Grandia Xtreme

"The best Grandia game to date. Seriously."

I must be the only person who has enjoyed this game immensely and can't recommend it enough. Grandia Xtreme is the third game in the Grandia series, and it carries over most of the traditions and battle system, but the game itself is very, very different.

Let me explain. The first two Grandia games were all about deep character interaction, they were all linear, they didn't give you much choice over your party at the time, and they told their story through cut scenes that occurred quite often. Grandia Xtreme is very different. This game basically has a minimal storyline, one base town, and is all about the exploration and the fighting.

And the fighting is very well done. For those of you who have not played the previous two Grandia games, the battle engine is quite unique. Like in all of GameArts' other RPGs, there are no random encounters; battle begins when you run into a wandering enemy in an area. The battle engine itself is like a cross between traditional RPG battling and strategy game battling. Every character and monster has an IP gauge that is constantly getting filled, and once it is full, you give them a command. But when someone moves to attack, they have to take distance and time into account, since time doesn't stop for the character to make their move. Each character has a limit to how much distance they can travel, and the enemy is free to attack while the character is preparing for something. A well-timed ''critical'' attack can knock an enemy preparing to attack off-guard, thus canceling their action. About the only time when time freezes is when someone casts a spell or uses one of their special techniques. And every character has their own set of unique techniques; some of them have single targets, some of them target an area, and a few are capable of hitting everything in the area.

One of the new features in this game is a combo moves system, where several characters cooperate to do something more powerful in combat. Those of you who have played Chrono Trigger should be pretty familiar with this... Also, the familiar ''mana eggs'' that grant magic powers in the other two games has been refined so you can get more powerful magic by combining eggs together. Skills are still acquired through books, but now the skill books open up slots for customizing a character's skill set, and each skill is acquired by identifying scrolls won in combat.

There's now eight playable characters. The main character this time around is Evann, who at the beginning of the game is a young adult who chose (unwisely) to dodge the draft. Of course, the local army caught up with him, and instead of sending him off to basic training, they instead throw him right into the fray. Apparently the army is fighting a group of monsters who are wreaking havoc with the world's elements, and Evann, plus soldiers Brandol and Carmyne, have to stop them. They are joined later on by a group of foreigners, and they learn to work together. Of course, there's more to the story than this, but who am I to spoil the surprises...

Graphically, this game is a major improvement over the past two games. The lame video clips that played when certain spells were cast in Grandia II have been replaced with some very impressive real-time special effects this time around. The modeling done on the characters, monsters, and areas is all very well done. Actual navigation is a little bit different, since the isometric camera angles from the first two games have been replaced by a behind-the-character view inside dungeons.

The sound is also well done. Just like the last two games, the music was written by Noriyuki Iwadare, who also scored the Lunar soundtracks, and this is some of his best work to date. The sound effects are well done and well executed. Like the other two games, there's voice acting in this one, and it's overall pretty decent. Mark Hamill (of Star Wars fame) plays as Evann, and did a good job overall. There are some other good voices (Carmyne), some bad voices (Titto, Lutina), and the rest were decent.

As stated before, the biggest change made to Grandia Xtreme is the change of focus from telling a deep story to making a game all about the fighting and exploration. There's several huge dungeons to explore, including one 30 floor dungeon. And once a set of dungeons has been cleared, it gets recycled into a bonus dungeon which you can revisit to earn some fat loot. There's no save points, but there is the occasional waypoint that will take you back to town so you can save. And, of course, they're all populated with plenty of monsters to keep you busy. This isn't a bad thing at all, though, because the unique battle engine makes every battle entertaining. And there are no load times.

Basically, if you play RPGs for the game and not the story, then Grandia Xtreme is the game for you. Where it goes light on story, it excels in most other categories. I would recommend this game to anyone who plays RPGs for reasons other than the storyline.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/30/02, Updated 12/30/02