Worth pointing out that a Grandia 1 & 2 HD bundle came out earlier this year: https://www.grandiahd.com/
Are they garbage? All the videos I've seen say the remasters are dogshit and ruin the game :(
The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
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Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#72The 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.
in that vein, https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/grandia-hd-collec...
It's bad though, isn't it? I saw some videos saying they did a really low effort job on it.
Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#73I'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.
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.
Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#74I 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…
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 mos…
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.
Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#75I 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…
It warms my heart knowing that there's others that enjoyed Grandia as much as I did. It always felt very underrated and forgotten.
Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
in that vein, https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/grandia-hd-collec...
It's bad though, isn't it? I saw some videos saying they did a really low effort job on it.
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."
Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
They really didn't cover at all why this game is better specifically on Saturn than PS1 or any modern remake / emulator.
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.
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.
Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
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.
> 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.
Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#79Worth pointing out that a Grandia 1 & 2 HD bundle came out earlier this year: https://www.grandiahd.com/
Are they garbage? All the videos I've seen say the remasters are dogshit and ruin the game :(
Honestly, I’ve not tried them. PS Store has the unremastered Grandia 1 available, which is what I’ve been playing.
Re: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
#80I 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…
Nightdive's Blade Runner Enhanced Edition is pretty infamous, so they've had a few bombs here and there. But not often.