The remastered PC port of classic Game Arts role-playing game Grandia II—now titled Grandia II Anniversary Edition—will launch on August 24, publisher GungHo Online Entertainment America told GameSpot today.
Grandia II Anniversary Edition will be available through Steam and GOG.com. The port is based on the original Sega Dreamcast version, published 15 years ago this month, and will be on sale for $14.99 for a limited time. After this, the game will cost $19.99.
Publisher GungHo chose to remaster and release Grandia II following a survey the company posted in April. In this survey, GungHo asked if players would be interested in PC ports of classic Game Arts titles, with Grandia II standing out as the most wanted port among the studio’s games.
“After careful consideration, we have chosen to retitle the game for PC to Grandia II Anniversary Edition in order to properly celebrate Grandia II’s 15th anniversary,” said President and CEO of Game Arts and GungHo Kazuki Morsishita in a statement. “The fans voted and, now, we are proud to bring a revamped edition of the classic role-playing game from Dreamcast to PC as Grandia II Anniversary Edition.”
Grandia II Anniversary Edition includes several new features, such as gamepad support, a Japanese voice acting track, and an additional harder difficulty level.
Not to mention the screenshots they HAVE shown are all from the original version
Or are they? We'll know in six days I suppose.
(I'd like to be positively surprised but Kein makes a good point there, they've shown nothing and unless it's been in the works for a long time before it was announced the development time has been fairly short.)
Hmm looking at this screens again and did the game have real time shadows like that?
I only remember the dc version which only had blob shadows in the field and crude looking real time shadows in the battles and i never played the old pc or the ps2 version which it was based on but i can't find screens with shadows looking like that from those versions either.
Well if these are from the "HD" version, it's a terrible one and certainly not worth reselling the same game over. The UI is awful, really low quality and there's no AA or anything. This is completely fine on the original game, but not when they're charging money for a supposed "HD Remaster!" that barely looks like someone has run it through an upscaling filter :\
These resolutions are supported, then, but there is a catch - Grandia II Anniversary does not support native widescreen. If you untick 'Keep Aspect Ratio', you will get a stretched image for selected widescreen resolutions. Otherwise, a resolution like 1920x1080 will actually be a 1440x1080 image with black borders, for example.
In actuality, while this re-release was initially teased as a remaster, it's a very light one, a loose definition of remaster indeed. Some of the models and building textures have been upscaled and slightly sharpened a bit, some , but nothing has been dramatically enhanced on scale that compares to several remasters in recent years. The game also remains locked to a 30fps frame rate.
Quote:
Otherwise, Grandia II Anniversary avoids the problems that plagued the non-Dreamcast versions resulting in a solid, though simple, PC port. I recall when playing Grandia II on PS2, the game would struggle significantly everytime the camera panned to show the player the layout of each city. No such obvious issues this time around.
also this videorreview suggests it has new shadows and lightning and improved AA
All things considered, I'd have rather just gotten Grandia 3 to be honest. This already existed on PC and it seems like there's nothing really done to warrant a re-release titled as a "HD Remaster!", so once again we just get a game we already had (thanks everyone that said "Grandia 2!", smart decision there ) and not something that would have truly been new.
Hey gamers! GameArts here. Which game out of our enormous back catalogue of cracking titles would you like to see released on PC/Steam?
GRANDIA II!!
Uh.. well, okay, we could.. but... wouldn't you rather have something that didn't already exist on the PC?
GRANDIA II!
*shrugs* Oh well. Money is money. Here you go. Here's Grandia II. On PC. Again. Enjoy?
Last edited by sabin1981 on Mon, 24th Aug 2015 15:54; edited 1 time in total
I don't recall a SINGLE issue of old PC-version of the game.
That's a pathetic attempt at "remake/remaster".
There where numerous bugs and crashes related to the crappy encoded fmvs on top of that it was a port of the bad ps2 version and not the dreamcast version, last i heard the old version is almost impossible to get to run on a modern os these days.
Honestly this is fine with me the game works a it should and we get the better dreamcast version as a base with some new features like a harder difficulty mode and japanese voices thrown in.I didn't expect it to look like a modern game that would be asking a bit much.
It's not even possible to emulate the game properly without any visual glitches since dreamcast emulation is so far behind. Grandia 3 can be emulated perfectly in pcsx2 so i don't really need it.
The launcher is limited to 1920x1080 but you can just open the config folder in the root directory of the game and specify any valid resolution directly in the ini file, still won't scale properly though so it's black bars or a stretched image but it worked perfectly well at 2880x1800
Screens:
Spoiler:
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EDIT: Updated screenshot link.
Last edited by JBeckman on Tue, 25th Aug 2015 07:53; edited 1 time in total
That's not a remaster. I'm gonna call it "recash".
Doubt it will sell like hot cakes.
It's in the top 10 since yesterday on steam and gog so it seems to be doing fine better then FF type-0 at least.
I don't know what you guys want it's just a port of an old beloved classic that was impossible to play in this quality before with some new features thrown in.
Seems to me like they did what they could with this port and it's not as if it is very expensive besides most of you shitheads would leech it anyway.
They ar least could proper widescreen mode shitcunt. The stretch method existed on WSGF for YEARS:
http://www.wsgf.org/dr/grandia-ii
Stretching is bad and they would need to remake every fmv, the game uses fmvs for a lot of spells which would also get stretched same with the hud and everything else 2d they would need to remake a lot of the art since they don't have the source material and it's probably long lost that's impossible.
Then there is culling of objects and npcs, redoing some in-game cut scenes to avoid bugs and clipping and so on, it's just way to much work but you probably don't get that anyway.
besides most of you shitheads would leech it anyway.
What would be wrong with that?
I own the game on two platforms... if they can't be arsed to do a bit more effort...
Kind of funny/silly that you have a stance like that on a forum like this...
There is nothing wrong with that (actually there is but i don't care or i wouldn't be here )
but complaining it's not worth the money if you don't buy it anyway is something i don't like.
So what if people were considering buying it before it came out? What if those people considered buying, then saw what a terrible cashgrab it really is and *then* decided it wasn't worth the money? Are they "shitheads" too? Shitheads just because they don't agree with you?
$20 for a cruddy port that brings nothing new to the table except 64bit OS support (out of the box without tweaking, since Grandia II works just fine on x64 with certain tweaks) an upscaled internal res (still locked to 4:3 AR with no widescreen at all, stretched or otherwise), same locked framerate, a god awful ugly UI with ugly bitty text and the same low res textures. All you're getting from this "Anniversary Edition" is improved shadows and an in-game menu for enabling AA without having to go through nVCPL.
I'll get it eventually... but not at the price they put it up for.
The amount of effort they put into it makes it a 5€ game for me. And that is just to have it on Steam and boot it up without getting my DC out of the box.
So what if people were considering buying it before it came out? What if those people considered buying, then saw what a terrible cashgrab it really is and *then* decided it wasn't worth the money? Are they "shitheads" too? Shitheads just because they don't agree with you?
$20 for a cruddy port that brings nothing new to the table except 64bit OS support (out of the box without tweaking, since Grandia II works just fine on x64 with certain tweaks) an upscaled internal res (still locked to 4:3 AR with no widescreen at all, stretched or otherwise), same locked framerate, a god awful ugly UI with ugly bitty text and the same low res textures. All you're getting from this "Anniversary Edition" is improved shadows and an in-game menu for enabling AA without having to go through nVCPL.
Shitheads for complaining, right?
Ah cmon don't take it personal i was just making fun with the shithead comment i knew someone would bite.
I mostly just like the game itself and that i can play it as intended again.
Sure the port could have been better but they obviously lacked the resources for that im ok with what we got and im sure they will probably improve it a bit.
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) and not something that would have truly been new.
