What is your favorite RPG developed by Game Arts? Which one do you think had the best story? Which do you think had the best gameplay? Who is your favorite character? Who is your favorite boss?
Also You should probably start with the PS1 versions, but it really depends on your personal preferences. The biggest difference, gameplay-wise, is that the Sega CD games have random encounters and the PS1 versions let you see the enemies on the map and give you the option of running past them(though some enemies are almost impossible to avoid.) Lunar 2 on Sega CD has a quirk where you have to purchase new abilities for characters using magic points, which are gained from combat like secondary experience points. You also have to pay with these magic points every time you save your game and the cost goes up every time you save. You gain magic points so fast that you'll barely notice the cost after a few hours in, but it can be kind of a pain early on.
Story-wise the games are very different, in fact Lunar 1 on the PS1 is almost a completely different game from it's Sega CD counterpart(for example, in the SCD version the MC is a silent protagonist whereas he's a fully fleshed out character in the PS1 game.) The iterations of Lunar 2 are more similar, they still have some differences. The most glaring flaw with the PS1 version is that it gives away a pretty big spoiler about one of the characters right as you recruit her, instead of waiting until it was actually relevant. The SCD version also feels a bit more subtle and nuanced to me. Also, the PS1 games are more cutscene heavy.
The SCD versions have much better atmosphere in my opinion, but they both got hit pretty hard by Working Designs' "localizations". It just depends on whether you'd rather hear references to early 90s stuff like Miami Vice or late 90s stuff like the Monica Lewinsky trial.
TL;DR: Play the 16-bit versions if you like the style of 16-bit RPGs more or play the 32-bit versions if you like the style of 32-bit RPGs more.
As far as I know, the Dreamcast and PC versions are almost identical whereas the PS2 version has quite a bit of bugs. I can't say for sure as I've only played the Dreamcast version.
Out of curiosity as I have both series on my backlog (though as of yet no good way to play Grandia II between having a toaster and the PS2 port apparently being shit; might have to get a Dreamcast down the line), how do the translations compare between Lunar and Grandia? I mean, I've heard about WD rewrites with Lunar (and other games they handled, I'd expect), but did SCEA and Ubisoft do that much of a better job with Grandia?
Angel Perry
They're much better than what Working Designs did, in my opinion. The dialog was quite more natural and I don't think were even any pop-culture references. The voice acting in the Grandia games, however, is much worse.
Adrian Brooks
*quite a bit
Brody Smith
was that shit saving system in lunar 2 a result of working designs "tweaking" the game?
Angel Butler
Eh, I don't mind English vidya dubs from the time too much, provided there's some semblance of effort behind what might be bad direction. Stuff like Tales of Eternia I can adjust to; stuff that's Chaos Wars or ARF-tier bad dubbing, no (and the latter game really has no excuse for having been a 2010 localization). Funnily enough, a few JRPGs at the time actually had markedly good dubs, like Koudelka, but that was English audio worldwide anyhow, even in Japan.
Good to know that the scripts for Grandia seem better done. Might have to bump it up a somewhat in my backlog. Shame I can't do much about playing Grandia II as of yet (unless I want to muddle through the PS2 version on my IDE; maybe that could reduce the slowdown I've heard it had, at least?), and in regards to Lunar, with how mixed people are as to Working Designs' work with them, I doubt they'll see full fan retranslations anytime soon.
Is there any information as to who did the PS2 port job for Grandia II anyhow, and how it wound up so botched? I mean, looking at its fellow Dreamcast JRPG, Skies of Arcadia turned out pretty damn alright with the Gamecube port (and people seem reasonably split as to which version is better, as both have their pros and cons). Seems more than a bit odd that the console that would pretty much be JRPG king for sixth gen would wind up with such a bad port of Grandia II.
Nathan Green
Grandia 2 had a decent dub, with the likes of Cam Clark, Paul Eiding and John Cygan in it. Grandia 1 and Xtreme had shit dubbing. 3's dub is sort blah and utilitarian, which I guess fits as the game itself is blah and boring as shit.
Charles Harris
I believe so.
Lucas Perry
>>>/reddit/
Kevin Bell
Should take the bait, either he or some other posters have been hitting threads on anything remotely Japanese with "weebshit" or "disposable weebshit" posts recently, as if trying to turn consensus against ability to discuss such games, be they current games of classics anons have had a longstanding liking for.
Sebastian Turner
Shouldn't* I swear, it's like sometimes contractions I attempt to write out get eaten as I type. I don't have any auto-correct shit on though.
Ayden Watson
That's rich coming from someone who belongs on >>>/reddit/
Daniel Rodriguez
The PS2 port was done by Rocket Studios, developers of NUDE on the Xbox Hueg.
Caleb Gomez
Downboat negated :^)
true >>>/somethingawful/ hero
Zachary Davis
I played all their games. Real good charm that made me feel good. Kids stuff really because nothing go too complicated either. I think Grandia II was my favorite game from them. I never had the Sega CD Lunar's but the import Saturn ones. Even with all the extra bells and whistles neither of the games stood up to how cool Grandia II was for me though. It's up for debate to determine which was the worse game though: Dragon Song or Grandia III. Yes I know Game Arts didn't make Lunar Dragon Song, but it's just hypothetical mumblings…
What a surprise the thread is getting attacked by the same "disposable weebshit" posters. These very few games are pretty good and well worth trying out even if you mostly play western games.
Adam Bailey
I say definitely that Grandia 3 is easily one of the most boring JRPGs ever made. Couldn't even make it past disc 1 with cliched it was.
Jayden Barnes
ironically you were using one of their VPNs
Matthew Gonzalez
Why are you posting the worst versions of the Lunar games?
Cameron Martinez
My fave is definitely Grandia 1. After reading about it (ca. 2002) in magazines I wanted to play it so damn much, and never had luck finding a copy. Back when Internet wasn't around for me and I could only source bootleg copies where I am, I managed to finally find Grandia, but it was in Japanese. I actually managed to slog through and got to disc 2, stopping there because the bootleg disc 2 would crash as soon as I entered a fight. Then waaaay later I found another copy in a store that no longer exists - this time in English. I was ecstatic. The dub is hilariously bad but that only adds to the charm. I should probably give Redux a spin sometime…
It was sadly rushed as hell, and it shows. It has the best iteration of the Grandia battle system and it's fun as hell to smack enemies, but aside from that it's in dire state. >Miranda is awesome and kicks ass then promptly leaves the party FFFFFFFFFFF
I still haven't beat G3 - I'm in a late disc 2 part. Story is entirely forgettable, but I still had fun in battles so that kept me going. If it didn't get so terribly rushed it could've been a worthy final entry.
Mason Ramirez
Your really think G3 is rushed? I don't think so on account of how much of the game they focused on that crybaby bitch female MC. They wanted a romantic story and you got one, that fucking twerp always crying. Maybe you got that notion seeing as there's only 2ish big hub towns and 5 dungeons, the main badguy's castle was short and you spend forever in Zorn's mirror land that looks easy to make.
Lucas Stewart
Getting PTSD flashbacks from the "localisation" 90s JRPGs had to go through back then.
Sebastian Cruz
Please tell me there are fan translations out there?
John Gonzalez
Anyone else catch how G2 is essentially a darker and edgier adaptation of G1's story? It reuses a ton of the same major elements just without the childhood adventure aspect.
Thomas Roberts
It was rushed. No doubt about it - just look at all the locations in the flight world map. Many of them are inaccessible and serve as a mild 'fuck you' whenever you fly over them.
Jack Price
Of those, I only tried Grandia 1, even had the original for the PSX. Fucking marvelous game, one of the only RPGs that ever actually made me feel like I'm going on an adventure. And not one of those edgy "you gotta save the world! But it's so tough and impossible…" grimdark shit. It was more of a "Fuck yeah, we're going on an adventure and it's go be awesome and we're gonna have so much fun!"
I loved the RPG and the battle systems to it. How the growth of your skills influenced your stats and how you had to diversify but it was as easy as using another weapon or different spells. It was simple enough and could be expanded to something more complex, but it did it's job very well. Allthough, I have no idea how people make it to the endgame without emulating with frameskip. Battles can be quite long with just the loading animation, but maybe I'm spoiled with fast skipping things in an emulator.
The story was a bit cliche sometimes, but it did it's job well enough. Too bad it never showed who Justin's father was (who I could have sworn was that general).
I knew there was Grandia 2, but not 3. Gotta keep them in mind for my backlog after Skies of Arcadia.
Noah Young
Grandia 1 is fucking amazing. Dope as fuck nuanced strategy combat, and the game really makes you feel like you're going on a REAL adventure. You say goodbye to your mom… hop aboard a ship… etc stuff that would spoil it for you. Towns, dungeons, complex level up schemes with magic and skills. A true gem of a game.
Final Fantasy is fucking GARBAGE
Xavier Turner
You don't even need to bring up game arts to think final fantasy is garbage. Final Fantasy consistently underperforms its competition in everything but game sales domestically in japan and squeenix never fucking listens. Again the best of example of a jrpg is the genre's worst entry. From what I played of dragon quest it's even worse.
Grayson Nelson
Lunar 2, without a doubt. The only game I ever purchased a special edition of.
Levi Price
The only thing Final Fantasy is good for is getting all the uninformed JRPG fags and keeping the real good shit hidden in their fucking shadow. FF Popeye Edition stole the show so fucking hard that Grandia is a little known cult hit. Business is business but goddammit fuck you Square
Alexander Watson
Can't forget that soundtrack by Iwadare. The main Grandia theme basically screams *ADVENTURE* in your face.
Dylan Lewis
How could I forgot? Too catchy, too adventurous. Does any other RPG really capture that adventurous spirit? All I can think of is Mega Man Legends 1 and 2.
Elijah Bennett
I wouldn't say fuck square as they use to make some of the best jrpgs in house but still ignored them to try to shill more and more final fantasy copies to the US. Now the other game are buried and I really don't want them restored to modern day squeenix which ruins everything.
Iwadare was amazing in every game up until fairly recently. He was boring as shit in Radiata series, Kid Icarus, and horrible in Langrisser for 3DS.
Charles Torres
I like what Square did literally except for anything Final Fantasy. Most of the non-FF shit is so good. I don't understand the appeal of FF anyway, only the first game is really that great and not because of the game itself but because it breathed life into the near nonexistant RPG genre.
Alexander Wright
His Phoenix Wright compositions are pretty good, though.
Ayden Bennett
No. Most people, outside of places like Holla Forums and the other autistic corners of the internet, love Working Designs and think they're the apex of publishers, so there's very little demand for a fan translation.
Elijah Taylor
Working Designs GOAT
Easton Turner
As of now, nope. Fanbase being split on the localization quality likely creates an air that demand for fan retranslations could be low (as opposed to a game with an English script so low quality no one can support it as being "good"). It would probably take some western moonspeaker devoted/autistic enough to the franchise, and angry enough as well, to retranslate them.
In regards to fan translation and retranslation, the sad thing is that usually if a game is in English in some form, it's at least playable, compared to a game that never saw an English release. As such, demand is likely much, much higher for translating games the west never got, rather than revisiting older games. Certainly not to defend bad official translations like Working Designs (and their modern incarnation, Gainjinworks) are prone to, but the amount of full fan retranslations are rather small, compared to games where the first English translations they ever see are done by fans.
Skies of Arcadia is generally considered the other "adventure"and/or "exploration" theme heavy JRPG.
To be honest, I admittedly haven't delved all that much into Square's works myself, beyond a few titles at this point (not that I haven't liked what I've played, but rather that I don't want to fall into the hole I've heard other people have about the notion that "Square is all you need JRPGwise", so I've been focusing more on other games/series), but i will say that something I find really annoying is how Square's (and modern Square-Enix at times) western release dates occasionally are really close to other similar games, a number of which sold like shit in comparison. I can't tell if other companies like Midway and Atlus are simply stupid to release games too close to Square's much more anticipated releases, or if Square actively tries to kill off their competition.
Luis Taylor
Learn Japanese.
Isaac Bailey
Where does the PSP version fall in with all these versions of Lunar?
Nathaniel Price
Please don't bully me for saying this, but when does Grandia get good? I'm only on the boat to the New Continent, I feel like the game gasn't really hooked me yet, and I'm not sure whether or not I wanna put in 50+ hours to wait until it does. It's a shame because I've been wanting to play it for a while now, and now that I actually am I just don't have the motivation to return to it.
Jack Bailey
The game hasn't even really started yet. It should get more interesting soon, but it really kicks into high gear once you get to the wall.
Oliver Watson
I haven't played it myself, but from what I've heard it gives away some spoilers in the opening. Supposedly Xseed even used quite a bit of Working Designs' original script.
Jordan Lee
Squeenix alone doesn't do this. Most producers release on certain days because it's cheaper for distributors and they hope that a customer will buy a smaller title while they're there looking for the bigger title. It's not "x will be ignored because y is released on the same day" it's "x will be noticed by the casual in ther to get y"
Oh and while I'm talking about other-than-ff square games, I really do mean square and not square enix. I'm talking about titles from the SNES and PS1 era.
It's like a mobileshit remaster of Lunar 1. You should play it if you must play on a handheld, but the saturn games are probably the best ones to get because you can emulate the saturn now.
Jonathan Nguyen
Yeah, I suppose it would be cheaper for distributors, but if the point is to make a good profit sales wise and a person generally only has $X to spend on games per week/month (especially in regard to outright new releases; I can understand maybe getting a cheap preowned game on the side of a new, full price release), releasing very similar titles so closely together is more than likely going to fuck over the one from a lesser known series/company. To use a direct example, did Square already have a release date for Final Fantasy X announced before Midway announced Shadow Hearts' western release (and thus Midway fucked their own release over), or did Midway already have their own date for Shadow Hearts and Square just so happened to choose a close-by release date afterward, so as to steal sales from what might be seen as a competing title (one guess as to which game had more interest in being bought at that time)? I get that there's only so many weeks in a year, and so many Tuesdays to release on (for whatever reason, that seems like the big day of the week for releases here in the US, at least lately), and there's bound to be differences in how hard something is marketed compared to other games, but its something that irks me a bit. I suppose I'd really have to find when the actual western announcement dates for some of these releases were though.
Camden Torres
While the game does get a bit more serious after The Wall and especially after the second boat trip, maybe it's not for you. The story isn't all that complex, but it has that neat sense of adventure, and you really do see how Justin matures as an individual, so if you don't like trial by fire type of stories, then maybe it's not for you. I also enjoyed the combat, and it does get more interesting with the addition of spells, but it never gets more complex, nor are the encounters all that hard.
Jayden Hughes
Ye I have to agree. I like Grandia 1 but even I admit that if you're looking for fast paced, blow your mind, or epic story it's not there to be found.
I have no idea who sets the date. I worked retail and for a distributor of electronics and videogames. All the games for a date come in 1 box and I knew from the warehouse job you save big time sending more pallets at once to the point you'll get them cheap enough it'll benefit you to send empty boxes to secure more profit. I read the rest in magazines. I think it was Atlus trying to sell SMT3 by shipping it the same date as other games.
Nathan Cooper
yeah it was SMT3 releasing the same day as FIFA
Leo Flores
A fair point, but SMT and FIFA probably don't have a lot of overlap in terms of who's interested in what, to the point they don't exactly compete for sales the way games in the same genre that release within a close time frame would (and I don't mean simply the same exact date, but a general period of time nearby, like up to a week or two).
Ayden Evans
Just started playing Grandia and wow this is charming. It's captures the same feel of 90s adventure anime pretty well. Are the rest of the series just as nice?
Landon Gutierrez
Pro Tip: There are patches for Working Designs stuff including the 2 Lunar games that revert all the idiotic gameplay changes that they did.
Nope they shit the bed with Grandia 2 and tried to be all dark and edgy but it just fell flat. The writing is really bad.
Eli Harris
Holy fucking shit thank you so much. I had no idea about this.
Jacob Watson
Going to bookmark that myself, but I'm a bit curious, did the PS1 versions of Lunar not have gameplay changes, or were the Sega CD versions just easier to work with as far as restoring them? Just asking as I don't see the PS1 versions on that first post with the patch links.
William Stewart
Eh, I'd say once the battle system really starts to open up and you start finding Mana Eggs.
Grandia 1 has, in my opinion, the best "Do Stuff and Get Better at it" ability systems ever. Attributes are tied to Skill Types, so characters who use Swords and Fire magic gain more Strength, while characters who use Maces and Earth magic gain more Defense and HP.
Even more fun: abilities mix together. Get good with Wind and Fire magic? Now you can cast Lightning. Get good with Swords and Fire? Now you can do Flame Sword attacks. Get good with Fire, Wind AND Swords? Lightning Slash. Fucking awesome.
Typhoon Tower is the worst dungeon, though.
Isaac Turner
God Tier: Lunar - Eternal Blue
High Tier: Grandia Lunar - Silver Star
Mid Tier: Lunar - Magic School Grandia II Grandia Parallel Trippers
