Grandia HD Collection has now appeared on PSN and the Xbox Store.
This is an old collection, that was previously published on Steam and the Nintendo Switch eShop in 2019. As shared by Wario64 on Twitter, a trophy list appeared for the collection on PSN a few hours before the store listing. The trophies on PSN matched the trophy list on Steam.
Grandia HD Collection bundles Grandia and Grandia II, 2 out of the seven games in the franchise. While most of the games ended up on the PlayStation 2, these are arguably the titles that matter the most.
The first Grandia was first released on the Sega Saturn by Game Arts in 1997, with a PlayStation port arriving in 1999. This title used a combination of 2D and 3D graphics, but was set in an isometric perspective. You could also rotate the map to get a good look of everything around your environment.
This was Game Arts attempt to compete with Final Fantasy 7, and while it in no way squares up to the competition, Game Arts did have some great ideas on offer here. It is also a turn based RPG, but you can avoid enemies as you see fit.
Characters level up in battle, and they raise their skills by using different weapons and magic spells multiple times. This encourages players to use as many different weapons and spells as possible. The game’s system also allows characters to move around with some limits in the middle of battle.
But the most interesting element of its turn based gameplay was how it broke up the repetition of other systems. If you paid attention to your turns, you can interrupt an enemy by attacking them just before they were about to take their turn.
Grandia II released on the Dreamcast in 2000 and upgrades to 3D graphics completely. However, it retains the isometric view and the gameplay. It’s also a more fully realized adventure, if the story is completely different as well.
The Grandia franchise was really meant to be Sega’s, and ended up on PlayStation out of necessity. It’s somewhat fitting that now that the collection debuts on PlayStation Network, the games are also available on Xbox for the first time.
As for the collection itself, there are no major QOL changes to the games. But it does add widescreen support to make the games fitting for modern platforms, as well as the abovementioned trophies.
If you never got around to playing these games back in the day, or you are only hearing about them now, there’s now no excuse to check these out in the platform of your choice.
