The Grandia HD Collection consists of the first Grandia game originally released on the original Playstation and Grandia II which was originally released on the Sega Dreamcast. Both of these games have been re-released and made available on modern platforms.
Grandia tells the story of Justin as he travels the world with a band of countenances and friends in search of an ancient artifact and a sense of adventure. Grandia II has you playing as a Geohound named Ryudo. A guy that takes up contracts in exchange for payment or items that he can sell to make a profit. Together with Ryudos companion bird named Skye, they embark on a journey with their charge Elena and a couple of friends along the way. Their goal and the story are centred around a religious blade called the Granasaber.
The way each game plays is very similar. Both have you navigating your party of characters around 3D maps of towns and locations. Talking with townspeople, purchasing items and weapons, solving puzzles, and battling enemies. Battles with enemies are turn-based, with each party member taking an offensive or defensive turn. This could be immediately after the previous character or after an enemy has attacked a party member. After each battle, you earn money, experience points, and sometimes items will have been dropped of which you then squire as a reward. Earning enough experience points will let you gain a level which will improve your stats and sometimes new skills, magic, or abilities to aid you in your journey.
Each game does feature cut scenes that play out to move the story along which is a nice break from the action and grinding you may have to do before moving on. The scenes play out with some really good voice acting, the writing though definitely shows it’s age. With these games being from the 1990’s the dialogue and the way the characters speak is dated and can sound silly and odd by today’s standards, but is still a lot of fun to listen to and enjoy.
Graphically, both games are pretty different to an extent. Both games feature 3D environments that look really good, at least for the time they were released. The character models and NPCs differ between the games and this is where it’s graphically different. The first game has sprites for characters and enemies and with the 2.5D isometric style camera, they give a 3D appearance. The second game Grandia II, features full 3D character models with a camera that really works to highlight them and make them stand out.
Performance-wise, the game has some issues, which is surprising given that these are older games running on modern platforms. The load times are fine, nothing wrong with those as they aren’t long at all. The performance issues I’ve found are with the in-game camera and the sound. The issue I found with the sound is with the voice-over dialogue. I will get more into that in the next section. The camera issue is with panning during cut scenes. Instead of a smooth camera motion, the camera is jittery or rather jerky. What should be a smooth panning motion over a town, becomes a stutter as it moves.
Both Grandia and Grandia II have amazing soundtracks that have been remastered and the HD-quality audio really allows them to shine and sound beautiful. The voice acting in both games sounds really good but also has a bit of a performance issue that I hinted at in the section above. The issue with the voice acting isn’t that it sounds bad. In fact the voice acting sounds very good and really gets you hooked on the story as it unfolds. Where it falls short is in its intermittent nature and the sudden drop off when names are spoken.
As an in-game cut scene plays out, the characters have voice-over dialogue that sounds really good, but when they address characters by name, the audio will either suddenly drop off as the name is spoken, or the name will just not be spoken at all. This breaks the immersion of the scene as it’s playing out and feels like it’s something that quality control either missed or purposely left broken to meet time constraints. Another issue with the in-game dialogue, when voiceovers are heard, is that it seems intermittent. When the scene first starts, you can hear the characters talking and as soon as the player gains control of the character, the conversation in some cases will continue without any of the characters’ voices being heard.
Another aspect of the audio that stands out is the sound effects of things like footsteps and cartoon-like sounds. They sound extremely out of place and just don’t quite fit the games. Like the voiceovers were layered on top of the music, then the sound effects were on top of the character’s voices. The end result is that both the voiceovers and the sound effects sound a bit detached from the game. Character voices and sound effects should have been made to be on the same level as the in-game music with the audio levels adjusted to make them sound more within the flow of the audio as a whole. I am not sure if this is possible to have done, and it may have been necessary in order to bring the audio to an HD quality.
Should it have not been possible, these should have been a re-release instead of an HD remaster. If you’re going to have voice actors have characters speak the dialogue, you should either have them speak all dialogue or only have it during important story scenes and not stop suddenly in the middle of a conversation. Again, this makes the game feel like it’s unfinished or broken and nobody thought or cared enough to spend the time to complete or fix the issue with the dialogue.
Both of these games are really good games and for the price, you’re getting an amazing collection. Well under the price for the games on their original platforms. Sure the game has issues with audio sounding detached and camera movement is not optimized in the slightest. But both of these issues could and hopefully will be corrected with the release of a patch.
As a fan of both games, I highly recommend picking up this HD collection. Both games are good for players looking to get into JRPGs for the first time or looking to revisit these classic games on modern platforms.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
