Grandia Xtreme

"(Grandia - storyline)/Repetitive dungeons = Whaaa?"

Grandia 2 was a great game, period. Ubi Soft took the publishing helm of the game as Game Arts was still the publisher. This time around, Enix takes the role of the publisher. They decided to make a Grandia game that was very ''challenging'' (for them anyway), hence the name Xtreme. The developer meeting might have gone this way:

Publisher1: People said this game needed challenge. What do we do?
Publisher2: I know! Let's make the dungeons a hell lot larger! How about... 10 levels each?
Publisher3: Without a save point! So they have to leave and restart if they lose!
Publisher2: Why not make it randomly generated? So it changes everytime they enter? Plus, it takes disc space.
Developer: Er... are you sure? We could just use the same style as before and...
Publisher1: Nonsense! Just keep the old battles the same. Change everything else!

<A lone figure crashes into the board room.>

Protester: You FOOLS! You're destroying a perfect game! What's wrong with you!

<Security arrives to pull him away.>

Protester: Let go of me! You're making a big mistake!
Developer3: ....Okay... Maybe we should put all our effort on the dungeons. We probably don't need a story for this anyway...

<And so ends the meeting...>

..... Enix may have been drunk or something. Game Arts probably drank too much also.

Graphics: 9/10

A huge leap forward from previous graphical attempts by Game Arts. Previous games didn't ever rely on good graphics, but this time it seemed they had no choice. The character graphics are done very well, though they suffer from a few clipping problems. Also, their movements aren't very realistic, as if the lead character had no knees or something. The dungeons are very, very large and are animated with good authenticity and graphical prowess. And there's no slowdown!! The old problem that plagued the previous games was finally eliminated, thankfully. Stil...

Story: 3/10

Story? What story? It seemes it was eliminated accidentaly with the slowdown. Anyway, you play a young ranger who has geo-something powers that aren't even explained properly in the game. He gets kidnapped by some army and gets forced to work with them to stop the ''Elemental Disorder''....

And that's it. All that follows is you going into SO many dungeons trying to stop some major undefined disaster in an incredibly small world map. The story is plain lame. You will practically learn the last boss and future plot twists in more-than-obvious clues in the game. There are multiple characters, but character interaction is at a ridiculous minimal that you will barely know anything about your party members. Add to the fact that character development is a big fat zero. The hero remains a hard-headed fool the entire game. Heck, the supporting cast had little to develop on in the first place. The villains are as generic and cliche as they can ever be. The entire plot is so predictable that you can even get the feeling you've played the game somewhere else.

Gameplay: 6/10

The good news is that they decided to use the treid and tested Grandia Combat System. It's a godsend to games. Gamers who bother to play anyway. Game Arts opted for the Ramdomly-generated dungeon approach. Here they give you huge, and I mean huge, dungeons that change evrytime you enter the cursed places. This wouldn't be so bad.... if there was a savepoint. The fact that theres only one town in the game (2 actually, but the other serves almost no purpose at all) and that you see the same faces over and over is aggrevated by the fact that there's only one save point in the game! Yup, if you die inside a dungeon without opening a geo stream (some of them are one way even), you have to slave over the entire thing again. Not to mention that level designs are so overly repetitive.

What did they do? Reall, what did they do? If they wanted to try something, they should have done it properly! They should have kept what was good in the series and just change the rest. Sadly, they pretty much overhauled everything, with very bad results. If you don't mind mind-numbing repetitiveness and false claims of challenge much due to bad decisions, then give this game a whirl.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/01/03, Updated 01/01/03