Grandia 1

  I finally beat Grandia yesterday, so here are my two cents whilst they're still fresh in my head.

Grandia, one of those RPGs from the "golden age" of RPGs on the PlayStation.

The main protagonist is Justin, a young boy who has the high ideal of becoming an adventurer, and finding out more about the ancient Angelou civilization. Along the way he befriends new characters, some of which join the party. The game is isometric 3D, which leads to some pretty typical problems with the camera. Unless the camera is spun a certain direction, some things may be obscured. Navigation is helped by a compass in the upper right hand corner of the screen which I felt was cumbersome to navigate with to say the least.

The game is in dire need of a map that can be opened in the menu, or a mini map at the least. Too often I felt lost in many of the game's various areas. Some places are downright a maze, or even worse have you stepping onto platforms to go upside-down and facing the opposite direction.

The battle system is interesting, and really trying to do something a bit different. For that alone it deserves some praise. The general basis of this system is the more you use something, the higher in level with it you get. Each character can equip different types of weapons. Justin, for example, can equip swords, axes, and hammers. To learn skills, you must meet the criteria found in the move menu screen. For example, this may necessitate level 25 in axes, level 23 in swords, and level 24 in hammer in order to learn a new skill. The more you attack with the weapon, the higher your levels go.

The magic system is much the same. However first you must find mana eggs strewn about the various areas. This mana egg is taken to a local shop, where in exchange for it the character will learn a magical element. There are water, ice, fire, and wind. Spells require your magic level to be at a certain level, and as with the weapon system some require you to have levels in multiple different magic elements. Leveling up in magic also bestows stat gains as well. The more you use a skill or magic, the more "stars" it gets in the menu--the quicker you cast these spells, aside of leveling up the element magic itself.

The battle system further operates with an interrupt mechanic. In the lower right hand corner of the screen is a ATB gauge of sorts, which has each character moving along it. Once they get to the end, and take their turn, then there is an "actively using a move" gauge that the character portrait runs over until it reaches the end and executes the command. If you can execute a command quicker than the enemy while they are in this vulnerable position, you will block their attack and they will lose their turn. Battles aren't random, and the enemy is observed on the game screen. If the enemy sprints at you and engages you into turn-based battle from behind you will be ambushed; but if you engage in battle first, you'll get a pre-emptive strike.

It sounds like a wonderful system on paper, and in many ways in reality it is. However, it is certainly a very tedius system where you can spend a lot of time casting the same magic over & over & over & over again.

The game is rendered in 2D sprites which gives me a nostalgic glee. It's a game that was released very soon during the advent of 32 bit systems. There is voice acting in the game, which is OK to mediocre at best but I will applaud simply for them trying when this was far from a typical convention at the time. The writing is often very tongue-in-cheek and there is a real sense of humor and spunk to the characters. Each person in a town can be spoken to two or three times and will have something different to say each time. The amount of effort that was put into the writing, and much of it very voluntary interactions, is admirable.

The music is good to great and does a good job of setting the atmosphere of the game.

The game truly has a grand sense of adventure about it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the sense of exploration and discovery and was eager to speak to the persons in the next town whenever I got there. Now that I have gotten most of the basics of the game out of the way, and some of the best parts of the game I will begin to say what I didn't like..

The game was an enjoyable experience a little over halfways through, but unfortunately the end game is bogged down by being overly bloated and a long slow slough of a slog. At one point, I was forced to go through an area I had JUST gone through rather recently (albeit with new enemies) which was absolutely repetitive and annoying. The end dungeons of the game are very messy and difficult to navigate, as well as long and very repetitive. Many of the bosses lack variance and are very basic and repetitive. There is NO save before the battle with the end boss, and before the end boss there is a boss you must face. This led me to have to re-do the battle with the boss before the end boss THREE TIMES when I had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt I could beat this boss the FIRST time; and each time battling this boss it took upwards of 30 or more minutes to 

beat them.

IF there was a mini-map, and if they had shaved off the excess fat from the meat of the end game, and IF there was a save point before the end boss I would think very differently of this game. As it stands, it is most certainly an above average game, even a good game, but a great game? Certainly not, and very far from being an amazing game.

It is saying a lot that I got so bored with the battle system that for 75% of the game I was using the auto battle system. Which, I will say, was cool in the sense that there are different algorithms that you can choose from which is of benefit to the weapon/ magic leveling system. One thing I play RPGs for, though, is to enjoy the battle system. Overall the battle system was only enjoyable during a boss fight, and many of the boss fights were not that great in the end game.

A further strike against this game is how many inspiration and even outright rip-offs it owes to one of the best RPGs of all time: Chrono Trigger. Red-haired protagonist who comes of age and ends up being in the middle of saving the world? Check. Nefarious being feeding off of the greed of humankind? Check. Even some of the boss enemy designs--such as the Gaia Battler--look EXACTLY like enemies from Chrono Trigger. Some gamers debate which game is better--CT or Grandia but I find this an unfair question. Without Chrono Trigger there would be NO Grandia as we know it. Yes, Grandia tries to do some of its own things, but overall it does rip many pages from CT and CT is a far, far, far superior RPG experience. Grandia merely lives in the shadow of CT, wishing it were that great.

Towards the end of the game, if I had not invested 40-something hours into the game I surely would have put it down--never to return to it. The end game is THAT offputting. I felt almost betrayed by the creators of the game, strung along a great game only to reach this mediocre end game point. If I beat a boss, LET ME SAVE MY GAME! Don't make players repetitively go back through an area a second time when they just did a little bit ago. Don't needlessly put so much filler content to bloat the game up 5 - 10 more hours. Also, let me mention that some characters eventually leave the party permanently--which was very frustrating; I had put in all this effort to make these characters stronger and better a la the battle system only to find out that was all in vain! Despite its many and annoying flaws, this is a good game. I don't know how much I can recommend it when the very year this game came out, many other RPGs that are far better than it came out.

7.5/10.