"Grand in acceptable xfail."

Introduction
I have only watched my cousin play Grandia II. Just that alone tells me there is a HUGE difference between Grandia II and Grandia Xtreme. Let me first say that this is a well made dungeon crawling hack and kill Role-Playing Game. Despite what the hack and kill implies, this is a fairly interesting game, if not potentially boring.

Story: 5/10
“5/10?” you ask? Well, there are two points I MUST make about this. First point: the plot is so akin to every other mediocre RPG out there in the world it hurts. Simple enough, here is the basic plot: “You’re this dude. These other dudes make you join the “army” or whatever it is called. You are what they call a Ranger. That alone implies that you have something special about you.” My second point would be this: you can tell who the ****ing bad guy is too easily. Other than that, I did find this game quite hilarious.

Music: 3/10
Music…music….it must not be good because I cannot honestly remember there being anything…wait! That’s right, it was there, and it was annoying. I guess you could say that the volume on my TV was always turned down.

Sound: 610
The characters’ mouths do not move to the yapping. Sure, that doesn’t really matter all that much, but it does get annoying when all you see is an expressionless face on a head moving about as if it is talking. I mean, it’s almost as if they are using some sort of telepathy on you. Mind you, that would be pretty cool if they really were…but that is not the point. Noises keep with what happens, that is a plus, you could say. The voice acting pulled it down, though, for me. Oh well.

Gameplay: 8/10
This is about the most shiniest part of the entire game, until of course it all gets old. The thing that keeps you running is the fact that you get millions of different things you can do. You have these things you HAVE to have to use magic called Manna Eggs. There are four basic eggs. You can mix them up with each other and come up with some really awesome junk. The fighting is varied when enemies are next to immune to certain attacks, so you end up looking for different ways to harm them. Also, every once in-a-while a character will earn a new special attack. This is very useful when it comes down to a boss that could really be hurt by certain types of attacks. I will not go into details, takes to long. There are also Ability things. These boost this and that. One could be for endurance, another for speed. There are MANY, and do I mean many, of these things.

Replayability: 3/10
Other than all the egg things and Ability things, there really is no reason you would want to go through this game again. Unless of course you are a hardcore gamer, but, then again, you probably already have this game if you are.

Graphics: 4/10
Like I stated in the sound area, the characters’ faces are almost blank. Maybe their eyes will blink every once in a while. Everything looks sort of thrown together. If you love anime, you’ll love the graphics. As always, graphics really do not matter in a game. Just play on, you’ll never actually notice the bad graphics if you are having fun.

Overall:
Story: 5/10
Music: 3/10
Sound: 6/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Replayability:3 /10
Graphics: 4/10
Total: 4.8333333333333333333/10
Rounded Total: 5/10

Buy/Rent
Rent. R- I would recommend renting this game at best. E- Fanboys should love this game, so they would probably buy this, but I say “if you rent it, you will be happy.” N- If you just want a game to buy, buy some other game and rent this one along with it. T- I think my point is across now. Rent.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/30/02, Updated 11/30/02