Grandia II and Soul Hackers - Getting Back To It.

On 12/01/2015 at 11:44 AM by mothman

Grandia II

I finally got back into Grandia II on Steam this past weekend and managed to move the story along a bit. I played about 3 hours on Saturday and another 3 on Sunday. On Saturday I remembered why I hadn't played in a while.

I didn't consciously stop playing after 3 hours, the game decided I'd played enough, Steam reported that the game had stopped and my 22" monitor went black. I could see the error in the task bar on my laptop monitor but could not open it to confirm or close the program or go back to Steam. The only choice that worked was to shut down the laptop by holding down the power button until it shut off. Ahh the joys of PC gaming.

Luckily I only lost about 20 minutes progress so I did not throw anything. I went back to the game on Sunday, beat a boss and moved on to the next town without incident. I'm really enjoying the game when it cooperates.

Soul Hackers

I've also played quite a bit of Soul Hackers on the 3DS. I'm having fun with it but I can see how some people might rage quit if they weren't using the dungeon map hack.

In Soul Hackers by default you do not see the complete dungeon floor or the traps and warps until you have covered the area. Dungeon maps are big and complicated and full of said traps and warps. Traps can injure and warps can take you back to the beginning, or right out of the dungeon. Hell even when you have the map hack on and can see the warps it's all trial and error. 7 warps take you back the beginning and one takes you to your destination.

Also as I've mentioned before if you turn the difficulty hack to Up you will die every few minutes sometimes without getting a turn in.

So I'm playing to see the story without my head exploding. Kinda fun if you do it right.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

12/01/2015 at 11:49 AM

boy the games you're playing have some value-added obstacles!

I bought Grandia when it was one sale but haven't played it. I haven't been playing any games on my PC actually. It's been kind of running like crap.

bullet656

12/01/2015 at 12:40 PM

I "beat" Soul Hackers a couple weeks ago. I use quotation marks because I actually only made it about halfway through the next-to-last dungeon and for some reason decided it was time to stop playing (can't remember exactly why, probably one-shot killed or something similar). I watched the last 1.5 hours or so on a 'Let's Play' video just to finish up the story, skipping over the random battles.

I'm sure I could have really beat it if I persisted, but I just wanted to get on to something new. I really enjoyed it though. I think I went over half the game before I decided to switch on the map hack.

goaztecs

12/01/2015 at 02:00 PM

I don't think I have the paitence to play Soul Hackers. I would be frustrated with what you just described. Is that just a gltich in the Grandia game or its just one of those random crashes?

mothman

12/01/2015 at 02:05 PM

Being on PC it could have been a game glitch or Steam or the PC operating system or a hardware malfunction. There's really no way to know when there are so many layers.

FAF101

12/01/2015 at 02:59 PM

I have Grandia 2 on PS2 and it's the only one in the series I have completed. Took me a little to go through too since I took a break due to a boss I couldn't beat then after going back beat it.

I still need to buy soul hackers, but I'm glad for the forewarning on how it in be a rage quotable game. Just men's I'll be yelling at it a lot lol.

jgusw

12/03/2015 at 08:57 PM

I tried playing Soul Hackers a while back. It was too old school for me to get into it.

12/04/2015 at 08:15 AM

It's a lot more fun once you use some of the hacks. Makes it less nasty.

PixlBit