http://diehardgamefan.com/2009/01/27/unbranding-the-sheep-if-an-mmo-falls-in-the-forest-and-no-ones-logged-in/ Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:04:17 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://diehardgamefan.com/2009/01/27/unbranding-the-sheep-if-an-mmo-falls-in-the-forest-and-no-ones-logged-in/comment-page-1/#comment-7536 Diehard GameFAN | 30 Days of Dreamcast – Day 13: Grandia II Sun, 13 Sep 2009 14:03:17 +0000 http://diehardgamefan.com/?p=83446#comment-7536 [...] However, time hasn’t been fond to the franchise. The death of the Dreamcast prompted Ubisoft to port Grandia II to the PS2 and PC, handing the project to a secondary development team (Rocket Studio). The port met with disastrous results; the PS2 port, in particular, was awful, with a severe downgrade in graphics and a severe upswing in glitches and performance issues. This was followed later that year by the Enix released Grandia Xtreme, which was basically the great fighting engine of Grandia II put into a dungeon crawler’s chassis, with decidedly mixed results. Finally, fully under the control of the merged Square-Enix, the highly anticipated Grandia III came out. I don’t quite recall was critical reaction was to that game, but I do remember that I couldn’t get past the absolutely putrid story, nor could I suspend my disbelief enough to accept that Miranda was the mother of Yuki. I disliked Grandia III so much that it caused me to invent the term “Squeenixed” to describe series that the new behemoth had gotten ahold of and summarily ruined (other “Squeenixed” games: Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, Star Ocean: Till The End of Time, and Final Fantasy X-2, among others). Grandia then went silent, until word of a Grandia MMO named Grandia Zero surfaced, with an open beta scheduled for any time this month. Lovely. I wonder if it will suck only as much as the Megaten MMO, or if it will loudly and spectacularly crash like every MMO failure I chronicled in January. [...] [...] However, time hasn’t been fond to the franchise. The death of the Dreamcast prompted Ubisoft to port Grandia II to the PS2 and PC, handing the project to a secondary development team (Rocket Studio). The port met with disastrous results; the PS2 port, in particular, was awful, with a severe downgrade in graphics and a severe upswing in glitches and performance issues. This was followed later that year by the Enix released Grandia Xtreme, which was basically the great fighting engine of Grandia II put into a dungeon crawler’s chassis, with decidedly mixed results. Finally, fully under the control of the merged Square-Enix, the highly anticipated Grandia III came out. I don’t quite recall was critical reaction was to that game, but I do remember that I couldn’t get past the absolutely putrid story, nor could I suspend my disbelief enough to accept that Miranda was the mother of Yuki. I disliked Grandia III so much that it caused me to invent the term “Squeenixed” to describe series that the new behemoth had gotten ahold of and summarily ruined (other “Squeenixed” games: Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, Star Ocean: Till The End of Time, and Final Fantasy X-2, among others). Grandia then went silent, until word of a Grandia MMO named Grandia Zero surfaced, with an open beta scheduled for any time this month. Lovely. I wonder if it will suck only as much as the Megaten MMO, or if it will loudly and spectacularly crash like every MMO failure I chronicled in January. [...]

]]> http://diehardgamefan.com/2009/01/27/unbranding-the-sheep-if-an-mmo-falls-in-the-forest-and-no-ones-logged-in/comment-page-1/#comment-6961 The Superbus’s Thoughtpad » Diehard GameFAN Review: Grandia II (Dreamcast) Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:44:00 +0000 http://diehardgamefan.com/?p=83446#comment-6961 [...] However, time hasn’t been fond to the franchise. The death of the Dreamcast prompted Ubisoft to port Grandia II to the PS2 and PC; handing the project to a secondary development team (Rocket Studio), the port met with disastrous results; the PS2 port, in particular, was awful, with a severe downgrade in graphics and a severe upswing in glitches and performance issues. This was followed later that year by the Enix released Grandia Xtreme, which was basically the great fighting engine of Grandia II put into a dungeon crawler’s chassis, with decidedly mixed results. Finally, fully under the control of the merged Square-Enix, the highly anticipated Grandia III came out. I don’t quite recall was critical reaction was to that game, but I do remember that I couldn’t get past the absolutely putrid story, nor could I suspend my disbelief enough to accept that Miranda was the mother of Yuki. I disliked Grandia III so much that it caused me to invent the term “Squeenixed” to describe series that the new behemoth had gotten ahold of and summarily ruined (other “Squeenixed” games: Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, Star Ocean: Till The End of Time, and Final Fantasy X-2, among others). Grandia then went silent, until word of a Grandia MMO named Grandia Zero surfaced, with an open beta scheduled for any time this month. Lovely. I wonder if it will suck only as much as the Megaten MMO, or if it will loudly and spectacularly crash like every MMO failure I chronicled in January. [...] [...] However, time hasn’t been fond to the franchise. The death of the Dreamcast prompted Ubisoft to port Grandia II to the PS2 and PC; handing the project to a secondary development team (Rocket Studio), the port met with disastrous results; the PS2 port, in particular, was awful, with a severe downgrade in graphics and a severe upswing in glitches and performance issues. This was followed later that year by the Enix released Grandia Xtreme, which was basically the great fighting engine of Grandia II put into a dungeon crawler’s chassis, with decidedly mixed results. Finally, fully under the control of the merged Square-Enix, the highly anticipated Grandia III came out. I don’t quite recall was critical reaction was to that game, but I do remember that I couldn’t get past the absolutely putrid story, nor could I suspend my disbelief enough to accept that Miranda was the mother of Yuki. I disliked Grandia III so much that it caused me to invent the term “Squeenixed” to describe series that the new behemoth had gotten ahold of and summarily ruined (other “Squeenixed” games: Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, Star Ocean: Till The End of Time, and Final Fantasy X-2, among others). Grandia then went silent, until word of a Grandia MMO named Grandia Zero surfaced, with an open beta scheduled for any time this month. Lovely. I wonder if it will suck only as much as the Megaten MMO, or if it will loudly and spectacularly crash like every MMO failure I chronicled in January. [...]

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