It took me a bit to decide on whether I wanted to classify this as Goin’ Retro or Whatever Happened To. In any case, if you haven’t heard of the Grandia series, stop what you’re doing right now, download a PSX emulator, download the original Grandia. Yes, I’m promoting this tactic because as far as I know, Game Arts is making no attempt to re-release the game and virtually all the Grandia stuff is awesome.
Sure, there’s PSN, but fuck that noise. What makes it so awesome? Well, there are a variety of factors, but let’s break this down game by game, concentrating only on the main series (there were a couple of spin off games and an MMORPG in its beta stages in Japan, but you can wiki those if you’re really that interested).
Grandia
Grandia is a charming, nostalgia inspired story about a boy who wants to be an adventurer. It’s a very light hearted story with a pretty decent sense of humor and well developed characters. The environments are in 3D, whereas all the characters are 2D. Even still, the environments, textures, all of it looks and plays great (though there is slight slowdown in the PSX version in heavily polygonal areas).
These things alone sell the game, but there’s one major difference that really sets Grandia apart from virtually any other RPG out there: the battle system. It’s, well…it’s almost hard to describe what it is, actually. Effectively, it’s turn-based, but there’s more to it than that. You’re able to see who’s turn will come up next based on the IP bar (I assume that stands for in progress).
Even Breath of Fire 3 ain’t got nothin’ on this bitch.
As soon as one of your turns comes up, regardless of what’s happening in battle, everything is paused and you get to select an action for your character. After you select an action, you then have a small quadrant of the bar to traverse before you reach the end point, at which point your character will either immediately execute the action if it’s a spell or technique or begin to run toward his/her target to perform the selected action.
At first this sounds a little needlessly convoluted. After all, FFX had something similar except you didn’t have to wait around, so why all the waiting? This is where the true tactics and brilliance of the battle system come into play. See, yes, you do select commands in a turn-based manner, but beyond that everything kinda happens at once. If you hit an enemy with a critical strike when they’re in the final quadrant, it will result in cancelling the move and throwing them WAY back on the bar.
i can has suprize buttsecks?
Standard combo hits and such only slightly delay progress on the bar and critical hits will always push the target back on the bar, but you get the cancelling effect if you time it juuuuuust right. This is one of the keys of ensuring the enemies never get in so much as a scratch. Naturally they have the ability to do it to you as well, but obviously their AI never goes to the point of ridiculous strategy.
It should also be noted that in this one multiple characters can equip multiple weapons and spell types. Having multiple spell types means being able to learn spells that combine original sets. Furthermore, learning new abilities and spells requires continuously using abilities and spells over and over, thus earning them. So for example, there are some techniques that require a weapon proficiency with the ax to be at a certain level and also fire proficiency at a certain level and using the individual techniques bolsters their overall effect over time as well.
Ah yes, back in a time when we had more colors than just brown, gray, and grayer gray for our games.
The best part is for a game that debuted in America in 1999, it has some of the most innovative, complex but not complicated features I’ve ever seen in an RPG. It’s fun, easy to pick up, hard to put down, and just damn awesome for the time it was released. I still haven’t seen barely any games utilizing the IP interface. Of course, there’s always…
Grandia 2
With a more serious story, darker and more sarcastic characters, and in general darker themes, Grandia 2 feels very similar to Grandia, if not maybe an older brother version of it. For one, everything is now in 3D. The pacing is better, though I’d say the characters and story are pretty much on the same level. There is one major gripe I have about this game that some people might really get into if you’re not the grinding type, but here goes: coins.
What kind of coins? Specifically, special coins and magic coins. Okay, see…in the last one you had to earn your abilities through constantly grinding the abilities and so on. In this one, you buy them. The way this works is after each battle you acquire items, gold, experience, special coins, and magic coins. At any point you can duck into the menu and purchase special abilities, magic for your eggs (which are now equippable objects with preset magics), and purchase skills from skill books.
Wait, what about my continental breakfast?
Now sure, from a more realistic standpoint this doesn’t make sense, especially since you don’t have an auto-allocation of coins, rather they’re lumped into one sack. So theoretically, you could completely overpower one character with all this shit while the others are just about fucking worthless even though everyone shares in the battle experience. Sure, they’ll still level up the same, but ability-wise, one would clearly be ridiculous.
However, one thing this does right is allows the pacing to be more fluid. The pacing for the original Grandia was pretty good, but to be completely honest you’d look for ANY reason to use your skills up as quickly as possible and hang around save points so you can recover just so you can grind up all that shit. You could still do that here, but really, you don’t have to. You get these coins at a fairly decent rate, so it’s not like you really REALLY have to grind the fuck out of the game to get anywhere.
FFX ain’t got nothin’ on this bitch.
Of course, not only do you use these coins to buy stuff, but also upgrade said stuff. That’s where I think they went wrong, but again, that’s just personal preference. Also, no weapon proficiencies this time around. Everyone equips very neatly defined weapons and armor with only slight overlapping on armor. The battle system remained virtually unchanged, but hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Speaking of broken…
Grandia 3
I don’t think I ever got a chance to review this at ye olde PW, so here goes. Grandia 3 is not a bad game. Disappointing in some respects, but it isn’t bad. It certainly doesn’t live up to its predecessors, which is unfortunate because we really could’ve used another great Grandia title as I’ve heard very mixed things about Xtreme, which is a word that should never be allowed near any RPG ever.
What’s wrong with the third installment? First off, I don’t like the main character. I just don’t. He’s fucking boring. Yeah, I get that they’re trying to create another Justin-like character (hero of the first one), but it seems they got the wires crossed and ended up with a very vanilla, undesirable, and almost whiny main character. His MOM’S more entertaining and fortunately, she joins up as a playable character (I’m absolutely fucking serious and she’s a MILF to boot).
MILF + tentacles = …droooool…
With the exception of a few key moments, the characters feel very…uncharismatic. It’s like Game Arts assembled the most generic NPCs ever together, then forgot to make the heroes, so substituted them as such. The spoken dialogue is hit/miss as well. Sometimes there would be cheesy lines in Grandia 1 and 2, but often there are worthless fluff cutscenes that are chock full of awkward, long pauses and terrible dialogue.
Even weirder still, moments later you’ll receive an awesome cutscene you would expect from a Grandia title. It’s such a mixed bag, really. In fact, I feel the same way about the battle system. How could that possibly happen after all the praise I showed for it previously? Okay, they added a few things I like: juggling, aerial strikes, special finishes, and enhanced awards for performance in battle.
What is this, a gay(er) version of Kingdom Hearts?
I like all that stuff, I really do. But battles feel so…slow and plain, somehow. It also doesn’t help that you don’t move around that quickly in relatively bland, uninspired, and overly spacious dungeons. Even the music and sound effects are just okay. Still, there are other features that I liked. Skill books and mana eggs are equipped to assist in that character’s already inherent skills and magic.
Magic can be extracted from mana eggs and mana eggs can be combined for greater effects. Skills and magic are also equipped in a way similar to that of Lost Odyssey. Characters learn new abilities naturally and they are improved through constant use. Also, while the dungeons are fairly ugly, the not dungeons (usually towns) are actually pretty nice and usually pretty well inspired.
Conclusion
And where does this leave us now? Well, for the most part the Grandia series is a blast. I haven’t tried Xtreme and I don’t want to. The third was a disappointment, but there were also things it did right that I would love to see in another Grandia. Of course, that’s only if, you know, it had less suck. Either way, while the third is definitely the ugliest of the three, it still outshines a lot of the more recent RPGs and the other two are bonafide classics.
