""""Remaster""""
This is how not to convert a game jesus christ. Whilst there's been some rather extensive patching to fix the crashy buggy mess this is - nothing has goe to fixing the problem that it looks like shit. It has the unfortunate distinction in both the assets and upscale work being pretty horrible - most notably having some incredibly heavy smoothing applied to all the sprites - as well as being really inconsistent. These god-awful sprites now run across weirdly sharp 3D environments with muddily-textured buildings all over the place. Oh, and since the widescreen conversion is also borked, you'll be able to see outside the map at a hilarious frequency.
And sadly the game itself is a bit too trite to make up for it. It's endearingly saccharine, but there's very little tension in the plot for a good chunk of time that makes the whole thing feel pointless. And the characters seem like they've been pulled straight off the peg from TV tropes with basically no nuance or awareness. It's like a children's TV show JRPG and there's just no hook here in the adventure or narrative.
If there's a hook, its the battle system, which is a genuinely interesting mix on an ATB system - but it's also slow as hell and can't carry what's otherwise a very dull experience on it's own.
Oh, and the food eating segments are comfy as hell I guess.
Fortunately, there was just enough here to make me try out Grandia 2 afterwards - which so far I'm finding is a massive improvement on this original game in every way - refining the good combat core and throwing in some actually pretty good storytelling.
As for this though, it's not worth the eye strain.
This is how not to convert a game jesus christ. Whilst there's been some rather extensive patching to fix the crashy buggy mess this is - nothing has goe to fixing the problem that it looks like shit. It has the unfortunate distinction in both the assets and upscale work being pretty horrible - most notably having some incredibly heavy smoothing applied to all the sprites - as well as being really inconsistent. These god-awful sprites now run across weirdly sharp 3D environments with muddily-textured buildings all over the place. Oh, and since the widescreen conversion is also borked, you'll be able to see outside the map at a hilarious frequency.
And sadly the game itself is a bit too trite to make up for it. It's endearingly saccharine, but there's very little tension in the plot for a good chunk of time that makes the whole thing feel pointless. And the characters seem like they've been pulled straight off the peg from TV tropes with basically no nuance or awareness. It's like a children's TV show JRPG and there's just no hook here in the adventure or narrative.
If there's a hook, its the battle system, which is a genuinely interesting mix on an ATB system - but it's also slow as hell and can't carry what's otherwise a very dull experience on it's own.
Oh, and the food eating segments are comfy as hell I guess.
Fortunately, there was just enough here to make me try out Grandia 2 afterwards - which so far I'm finding is a massive improvement on this original game in every way - refining the good combat core and throwing in some actually pretty good storytelling.
As for this though, it's not worth the eye strain.