• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Grandia® II Anniversary Edition (PC) |OT| Still Not Vague Enough 15 Years Later

BONKERS

Member
And this is not something you've been told, you guys have actually confirmed it yourself on the Dreamcast?

I apologize again that I'm making such an issue out of this, but I'd really like to know.

I tested it the other day when I took comparison screenshots vs the DC version (Should be earlier last page or the page before). And I did it again earlier.
 

Pyrrhus

Member
The game crashes every time I lose a connection with my wireless 360 pad. Yet another 40 minutes wasted because of this game's broken port. This game has stolen 3 hours of my life at this point.

How is it the game's been out a month and this is still happening? I mean, this is basic, basic, basic. You guys can keep clapping the marketing guy on the back but in the meantime the game's still a mess, though incrementally less of one than at initial release.

The entire game should not crash whenever my battery runs out on my pad.

I bought this game at full price on release day as a show of support for Game Arts games on PC. But if and when another port by Gungho and whatever inexperienced mercenary band puts in the lowest quote comes out I will be waiting for proof that some lessons have been learned and warning anybody who will listen to do the same. You can't treat your customers like marks forever.
 

ss_lemonade

Member
You're talking to a thread that's half full of 1) hardcore Grandia fans 2) FPS elitists 3) a combination of the above.

We're absolutely sure.
Did the PS2 version have 60fps battles? Only ones I tried were the DC one (30 everywhere) and original pc release (60 for battles) and I once heard that the original pc version was based on the PS2 release
 
Did the PS2 version have 60fps battles? Only ones I tried were the DC one (30 everywhere) and original pc release (60 for battles) and I once heard that the original pc version was based on the PS2 release

Oh lord, the PS2 version couldn't handle 20 fps walking through a town without freezing let alone a battle. Don't even mention that garbage port.
 

Eila

Member
The game crashes every time I lose a connection with my wireless 360 pad. Yet another 40 minutes wasted because of this game's broken port. This game has stolen 3 hours of my life at this point.

How is it the game's been out a month and this is still happening? I mean, this is basic, basic, basic. You guys can keep clapping the marketing guy on the back but in the meantime the game's still a mess, though incrementally less of one than at initial release.

The entire game should not crash whenever my battery runs out on my pad.

I bought this game at full price on release day as a show of support for Game Arts games on PC. But if and when another port by Gungho and whatever inexperienced mercenary band puts in the lowest quote comes out I will be waiting for proof that some lessons have been learned and warning anybody who will listen to do the same. You can't treat your customers like marks forever.
That's a strange one, I guess the game can't switch control methods on the fly? If so, one of the things to fix.
I wouldn't really call SkyBox labs a mercenary band, they have put out a bunch of ports. But looking back, they were all RTS PC remasters with no controller support.
 
This is my first time playing the game, bought it on a whim because I wanted a jrpg and the only other one I would have bought is likely to get ported to PS4 in the future according to GAF so I'll wait on that.

Anyways, loving the game so far. Biggest complaint by far is that the formula hasn't really broken once you're past the tutorial, and even then...

travel through map/forest> arrive at town> save at inn> do story shit> save at inn> leave towards dungeon> boss > return to town> save at inn> leave towards next area (story shit)> rinse and repeat.

I guess another complaint is the camera when moving through dungeons. somtimes there are rooms with low ceilings and you can't see.

Besides that loving it. Good vs Evil is kind of a joke though.
 

BONKERS

Member
Did the PS2 version have 60fps battles? Only ones I tried were the DC one (30 everywhere) and original pc release (60 for battles) and I once heard that the original pc version was based on the PS2 release


I remember noticing how low the framerate was when playing it back when it first came out. Even though I really didn't know better back then. I could tell. And I even defended the shit performance lol. It's a slideshow at times.

The game crashes every time I lose a connection with my wireless 360 pad. Yet another 40 minutes wasted because of this game's broken port. This game has stolen 3 hours of my life at this point.

How is it the game's been out a month and this is still happening? I mean, this is basic, basic, basic. You guys can keep clapping the marketing guy on the back but in the meantime the game's still a mess, though incrementally less of one than at initial release.

The entire game should not crash whenever my battery runs out on my pad.

I bought this game at full price on release day as a show of support for Game Arts games on PC. But if and when another port by Gungho and whatever inexperienced mercenary band puts in the lowest quote comes out I will be waiting for proof that some lessons have been learned and warning anybody who will listen to do the same. You can't treat your customers like marks forever.

Caspel has made it more than clear many a time that you are free to PM him with issues to pass along. They are still going to be patching the game.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/member.php?u=11467
 

zakujanai

Member
This is my first time playing the game, bought it on a whim because I wanted a jrpg and the only other one I would have bought is likely to get ported to PS4 in the future according to GAF so I'll wait on that.

Anyways, loving the game so far. Biggest complaint by far is that the formula hasn't really broken once you're past the tutorial, and even then...

travel through map/forest> arrive at town> save at inn> do story shit> save at inn> leave towards dungeon> boss > return to town> save at inn> leave towards next area (story shit)> rinse and repeat.

I guess another complaint is the camera when moving through dungeons. somtimes there are rooms with low ceilings and you can't see.

Besides that loving it. Good vs Evil is kind of a joke though.

Not sure what you mean by this. I'm pLaying through this still and I'm not getting a good vs evil, black vs white vibe at all. For a start Selene
is clearly evil as fuck
and the
church
generally feels a little off.
 
Not sure what you mean by this. I'm pLaying through this still and I'm not getting a good vs evil, black vs white vibe at all. For a start Selene
is clearly evil as fuck
and the
church
generally feels a little off.
I meant that it's what they call the battle and struggle. Like nobody could come up with a better name lol
 
Grandia II Anniversary Edition Patch 1.05 is now live.

The following issues have been addressed:

- Ryudo's Sky Dragon Slash texture issue
- Reproducible crash using Gravity spell
- Tio's Whisper to the Stars not correctly raising stats as expected
- Enemies not playing death animation correctly
- Wrong background when flying up to Valmar
- Background at sea during 50/50 cutscene not displaying correctly
- Sky background not displaying correctly during Ryudo's flashback
- Carius's spell not casting correctly in the first Millenia encounter


**POSSIBLE SPOILER**
- The second Millenia Boss Battle Crash when Millenia Casts Fallen Wings Spell
**END SPOILER WARNING**
 

BONKERS

Member
Well my problems from the last patch are still the same. But the other stuff is more than welcome.

By the way, is there any chance of 60FPS outside of battles ever happening at this point? Or does it mess up stuff too much?
 

Caspel

Business & Marketing Manager @ GungHo
What happened to Falk to get him banned? Bummer! Was hoping to hear his feedback on the recent patch.
 

Paltheos

Member
Oh, cool. I didn't know Whisper to Stars was bugged. I mean, I thought something might have been up since Grandia usually displays spell effects and I was pretty sure I was reading the description right. Good thing too. I got stuck on the final boss on hard in my first attempt. Whisper to Stars was a big help when I tried again today.

I did encounter an odd bug today, but I know neither how I produced it nor how I resolved it. For some reason, "MAGIC \" (or "MAGIC /", I don't remember which) replaced the names for the third spells for all levels for all mana eggs in the powerup menu. After some shuffling about in other menus, it went back to normal. Not a big deal. Weird though.

Things I've noticed I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere:
A beep SFX occurs late in the animation of Hellburner. It occurs in the English and Japanese tracks (if that should make any difference whatsoever). I just tested it again in English 1.05, and it's there at the moment.
Japanese audio is sometimes out of sync and later cut off in cutscenes, which appears to occur because the text boxes scroll faster than the audio is spaced out (and then the cutoff occurs probably because later sets of dialogue are hardcoded to start at specific points of the cutscenes). I don't know if this was fixed along the way as I didn't encounter this issue late in the game, but I know it was super noticeable at other points, especially and particularly the conversation between Ryudo and Elena at Cecile Reef.

Edit: I'm not sure I've said this before so I'll say it now here. Thank you for this release, GungHo. I'm very satisfied with the quality and support of this release, especially all these additions that you absolutely didn't need to do but still did anyway. Thank you again.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Thinking about diving into this one in the next week or so. Are there any outstanding issues that people are aware of with this thing? Not sure if I should hold off a little longer for another patch.
 
Thinking about diving into this one in the next week or so. Are there any outstanding issues that people are aware of with this thing? Not sure if I should hold off a little longer for another patch.

There were still lots of crashes in 1.04 - I got one in the last dungeon in the last area with standard enemies before the first boss, and then another against the second boss. Dunno if those have been resolved in 1.05.

Other then that, if you're playing with Japanese audio, there are no subtitles in cg cutscenes, and the text/audio aren't synched in the in-game engine cutscenes. BG music doesn't loop properly either.

Finally some of the ability names have incorrect explanations, but I think that's a holdover from the original DC localisation.

If you play in normal mode, you may get randomly switched to hard mode (you will know because the save game has <HARD> next to the entry). Hard mode is not very hard though, so it's not too big a deal (dunno if you played on the DC, but Grandia 2 is famously a walkover).
 

BONKERS

Member
Oh, cool. I didn't know Whisper to Stars was bugged. I mean, I thought something might have been up since Grandia usually displays spell effects and I was pretty sure I was reading the description right. Good thing too. I got stuck on the final boss on hard in my first attempt. Whisper to Stars was a big help when I tried again today.

I did encounter an odd bug today, but I know neither how I produced it nor how I resolved it. For some reason, "MAGIC \" (or "MAGIC /", I don't remember which) replaced the names for the third spells for all levels for all mana eggs in the powerup menu. After some shuffling about in other menus, it went back to normal. Not a big deal. Weird though.

Things I've noticed I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere:
A beep SFX occurs late in the animation of Hellburner. It occurs in the English and Japanese tracks (if that should make any difference whatsoever). I just tested it again in English 1.05, and it's there at the moment.
Japanese audio is sometimes out of sync and later cut off in cutscenes, which appears to occur because the text boxes scroll faster than the audio is spaced out (and then the cutoff occurs probably because later sets of dialogue are hardcoded to start at specific points of the cutscenes). I don't know if this was fixed along the way as I didn't encounter this issue late in the game, but I know it was super noticeable at other points, especially and particularly the conversation between Ryudo and Elena at Cecile Reef.

Edit: I'm not sure I've said this before so I'll say it now here. Thank you for this release, GungHo. I'm very satisfied with the quality and support of this release, especially all these additions that you absolutely didn't need to do but still did anyway. Thank you again.


I don't know. The event timings are messed up somewhat in the ENG audio too. I think it's really the last thing that keeps it from being a must recommend to people for me.
There were still lots of crashes in 1.04 - I got one in the last dungeon in the last area with standard enemies before the first boss, and then another against the second boss. Dunno if those have been resolved in 1.05.

Other then that, if you're playing with Japanese audio, there are no subtitles in cg cutscenes, and the text/audio aren't synched in the in-game engine cutscenes. BG music doesn't loop properly either.

Finally some of the ability names have incorrect explanations, but I think that's a holdover from the original DC localisation.

If you play in normal mode, you may get randomly switched to hard mode (you will know because the save game has <HARD> next to the entry). Hard mode is not very hard though, so it's not too big a deal (dunno if you played on the DC, but Grandia 2 is famously a walkover).

Many of the tracks have been padded with loops for several minutes. (Many as long as 6minutes+) and they fade out and start again.

Which is hardly a bad solution. Seems to work just fine in practice to me.
 

Eila

Member
I haven't really tried this game much since I bought it, as I'm waiting for some more progress with the texture packs. However, I booted the game today to see the 60 fps battles (it works well), but I did notice the image was a bit fuzzy.
oSnUgrt.jpg

For whatever reason my TV recieves an interlaced signal whenever this game is fullscreen.
I tried with other games and this never happens.
1ISeqbl.jpg

Anyone else has experienced this?
 

Durante

Member
I just bought this and played for 2 hours or so. The first time I launched it (in fullscreen) it crashed, so I just ran it in borderless windowed mode instead which seems to work fine. I haven't encountered any other issues yet, though they really should have updated the font to something higher res.

Anyway, from what I've played so far I like the main character and the battle system.
 

Marow

Member
Question for those who've beat the game:

What's a good level for the final boss? I'm currently
lv. 51
and want to give it a go, but seeing how areas have been lengthy lately I'd rather be prepared so I don't have to backtrack.
 

eastx

Member
Question for those who've beat the game:

What's a good level for the final boss? I'm currently
lv. 51
and want to give it a go, but seeing how areas have been lengthy lately I'd rather be prepared so I don't have to backtrack.

Your current level is not a spoiler. :-\
 

Saikyo

Member
Question for those who've beat the game:

What's a good level for the final boss? I'm currently
lv. 51
and want to give it a go, but seeing how areas have been lengthy lately I'd rather be prepared so I don't have to backtrack.

Where are you in the game? What was the last boss you encountered?
 

That's kind of a bad thing to spoil given the large number of bosses at the end of this game. Marow may not even be at that particular section yet

Question for those who've beat the game:

What's a good level for the final boss? I'm currently
lv. 51
and want to give it a go, but seeing how areas have been lengthy lately I'd rather be prepared so I don't have to backtrack.

If you're on normal difficulty 51 is fine.
 

Durante

Member
I just realized something:
Grandia 2's battle system is RtwP, just with very inflexible (that is, fixed after each ally turn) autopausing rules.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
What happened to Falk to get him banned? Bummer! Was hoping to hear his feedback on the recent patch.

He may have done a self ban, I know he put one on himself back during e3.

HELLO HELLO Yes I'm back after a two week suspension enforced vacation
for calling someone's avatar ugly
.

Bunch of catching up to do, but there was an excellent thread on Steam forums about how the event timings may have been going off PAL 25FPS running at 30 which led to a lot of sync issues.

Will update OP soon.

Many of the tracks have been padded with loops for several minutes. (Many as long as 6minutes+) and they fade out and start again.

Which is hardly a bad solution. Seems to work just fine in practice to me.

A lot of games basically have the "OST version" put into the game data, with loop points inserted either as metadata, or held somewhere in a db. Naturally, the soundtrack versions fade out, and often have multiple loops to pad out the music and have it 'complete' (since the loop point is different from the start due to reverb tails, etc). I'm pretty positive that in 1.04 and prior simply were ignoring the loop points. haven't really had a look at 1.05 yet. Swamped with work.

Related: The only time it really bugged me were some of the boss battle tracks, since those could last upwards of 15 minutes.
 

BONKERS

Member
Well if they don't add the OGG looping tags. I'll encode super long HQ versions of the battle songs from the OST. Like 20 or 30 minutes! With no fading out until the end :D (That is if you are willing to have multiple 30+MB songs . I refuse to encode low bitrate!)
 
Just beat the game on normal. Kind of sad there was little strategy for the end of battle since I was so OP it was basically using each characters strongest attack and the occasional heal.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
I mean it comes from an era where there was almost a precedent that JRPGs ended around lv50.
 

Durante

Member
Neat!
Personally, there's really just one more thing I'd want, which is a higher resolution main font (since it's apparently hard to mod unlike the rest of the UI -- I haven't looked into it).
 

Marow

Member
Just finished the game! Turns out I was quite a bit from the end after all. The finale was a bit lacklustre, but it's still an enjoyable game. I'm fond of old JRPGs that
take a sudden sci-fi twist later on
.

Still, the battle system is what makes this work. Sure, it's mainly during boss battles it shines (how's the other games in this regard?), but it feels so satisfying. Probably my favorite turn-based battle system along with FFXIII, Bravely Default and Golden Sun.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Most of the games end up being spamming Sky Dragon Slash (or equiv) towards the end.

Grandia Xtreme was a little better in that regard. It was pretty much a dungeon crawler with Grandia combat though. Threadbare story.
 
Just finished the game! Turns out I was quite a bit from the end after all. The finale was a bit lacklustre, but it's still an enjoyable game. I'm fond of old JRPGs that
take a sudden sci-fi twist later on
.

Still, the battle system is what makes this work. Sure, it's mainly during boss battles it shines (how's the other games in this regard?), but it feels so satisfying. Probably my favorite turn-based battle system along with FFXIII, Bravely Default and Golden Sun.

If you have yet to play grandia 1 I would say go to that next, good story, great characters and the combat is just as good.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
I would say that the combat itself is on par, but by all that's righteous the level-up mechanic became such a chore at times.

If you're OCD

I actually prefer the story, setting and soundtrack though. It was a coming-of-age story of discovery, through and through, and no game has ever really recaptured that.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Holywow I'm so tempted to do another playthrough again with the music fixes

GungHo pls

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
 

BONKERS

Member
Hm. So did they add looping tags to the oggs? It'd be good to know when encoding HQ versions. ( I should stop being lazy and just go look myself)
 

BONKERS

Member
Nope. Turns out no looping tags. Which means they are looping it somehow through a separate file somewhere else.

This spells doom for replacing these low bit rate 22khz .oggs with the HQ versions from the OST :(
dawson-crying-gif.gif


Y GungHo Y

Also: The positional audio in Battle is ridiculously bad. What is up with that??? You either get Hard left. Hard Right. Or Center. Nothing in between.

Half the time, the character will be moving from say left of screen to center and then stay and attack in center. But the sound is coming hard left only.

Victory, Sword slash comes out hard left only. Voice Center.

This seems to carry over to Carbo Village. Where walking on Gravel, the sound pans only hard left, center and hard right.

While the fading out of audio is now perfectly on par with the Dreamcast
Audio event timing too is still completely wrong.
(And the error prior where the Harp playing after Ryudo and Elena first meet in the church stops too early, now slowly fades out as it is supposed to)
The resolution issues remain as well.
 
Top Bottom