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Grandia 2 Anniversary Edition on August 24, $20 (25% off sale at launch)

So even with the problems this version is worth picking up over my PS2 version? I'm replaying/finishing Grandia 1 on my Vita currently.
 

Miker

Member
I caved in and got it because of all the praise I've heard about its combat system. I've never truly enjoyed combat in JRPGs (maybe Paper Mario?), so I'm curious as to why Grandia's combat is so good.

Anyway, for a first time player, should I play with the English or Japanese audio? I would normally go with English, but I've heard the dub is pretty awful.
 

Skulldead

Member
There already exists a hard mode patch for the old PC version I'm sure someone can make it work with the Steam release

I know, was never able to make the original disc version work on my windows 7... i'm will be waiting anyway... the game just froze me twice... that's enough...
 

NIN90

Member
Oh jeez this camera in the first gameplay section. Talk about confusing.
Is it just the environment or is it generally like that?
 
I must be one of the few who thinks the english audio is actually good, at least for its time. But then again, I played Tales of Destiny 2 (Eternia US) so I also had the "pleasure" of listening to that.
 

BONKERS

Member
It's like pretty good

Fixed that for you.

I bought this. I am hoping they patch the crazy loud sound effects and unbalanced audio levels. And the Hard Mode which seems to be a joke.

Unless I can mod it all myself. Which I plan on doing if possible.

I also expect numerous mods community!
 

Kazer

Member
I am hoping they patch the crazy loud sound effects and unbalanced audio levels. And the Hard Mode which seems to be a joke.

Yes. I ended up buying it, but the sound effects are way too loud. And some higher res text/menus and such would be fantastic.
 

BONKERS

Member
It seems they kept the same .exe name as the original PC release which had a lot of driver side optimizations it seems. Since it's a new port, I wonder if they accounted for these or if they might cause issues with the new port.
nvidia_20150824_175425.png

Also: Does it seem like it uses DInput instead of XInput?
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
A shame the port seems somewhat bare bones. Maybe it will be updated or modded to add some further improvements (resolutions, widescreen, higher res GUI).

I'll probably pick it up next time it is discounted. Just bought new tires. If the port was nicer I might have skipped some meals and bought it anyway, but as it is I'll just hold off a few months.
 

Seda

Member
Some impressions of my own (Steam version).

I noticed there were some issues with the audio at times where the music track will loop a few times, fade out, and then restart from the beginning again. Speaking of audio, I noticed that the area where the Ryudo's fire pit is outside the tower in the beginning of the game is still emitting sound even though the fire is not visible. The music that plays during the first cutscene for when you arrive at the tower is looped so that it plays over and over again, but I believe it should only play once.

In terms of framerate, I don't mind the 30fps. I am noticing a ton of microstuttering on my end that doesn't seem related to hard drive access. I can eliminate some of it by forcing triple buffering with my drivers but it's still present. Is anyone else having this issue?

The game works fine using the In-Home streaming feature. Macbook Pro (Retina) Late 2013 connected via WiFi on a Netgear R6250 router (2.4Ghz hotspot) with a DS4 controller and haven't noticed any issues. I had some problems initially with hardware encoding enabled on the host but it seems better with it off.

From what I've played so far it seems like an alright port. I didn't encounter any of the odd coin bugs that everyone else is having. Definitely better than that PS2 port for sure.

EDIT: As a side note, I noticed the FIELD/SYSTEM config files from the original game are still present. These were purged from the original PC port if I remember correctly. Whoops.

These are located at 'Grandia II Anniversary Editiondatabin'.

Saved games are stored at 'Grandia II Anniversary Editiondatasaves'. They use the VMS Dreamcast save format.

Oh yes, I got an audio oddity similar to the one you mentioned too. For FMVs it seemed slightly offset and you'll hear the beginning loop again for just a second when the FMV ends. Sometimes the background music in a zone or whatever would clearly end and restart as well but I'm not sure if that's how it always was.



Also for general note: just do the hard mode. Game is still pretty darn easy :p
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
I have realized I remember very little from this game aside from the general skeleton of the story and its soundtrack

Is anyone doing an OT?
 

BONKERS

Member
Widescreen won't happen officially. Most of the spells are video overlays. So if someone makes it work, those will be cut off at 4:3.

As for microstuttering, try forcing 1/2 refresh vsync or using a 30FPS cap with RTSS
 

Neoweee

Member
Some variables are in datasets as raw text. Is there anything moddable related to hardmode in those files?

Other than that, there's a lot of digging to be done through the rest of the game files. Looks like graphics are easily replaceable, at least.
 

Dambrosi

Banned
Bought to support. Millenia = one of my first and most fondly remembered waifus 💓

I see the port has quite a few problems though, so I might wait for a couple of patches before playing (it's not like I won't be Snake-ing it up all month anyway)...
 

BONKERS

Member
It seems there are two Sound directories "Sound" and "Sound_n". Some of the encodes in "Sound_n" sound noticeably poorer.

Like "_OPB4d.ogg"

"Sound_n OPB4"
Format : OGG
File size : 778 KiB
Duration : 26s 440ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 241 Kbps
Track name : OPB4d
Track name/Position : 2550
Comment : Encoded with LameXP

Audio
ID : 15739 (0x3D7B)
Format : Vorbis
Format settings, Floor : 1
Duration : 26s 440ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 320 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.01 MiB
Writing library : aoTuV

""Sound OPB4"
General
Complete name : C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grandia II Anniversary Edition\data\sound\OPB4d.ogg
Format : OGG
File size : 240 KiB
Duration : 22s 166ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 88.9 Kbps

Audio
ID : 19530 (0x4C4A)
Format : Vorbis
Format settings, Floor : 1
Duration : 22s 166ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 105 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 22.05 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 284 KiB
Writing library : aoTuV 20110424 (UTC 2011-04-24)

Despite being a lower sample rate and more lossy encode the "Sound" folder OPB4 has more high end definition and oddly sounds less lossy at a glance

In some of them there are multiple encodes of the same song.

Both directories contain "btl01" which is the main battle theme. But it is obviously of poorer quality than even my lossy encode of the OST version of the song.

Another is the title theme Deus, there are 3 encodes between the two directories with some variation on "KAMI_inst01" And one of them clearly sounds better than the other two
 

cj_iwakura

Member
I have realized I remember very little from this game aside from the general skeleton of the story and its soundtrack

Is anyone doing an OT?

I'd offer to, because this is my favorite Dreamcast RPG, but I have no intention of buying it since I'm also happy with my DC copy.
 

OverQ

Member
I'm glad someone mentioned the bug where speaking to the tutorial guy changes all enemy ai. I never knew about or couldn't remember that from when I played 15 years ago on the Dreamcast!

Assuming it's the same bug - I thought it was really strange that (warning: minor first 30 minute spoilers)
the spiders were only casting a 'power crush' spell that nearly one shot kills you in the first tower, after replaying without speaking to the tutorial guy they are using their standard attack.

Would be great to get this bug fixed too.
 

Miker

Member
After playing for around half an hour, the audio issues are kind of getting on my nerves, and I might get a refund and wait until the game is a bit more polished.
 

rjc571

Banned
Sorry, but if you port over a 15 year old game and don't fix the framerate and don't fix the aspect ratio, the game should not cost $20. It should be $10 max.
 

antitrop

Member
Skies of Arcadia has nothing on this.

As someone who was looking forward to Grandia II more than Skies of Arcadia throughout the year 2000, it felt like I was the only one. There was way more hype for Skies, but Grandia II was the one that I lusted over for almost an entire year.

In the end, I love them both, but I'll always have a soft spot for Grandia II.
 
My computer blue screened when I tried launching the game. Any ideas?

Edit: Nevermind, I had to manually configure the game in my game library. Weird.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Nah, not that rough of a launch since we are on top of all the reported bugs and glitches (or trying to make sure we find them all). This morning's Steam issue was server/distribution side, so there wasn't much we could do until after the launch. With any PC launch, myself as a consumer, too, I have come to expect a few hiccups regardless of developer, publisher, individual, company, etc. So given that, I want to make sure we at GungHo are on top of every reported issue and make sure anyone that does indeed decide to buy the game can have an open dialogue and begin trust with us as we try to assist when/where we can.

Ah, that's nice to hear :). Here's hoping it opens up even further oppurtunities to bring old classics to PC
 

warheat

Member
Sorry, but if you port over a 15 year old game and don't fix the framerate and don't fix the aspect ratio, the game should not cost $20. It should be $10 max.

most old games especially console games is tied to framerate, the company won't bother with PC port if it needs to be 60fps. You can easily hex edit the game file for true widescreen support in original PC port, I think the reason it won't have official support from the dev because some of Grandia II spell animation is FMV, it won't be possible to convert prerendered spell animation to widescreen. So read reviews, if you don't like it, then don't buy it.
 

BONKERS

Member
After playing for around half an hour, the audio issues are kind of getting on my nerves, and I might get a refund and wait until the game is a bit more polished.

Yeah, man the foot steps. Dear lord!
I'm trying to replace some of the audio files with the OST versions too

EDIT: Replacing some of the Audio Files seems to be working so far. No crashes. Let's see how they loop. If this works then we could upgrade many songs to their OST versions
Edit: No looping problems so far with the song I replaced. It plays to the end. Then starts again. (My preferred method for looping streamed audio)
Apparently "sounds_n" is only used with Japanese audio maybe? "N=Nihongo?"


Sorry, but if you port over a 15 year old game and don't fix the framerate and don't fix the aspect ratio, the game should not cost $20. It should be $10 max.

The aspect ratio is tied more to the things like Spell effects. Which are video overlays.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be an option to run widescreen but have the spells still overlayed in 4:3. But that's just how it is.

The framerate, wouldn't it be possible to set the game speed to half and then run at 60FPS like many emulator hacks do?

It also seems this port suffers the same as Type-0 or Akiba's Trip where the mouse cursor is stuck on screen. That's super annoying dude
 

BONKERS

Member
Here's a video of the battle theme replaced with an arranged one for example
*IGNORE the strange letterboxing. Handbrake did this on it's own when I encoded the video*
https://copy.com/WO7E4iRwlEVngR3Q

WARNING IS MUCH LOUD

Also: I have to say whatever work they did on the graphics, very subtle but makes a pretty big difference. It looks so good


One other issue i've noticed is the music in the intro aren't as seamless/looping properly compared to the DC version. It just cuts right in with the new section, which is odd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRID23i_MFk

Specifically @3:50 (compare that to this new one), then again @4:01 Edit: Looking at it NOW, it seems the Animations are no longer timed to the music. As you can see when Elena and the guy are bowing the music matches their actions.
(Non emulated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ugIIqI5Zp0)
In this version there are new sound effects here now. But they don't seem to loop properly. Which sounds odd.

As well, since the battles start so much faster now, the encounter sound effect conflicts with the beginning of the battle music. Which sounds really awful.
You can also see why widescreen wouldn't really work too
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
So apparently it's compatible with Dreamcast saves. I guess I missed that there was some kind of hardware that allowed you to transfer data from a VMU to a PC?

It's like hilariously bad.

Bad as in avoid at all costs or must-play for the hilarity?

How are people talking shit about the Grandia 2 dub?! It is at the very least one of the better JRPG dubs of its time. Not to mention the frankly great localization. I think the English dialogue still stands out among JRPGs today. That and the characters are one of the main reasons to play the game.
 

Xenus

Member
So apparently it's compatible with Dreamcast saves. I guess I missed that there was some kind of hardware that allowed you to transfer data from a VMU to a PC?





How are people talking shit about the Grandia 2 dub?! It is at the very least one of the better JRPG dubs of its time. Not to mention the frankly great localization. I think the English dialogue still stands out among JRPGs today. That and the characters are one of the main reasons to play the game.

It's a product of what mid-budget JRPG VA's were at the time. It's bad by today's standards but not at all by back then
 

Falk

that puzzling face
the spiders were only casting a 'power crush' spell that nearly one shot kills you in the first tower, after replaying without speaking to the tutorial guy they are using their standard attack.

hey guys

guys

maybe the tutorial guy bug is the true hard mode of the game

!
 

Syril

Member
It's a product of what mid-budget JRPG VA's were at the time. It's bad by today's standards but not at all by back then
The cast itself was really solid, it's the direction that was questionable. It's like the actors were told to just be over the top and then they just kept the first take they did.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Eh, remember that this was 2 years before Final Fantasy had voice acting.

Even up till today when you get talent in the room and tell them "This is for a video game" they respond "REALLY?" and helpfully dive right into Cartoon Mode. Worse if you tell them it's a localization of a Japanese game and if they've ever, EVER done anime.

(But yes, regardless of reasoning I agree JP voice is far superior for Grandia 2)
 

May16

Member
Anyway, for a first time player, should I play with the English or Japanese audio? I would normally go with English, but I've heard the dub is pretty awful.

The dialogue is hilarious, thanks to the sarcastic main character. Pick whichever language you're most proficient in. You can't go wrong.
 
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