The-Quill-Warrior

During these.... testing times, it's important to stay connected with one another.

So if anyone wants to have a little chat with me, please comment below.

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Here we are: on the cusp of a new ye- decade! We're entering the 2020s now!

I wish you all good tidings in the coming year, and the 9 years that come after it.

Just wanted to give a Merry Christmas to you all!

Special thanks to all my followers for sticking with me throughout the year.

I really appreciate you all! \ ^o^ /

In case you hadn't heard already, the PS1 RPG masterpiece Grandia has finally had an HD Remaster released for the Nintendo Switch, and soon to be Steam as well.
This is pretty much the 2nd time every Grandia has seen the likes of a port or remaster; the 1st being when it went from Sega Saturn to the PlayStation.
So for over 20 years, it seemed like this amazing game had been lost to the ether, but thanks to the Switch's welcoming party of ported RPGs, GungHo were encouraged to bring it to light once again.

If my gallery hadn't already tipped you off, Grandia means so much to me that I wanted to make it my highlight of the year (well this and Kingdom Hearts 3).

So was it worth the wait? Does Grandia still hold up and does the remaster do it justice? Let's find out!

BEST PARTS (I'm pretty much gushing about the game again here)
-Innovative combat system. I'm never gonna get over how no RPG that came after Grandia took a cue from its battle system. It managed to blend Action and Turn-Based RPG elements without screwing them both up; mainly because it is primarily a Turn-Based game, with the added illusion of an Action RPG. Instead of the turn order being artificially sorted from one character to the next, Grandia has a gauge at the bottom-right that indicates when a character is about to have a turn, how long they're preparing their attack, and when they're about to attack. With this, you can plan out strategies like whether you have enough time to cancel an enemy's attack, or if your character's special attack is enough to make it to the end of the gauge before being attacked. It's incredibly unique and the challenges it presents are all its own.
-Innovative progression system. Grandia's combat isn't the only thing about it that's unique; the way you level up your characters is also very innovative. Sure you have the standard EXP gained from defeating enemies, but there's also the EXP of your Weapon Skills and Magic Skills. How it works is the more you hit enemies with a specific weapon or magic spell, you will gain points for that type of weapon or magic. The more points you gain, the more they'll individually level up which will allow you access to more attack moves to play with and get stronger. It provides cool incentive to customise and and variation now and again, and plus it makes trying to hit enemies in groups much more satisfying since you're directly rewarded for it. On top of that, for every time your weapon or magic type upgrades, it gives a little stat boost to your character! SO it's also literally making you stronger as well! And with most character's ability to use different weapon types and the limited choice of acquiring magic spells via Mana Eggs, there's just so many ways to improve and get stronger throughout the adventure that it adds infinite replay value.
-No random encounters. RPGs even to this day still rely on random encounters. I get it makes it easier on programmers and some people even like this mechanic, but to me, this is what always turns me off of most of the popular RPGs like Final Fantasy. It's just annoying and inconvenient most of the time; I really don't understand why people like it. Grandia however goes out of its way to have enemies on the field and engage them in battle once you touch them. It just feels so natural and makes it easier to navigate areas without having to worry about coming across a battle you don't feel like fighting at every step.
Furthermore, even the way you engage enemies is kinda unique to Grandia. When you move on the field, your entire party follows you in a serpentine method. Wherever you go, they will always follow right behind you; like you're all part of one body. The cool thing about this is this also adds a level of strategy; the more party members you have, the difficult it is to avoid enemies. If they catch your following party members, you'll be ambushed. So it encourages you to think wisely and decide if you really can avoid certain battles and how you'll go about doing it. Very much appreciated. ^^
-Excellent story. If there was ever a story that symbolised the growth of a person on the course of an adventure, it's Grandia. This game has excellent pacing; no part of it feels unnecessary and the more you travel, the more you really feel like Justin is growing more mature. And sure while the story sounds simple, it's all the characters and heart that really make it work. These are some of the most affable characters you'll ever see in a game, and even in my cynical age, this game still has me crying in tears upon seeing characters leave or expressing their innermost feelings. You just can't find another story as well-made as Grandia's. And if you have... play it anyway! You may change your mind and agree with me.
-Amazing soundtrack. This game's score is so good it reminds me of Studio Ghibli's films. Yep, it's that amazing. Noriyuki Iwadare went above and beyond to make the music the most unforgettable and heart-gripping tunes you'll ever hear. And with RPGs well-known for often having fantastic soundtracks anyway, Grandia still manages to beat them all. If good music is what you crave, I encourage you to listen to some of its tunes on YouTube and let that encourage you to check out the game. You won't be disappointed.
-Beautiful art style. Even the way the game looks is something of its own. At the turn of the 3D age, Grandia made the bold choice to have all the environments rendered in 3D, while the characters are still 2D sprites. Personally, I really miss this kinda style. The admittedly dated 3D settings are offset by the charming character sprites and wonderfully expressive character portraits. And yet, even though the settings look dated, they still have a charm about them that shows the modellers put their heart in making them feel as varied and lived-in as possible. Even if the characters are 2D sprites, I totally buy that they are in these environments and that they call this world their home. And while I'm on the subject, it's worth pointing out that the developers did indeed brush all the characters' portraits to make look less pixelated. Honestly I think the portraits look even better in the HD version than they did before. The brushed look can be seen as a kind of style. So I'm glad they managed to make it look just right.
-Every town feels alive. ANOTHER unique thing about Grandia that I personally really really like is how you can strike up conversations with NPCs. Unlike in most RPGs where NPCs usually give you a paragraph of text and that's about it; Grandia's NPCs all have their own unique conversations and in some cases, even their own mini little story arcs. It's impressive to me. And what's even more impressive is how you can strike up conversations with every single NPC in every single town after every single story event. Now THAT is attention to detail. And yes to be fair... this feature is rather pointless. Grandia doesn't really have much in the way of sidequests, so talking to NPCs yields virtually nothing. Aside from an extra item here and there. Yet the inclusion of detail like this for the sake of creating a lively world full of unique people is somethign that I wholly appreciate.
-Excellent frame rate and loading times. This one should be kinda obvious; it's an HD remaster of an old game, so of course the frame rate is smoother and loading times are faster. But compared to the original PS1 version, you have no idea how satisfying it is to play the game at this kind of speed. I'll admit, the original suffered from some terrible lag and delays. Even character animations are pretty slow and suffer from awkward pauses. We fans stuck with it however because... well... we didn't have much choice really. But this version moves so fluidly, I'm not sure if I can even go back to the original. For point of reference, it takes me probably about a few minutes to load up the original game on PS3. On the Switch, turning on the console and the game takes about 10 seconds. It's amazing. ^-^

NOT-SO-GOOD PARTS (because even the best games have some problems)
-Cutscenes and battle animations are unskippable. Kotaku recently did an informal review of the game, with its main headline being "it looks pretty, but could really use a fast-forward button". Sadly, I'm inclined to agree. Even though I would never skip the cutscenes myself when playing, having the option to do so would be much appreciated. But even if they couldn't do that, I think we all would have appreciated the ability to skip any of the battle animations. Even Final Fantasy knew to do that at some point. Because most of the time you'll be using special moves and magic spells over and over again to level them up, it can get pretty tiring to watch them now and again. Personally, I can live with it. And like I said, because it's so satisfying to hit enemies in groups with your attacks, sometimes you may not feel like skipping your attack because you want to see if you've successfully hit enough enemies. And it's not like any of the battle animations take 30 seconds or something. I'm pretty sure the longest animation I've seen in the game lasts up to 10 seconds. Not really a big deal. But with that being said, the option to skip them would have been greatly beneficial. Especially for Grandia 2 because that game's battle animations are when they decide to take the piss and have go on for too long.
Admittedly, I am afraid that because they neglected this feature, modern audiences and newcomers would lose interest in Grandia very quickly because they don't feel like watching the same battle animation over a dozen times. And that breaks my heart.
-Bad voice acting. Yeah, there's no denying it; Grandia's voice acting is preeeetty bad. BUT... it's the fun kind of bad. It's corny bad. The kind of bad where the people voicing these characters clearly can't act, but you can tell they're really trying. And I think that alone makes it still good. Much as I think the characters could do with new voices, I at least still believe each character when they're expressing an emotion. When a character's crying, I believe they're really crying. When a character's angry, I get that they're angry. For the most part anyway, Mullen and Rapp's actors are the other kind of bad... bad bad. The kind of bad where you can tell their actors just weren't trying at all. Aside from those two, I still find these performances endearing.
Furthermore, let's be totally fair... pretty much every game that came out of Grandia's era had bad voice acting. Even Metal Gear Solid, because who do you know actually talks like Solid Snake?
-Bad dialogue. Dialogue is another thing that can seem a bit cringy, but certainly tolerable. I mean when you consider that every single NPC strikes a conversation with the party in every single town and after every single story event... it makes you wonder how many months were spent on just writing the dialogue alone. So I can totally forgive how certain paragraphs can seem kinda redundant or how the grammar can be a little off.
-Pretty easy. Yeah OK, Grandia isn't really known for its difficulty. As long as you prepare yourself well, you'll pretty much have little resistance going through the game. I can certainly overlook it because of the implementations of a unique combat system and the focus on a brilliant story, but if what you want from a game is challenge, you won't really find it here.

TECHNICAL HICCUPS (things I encountered in the HD version, none of which broke my immersion, but should be nonetheless listed)
-Widescreen oddities. For the most part, Grandia handles widescreen pretty well. But it can't escape the problem of details being unveiled from behind the black border curtain. Like how when characters walk "off-screen", they stop in place at the edge of the screen where they're supposed to be gone. It's not really fair to critique something like this because obviously this could not be prepared for back then. But it's at least worth pointing out to newcomers; that when you see a character who should have left the screen still being there, it's because this game wasn't made for widescreen.
-Screen pops black into every enemy encounter. It happens for a split second, but it is nonetheless noticeable. I can look past it, but I fear some might find it annoying.
-Sound effects have no reverb. The developers said that to make this HD Remaster, they used both source codes of the Sega Saturn and PlayStation versions. The Saturn version for its speed and the PlayStation version for its sound. While its speed is bang-on, the sounds are noticeably lacking their reverb, or the echoes trailing the ends of the noises. So for example, when an object used to go "DINGggggg...." now it goes "DING-", like you can tell the echo is missing. I appreciate the developers sticking to the PlayStation version of sounds because I believe that version had superior sound design. But I am a little disappointed they couldn't keep the reverb.
-Boss Theme 1 is botched. For some reason, the boss music that takes up most of the 1st Half of the game plays twice over itself. And it just sounds... horrible. Fortunately, it is the ONLY song in the game to have this problem (thank GOD). But man, it's not reasonable to wish that no song would have this problem.
-Music in Pirate Island / Mermaid Lagoon disappears. After fighting one battle in this area, the music just flat out didn't play again. What's more, it stayed like that until Justin & Feena arrived at Virgin Forest. I'm REAAALLLY fortunate this didn't happen for the rest of the game, but it was nonetheless odd it happened here. This is the last dungeon you face before switching to Disc 2 in the original version, so I imagine that brought up some unexplained problems. And speaking of that, for some reason, even though the field music wouldn't play, the battle music shifted to the 2nd Disc's battle theme. It's just weird. :/
Oh and furthermore, neither of Justin or Feena's voice clips would play during this stage either. Neither in battle or in the aftermath of the level where they have another conversation. Yet again, it was fixed by the time I reached Virgin Forest. (Again, thank GOD )
-Sound Effects of Spells unique to Disc 2 are gone. One neat little touch I kinda liked in the original PS1 version was how in Disc 2, all the spells you use have different sounds, which makes spamming that little less repetitive. But for some reason in the HD Remaster, the sound effects of the Spells are the same throughout the entire game; Disc 1 and Disc 2. Awwww.
-Enemies got stuck in their spawn positions in Warp Space. Some of them can still be reached, but others you just can't fight. I'm sure this won't bother most people though.
-FMV of Golems awakening plays the wrong Baal commentary. That classic monologue of Baal saying "COME! THIS IS THE FORM OF YOUR NEW GOD!" followed by his terribly silly maniacal laugh for some reason plays during the scene in the Underground Temple where the Wall Golems come to life. It's pretty unfitting.
-The volume of that person's sacrifice to Gaia is rather low. Every FMV in the game is at the right audio... except for this one. Weird. :/
-Feena STILL doesn't learn Time Gate, even at the right levels. This HAS to be a glitch or something, because I distinctly remember it being a problem in the original as well. Once Feena learns the plot twits thing that I won't spoil for you, she can learn 3 more magic moves. She can learn 2 of them no problem, but for some reason 1 of them is forever unlearned, even if you meet the level requirements for that spell. You might be able to learn it if you keep both spells beneath the level requirement up until that point and THEN level them up... but at that point in the game, it's hard not to have Feena's magic skills be pretty high-levelled anyway, so it's a bit hard to ask the player to do that to cover up a mistake. If this is indeed a glitch in the original game, it went unfixed in this version.
-Game crashed once. Yes the game is almost entirely stable. Except for one part where I left Cafu Village to go to the Petrified Forest and the game instantly crashed. Fortunately, this was a one-time thing; I exited Cafu Village again to the Forest no problem. And once again, it;s very fortunate of all times where it could happen, it happened near a Save Point, instead of happening mid-dungeon or something. 0_o
I'm hoping this problem wasn't unique to me, and that no one else came across their own crash points while playing. Because that... would really stink. X(

OVERALL
And there we have it. On the whole, despite missing a cutscene skip feature Grandia still holds up in this modern age. I myself am doing my best to keep buzz for this game going with my Grandia Cast series, and I really, really hope that more people play it. It's heartbreaking that this amazing game had became so obscure. I wish anyone who has even the smallest respect for RPGs would play this game and give it the attention it deserves. Trust me, you'll adore it. It has an outstanding sense of style and innovation, without losing the core principles of what makes an RPG great.

And considering that Square Enix is for some reason uninterested in returning Final Fantasy to its classic turn-based roots like it's ashamed of it or something, if you in particular are upset about that and are left starved once again for a great turn-based RPG experience, Grandia is exactly what you need. It has that novelty of being an old classic, while revitalising a unique system that should be innovated into more RPGs of its kind.

Playing my favourite game of all-time outside in the brisk summer wind was a dream I never knew I had. And I'm thankful to got to experience it.

RATING (Game on its own merits): 10 / 10
RATING (HD Collection Version): 9 / 10

By the way, I probably won't jump into Grandia 2 HD straight away. My appetite has been savoured and I would like to take a break from Grandia for a while.
I mean there's that new Astral Chain game. I want a piece of that. :la;

Thank you all! I had a lovely time!

I got some clothes, Into the Spiderverse on DVD and some much needed back healing with my new shoulder massager!