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The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

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Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#101

Post by jerf »

jldugger wrote: post #98
jandrese wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Bal…

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!

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.

Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#102

Post by Grazester »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #85
garciansmith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

> 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.

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

Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#103

Post by jerf »

jajuuka wrote: post #65
jerf wrote: post #50

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…

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.

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.)

Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#104

Post by kbenson »

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

Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#105

Post by smj-edison »

jldugger wrote: post #98
jandrese wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Bal…

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!

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!

Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#106

Post by gh02t »

jandrese wrote: post #82
jerf wrote: post #50

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…

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 Bal…

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.

Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#107

Post by tmtvl »

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.

Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#108

Post by jldugger »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #99
jldugger wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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.

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.

Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

#110

Post by butlike »

kouteiheika wrote: post #15
TavsiE9s wrote: post #4

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.

> 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?

Dopamine only hits when the numbers go up. So no min/maxing when the cutscenes are playing
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