GungHo Online Entertainment today broke the news to Gamespot that they are planning to release Grandia II on Steam. The Steam release will use the Dreamcast version as its foundation, as the PlayStation 2 version was released with a handful of technical deficiencies (including frame rate drops and poor textures) compared to the Dreamcast version. The game is getting the works – HD graphical upgrade, keyboard and mouse support, gamepad support, and Achievements and Trading Cards for Steam.
This course of action comes in response to a survey issued by GungHo last month, and as readers may recall oprainfall wrote about the survey. asking fans which games they wanted to receive PC ports. Through its subsidiaries like Grasshopper Manufacture, Inc. and Game Arts, GungHo owns the popular classic RPG franchises Lunar and Grandia, among others.
According to GungHo Online Entertainment America President Jun Iwasaki, Grandia II received an “overwhelming” response from fans, prompting the company to move forward with announcing porting plans quickly after the results for the survey were tallied. In addition to this, “Grandia II was chosen for a PC re-release because it represents both a hallmark of the Grandia series and an example of how great JRPGs can be.”
I’m personally ecstatic with this news and just to put this out there – I voted for Grandia II for PC on this survey. I’ve recently discovered the first Grandia game through the Vita and as old as the game may be, I’m having fun with it because of the simple but charming characters, great sense of adventure, excellent soundtrack and straightforward yet interesting battle system. Hopefully the game comes to as many regions as possible – GungHo didn’t exactly specify which regions would be receiving the game, but it’s good to see their confidence in this initiative.
