there is obvious
| music/graphics artifacts.
| jerf wrote:
| I haven't played the first one but I played Grandia II on the
| Dreamcast and I think it's still my favorite battle system in a
| JRPG to date. Not only does it have the obvious details you can
| see on a YouTube playthrough, but higher-end play with it also
| requires managing positioning, which is easy to miss as an option
| at all in the menus, or to think it has no purpose. A low-level
| challenge run would probably be a lot of fun.
|
| Unfortunately in my casual playthrough I accidentally broke the
| combat system and by the end of the game nothing was a challenge;
| as with many other games there are "resistances" and
| "vulnerabilities" but also as with most non-Shin Megami Tensei
| games of the era, they aren't really strong enough or frequent
| enough to matter. I just pumped all my upgrades into Fire
| upgrades until eventually my routine end-game battle was one
| character to wipe all the enemies in one move, move to next
| battle. You could easily pump an elemental bonus enough to
| overwhelm the resistances the enemies had. More resistances and
| immunities distributed around would have helped prevent a
| degenerate strategy.
|
| And of all the battle systems to have a degenerate strategy for,
| this one hurts the most because it is otherwise so good.
|
| (Sadly, Grandia III was never completed. It was _released_... but
| it was never _completed_. The game as shipped has visible gaping
| holes in it, which is sad because what is there was quite good.)
| thrownaway85 wrote:
| Im probably a fool for posting this but this thread and these
| responses warm my heart. It's good to see so many people were
| affected by this era of gaming from Sega the same way that I
| was.
|
| The battle system in the later SMT games, especially after 3 is
| one of the best turn based systems I've ever played. It was a
| refinement of FFXs in so many ways. It encouraged you to
| "break" it as it were.
|
| Then there's games like Grandia 2... And Shenmue. God, I love
| Shenmue these days. The first one is brilliant in so many ways
| I didn't recognize when I played it when it came out.
| Absolutely wonderful game. The track that plays when Ryo and
| Guizhang fight the Mad Angels at the dock, "Earth and Sea",
| takes me back. For me, it's the most perfect Christmas game
| that Sega ever made
| jajuuka wrote:
| My first experience with Grandia was Grandia II as well but on
| PS2. I ended up getting the PC version as well, which at the
| time was fairly novel to see JRPG's on PC. Grandia II is still
| one of my nostalgic favorites. As you mentioned the typical
| turn based combat with positioning was a fun addition that
| could change your combat experience each time. Was like an
| evolution of the Chrono Trigger combat system.
| bena wrote:
| Try the Lunar series. It has something similar.
| jerf wrote:
| I find myself designing a TRPG (Final Fantasy Tactics,
| Disgaea) with Grandia time & space mechanics in my head; take
| position even a bit more seriously than Grandia did, but
| build on a TRPG balance and skill structure. Basically end up
| with a much more dynamic take on the TRPG, which has always
| been a bit of a static experience. The canceling mechanics
| coming from Grandia would be banger in that sort of more
| dynamic TRPG.
|
| There is, of course, a lot of games all around that space but
| I don't know of anything that quite matches what I'm laying
| out here.
|
| (Although the cancellation mechanics would need some careful
| attention. It allows for a whole bunch of weak characters to
| keep a single strong character down by always cancelling what
| they're doing. I suppose just turning it into a skill check
| itself instead of being 100% as it is in Grandia would do the
| trick, though.)
| Marazan wrote:
| Grandia II battle system also breaks when you get Teo. An area
| effect Critical? Basically allows you to completely control
| every battle even if you haven't invested in a board wiping
| Uber character.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's very common with RPGs of that era (and all eras really)
| that the developers don't test every edge case and end up
| leaving ultra-powered (and just as many or more close to
| useless) builds in the game. Every feature added increases the
| possibility of breakage by some quadratic factor. Once your
| battle system hits a certain level of complexity it's close to
| inevitable.
|
| Even carefully developed modern games like Baldur's Gate 3 have
| game breaking build options.
| jldugger wrote:
| IMO the way around that is to make breaking the game a
| requirement. If it's already an accidental part of the fun,
| might as well make it intentional!
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That makes games that aren't fun unless you're a wizard
| with the systems. They have their place, but I'm not a fan.
|
| Personally, I think devs should embrace some stuff being
| broken. It's a single player game, it doesn't _need_
| balance. One of my favorite RPGs is FF8 precisely _because_
| you can trivialize the game if you engage with the
| character building systems. It feels awesome to stomp
| things with your broken party.
| jldugger wrote:
| Perhaps "requirement" was a poor phrasing of the idea.
| "Feature?"
|
| > Personally, I think devs should embrace some stuff
| being broken. It's a single player game, it doesn't need
| balance.
|
| Exactly! Bravely Default & Octopath Traveler's job
| systems are built around the idea that the system should
| be breakable. BD2 even has a push-your-luck system that
| adds a multiplier for one-shotting multiple encounters in
| a row: you can get like a 50 percent rewards boost from
| random encounters if your team is able to "go infinite"
| against the current enemy mobs. And there are skills to
| remove damage caps, so you know they thought about it.
|
| OT did kinda tone that down some to add the timing and
| break mechanics; if you land enough hits on enemy
| weaknesses, they lose their current turn, and go into a
| stun status next turn (but go first the turn after that,
| so no stun locking!). But you still get end game builds
| that max out boost points every turn; you just can't
| usually one shot bosses.
| jerf wrote:
| I think Disgaea fits into that class. The solution to every
| problem is "more levels", but the game is basically built
| around that. I think it's also fun to craft your own
| challenges out of the raw materials given to you... to get
| as many levels as quickly as possible, to win at minimum
| levels, to win with only X, to ignore Y and Z, etc.
| smj-edison wrote:
| I'd put Noita in that category. I usually describe it as
| "broken both ways", because (as a rogue like) you have very
| little healing, and the enemies are punishingly hard. Not
| only that, but it's a full falling sand+physics simulation,
| so certain elements will randomly combine and kill you in
| the most unexpected and spectacular ways. On the flip side,
| the wand system is near turing-complete, and gets abused in
| the most crazy ways, to the point that you can do millions
| of damage per tick. One of the most chaotic and fun games
| I've played!
| gh02t wrote:
| To be fair to e.g. Baldur's Gate, finding game breaking
| builds appeals to many people in the core audience of that
| sort of game along with classic TTRPG players. Making those
| builds harder to achieve by accident is a good thing, but
| doing away with them entirely would probably be detrimental
| for the intended audience. True brilliance is also have
| systems that make that sort of build still fun to play, e.g.
| BG3 has some pretty amusing hidden interactions if you
| steamroll events you're not supposed to be able to win.
| donatj wrote:
| Grandia II is the only JRPG I've ever really truly enjoyed the
| battle system of. I feel like with a lot of JRPG's I'm sitting
| around doing math.
|
| Grandia 2 was largely just timing things such that if you did
| it right you would bonk the enemies turn back repeatedly and
| they'd never get to attack. Way more fun.
| Izkata wrote:
| The very first area at the start of the game actually
| encouraged this if you experimented even a little: Combo is
| the default attack but it doesn't defeat those early enemies
| so they'll hit you back, but the battles start with just the
| right timing so if you use Critical first it'll knock them
| back so your next Combo would hit and defeat them without you
| taking any damage.
| p1necone wrote:
| I think besides the mechanics, the other thing that makes the
| grandia/grandia 2 battle system so fun is how snappy all the
| animations and interactions are. You never really feel like
| you're waiting for things to happen even though it is semi turn
| based.
| KolibriFly wrote:
| When the core mechanics are that good, it's frustrating to see
| them undermined by soft balancing
| haolez wrote:
| I think Grandia was the biggest case in my life of a game that
| starts slow and finishes in a very high note. Crazy experience.
| Some unique story traits. It probably didn't age well, but I have
| fond memories :)
| KolibriFly wrote:
| A strong reminder of why emulation and fan translation efforts
| matter. Without them, this version of Grandia would remain lost
| to time
| drooopy wrote:
| Grandia's battle system is the best turn based battle system in a
| jrpg, ever.
|
| Also Grandia >> Final Fantasy VII
| jeppester wrote:
| I got my hands on Grandia because one of my friends' younger
| brother thought it was Digimon and begged their mom to buy it.
|
| Being 10 years old or so and not knowing much English yet (being
| Danes), we were pretty clueless about how to progress, but
| eventually we succeeded and got pretty far into the game. The
| game is about a great adventure, but for us it was also an
| adventure into the English language and a new type of game that
| we'd never tried before. I miss those experiences!
|
| Later I went back to it and completed it in my teens.
|
| The timing of this article is a bit fun since I'm currently
| playing it for the third time with my son, translating it on the
| go. It's awesome to see my "friends" also becoming his friends,
| and the game is holding up quite well and keeping him interested.
|
| Apart from the charming characters, the visual variety is really
| good with each town having it's own style. There's also hardly a
| boring moment (admittedly using fast forward for the battles,
| which otherwise otherwise a bit repetitive later on), there's a
| new story beat every half hour or so to keep everything fresh.
|
| The combat is also quite good, although easy if you have a bit of
| slightest experience with these kinds of games.
| kbenson wrote:
| _This point is driven home by Justin's insatiable desire to
| uncover the mystery of his Spirit Stone, and the ancient Angelou
| civilization._
|
| My mind immediately jumped to the idea that this is a play on
| words for the ancient Maya civilizations, and Maya Angelou.
| Apparently I wasn't the only one.[1]
|
| 1: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/197483-grandia/53620555
| tmtvl wrote:
| Grandia 2 on the PS2 was a lot of fun, it displaced Legend of
| Dragoon for my favourite battle system in a jRPG. Vagrant Story
| and Parasite Eve are also pretty neat, but I prefer Grandia 2 and
| Legend of Dragoon's party-based systems over the single
| character-based systems of those two.
| test6554 wrote:
| The "nostalgia" of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
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