I was genuinely excited to finally play the Grandia HD Collection. It’s been on my radar for a while, but for one reason or another, I just never got around to playing it. Even as a kid, Grandia was one of those RPGs I always wanted to play but never had the systems for. But thankfully, in the golden age of HD rereleases, I can finally experience it.
This current release of the Grandia HD Collection leaves me not only with a solid feeling of nostalgia but also with a few questions. Namely: why? While it’s still an excellent collection of two excellent and unique RPGs, the way it was released is so bizarre that it almost feels like a mistake.
There’s nothing I can really say about the Grandia HD Collection that wasn’t already expertly covered by CGM’s own Remington Joseph back in 2019 because this is the exact same collection. Grandia follows a boy named Justin, and his friend Sue who get swept up in a grand adventure when they set out to uncover the mystery of a long-lost civilization; while Grandia II follows a young man named Ryudo who gets swept up in a grand adventure after he’s hired to protect a priestess after a sacred ritual goes incredibly awry.
Both games have incredibly charming stories with Grandia evoking the classic days of 90s RPGs of a group of kids getting caught up in incredible adventures, and Grandia II really capturing that great vibe of early 2000s RPGs that were a little more serious, but still kind of goofy—playing it actually reminded me a lot of Skies of Arcadia.
“This current release of the Grandia HD Collection leaves me, not only with a solid feeling of nostalgia but also with a few questions.”
Its battle system was also incredibly inventive. As was touched on in Remington’s review, it’s a unique take on the “active-turn based” system, where actions take place along the Initiative Point bar (IP Bar for short), where performing certain actions can set players or enemies back or forward along the bar.
However, I specifically like how there is space between the COMMAND and ACTION functions, allowing for a lot of strategic advantages if an enemy is getting ready to attack but the player is given a chance to choose an action first. Furthermore, the game is bolstered by its lack of random encounters, as enemies can be seen on the map, and how you engage with them can grant advantages/disadvantages to your initiative.
But what I find incredibly bizarre about the Grandia HD Collection is just the timing and function of its release. The collection initially dropped on the Switch and PC back in 2019, and now, six years later, it’s being released on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
While both versions are playable on the PlayStation 5 and Series X/S—I reviewed this game on my PS5—I’m not even fully sure if they’re benefiting from the hardware. I mean, sure, the PS5’s SSD means the game initially loads pretty fast, but is there any doubt that a collection of two games from 1997 and 2000, respectively, wouldn’t be optimized on even the Switch’s hardware? It just seems like a very odd choice to me.
Of course, visually the Grandia HD collection looks good enough on the Playstation 5—or I guess the PS4. Much like Remington said in his review of the Switch version, these are a PlayStation X and Dreamcast game that were already good-looking when they were released, now with a coat of HD paint slapped on them. Grandia’s sprite work is incredibly charming, and the cleaner textures and smoother framerates add a lot to the game’s charm. The same goes for Grandia II—which also might be because I have a particular soft spot for that PS2/Dreamcast era aesthetic of 3D.
“The Grandia HD Collection was and still is a fine collection of two landmark RPGs.”
However, something Remington skipped over that I believe deserves special mention is the rocking soundtrack both these games have and the particularly charming and cheesy voice-acting present in Grandia II. I was immediately hooked in Grandia when you came into that incredible sound of slapping bass and bagpipes punctuating the Town of Parm, only to go into the Port of Parm, where ship horns create the rhythm alongside clanking metal for a completely new theme. There was no reason the Port couldn’t just have the same theme as the town, but they put the effort in.
Similarly, Grandia II maintains that the aforementioned cheesy voice acting with all its weird inflections and certain characters that sound like they’re recording inside a tin can, that just adds so much charm to the entire game. It’s not even a case of so-bad-its-good—there’s a certain earnestness to this era of voice acting that is fun in its campiness.
The Grandia HD Collection was and still is a fine collection of two landmark RPGs. While, as a collection, it’s a bit sparse on any extras for the asking price, you could do a lot worse. While it’s still beyond strange that this didn’t release, specifically on last-gen consoles, a lot sooner, it’s good that fans can finally experience this on a non-Nintendo console. Better late than never, I suppose.
