Growlanser Generations

"Full of heart but lacking in substance"

SRPGs or Strategy Role-Playing Games have achieved a certain cult-like existence and popularity. The only SRPG that most people have played is Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT). The reason for this is that these games tend to retain their Japanese, anime feel, something which does now bowl over well with the American public.

Introduction
Growlanser Generations is actually two games: Growlanser II and Growlanser III. Growlanser II (GL2) is the sequel to Growlanser while Growlanser III (GL3) is the prequel to GL2. From the outset, both games clearly show their age, but those that see beyond the surface will clearly see the gems these games are. However, they do not come without their faults.

Story
Both games' storylines are pretty lackluster. GL2 especially falls short of this. Without delving into the storyline too much, you play as Wein Cruz, a soldier who wishes to rise to the rank of Imperial Knight. You then carry out different missions for the King and meet bad guys and good guys. GL2 is a typical bad guy and good guy, culminating in the good guy's rise to hero. GL3 does mitigate this problem somewhat with a much better narrative that is typical of most RPGs: a band of heroes fight an ominous hero to save the world. Despite this, most gamers will not care for the storyline but the characters. The best part of this game is the fact that all the characters are memorable; the voice-acting really makes the characters come to life; i feel that the VA was very nicely done. There will be an annoying voice here and there, but the voices sound natural. Another unique aspect in these games is the multitude of Hero choices in the game. This game offers more interaction between the Hero and the other members of the party, allowing for much replay value just to see/hear all the choices.

Gameplay
Differences: GL2 uses a setup reminiscient of FFT. There is a world map which is basically a point by point grid, a giant connect the dot map. You will encounter random battles in some places and new places will open up as you continue on with the story. When you click on towns, you are given three options. Generally, these options are to talk, shop, or sleep. It is relatively simple and very important to do at every town if you want to uncover secrets. GL3 acts like a basic RPG with the return of the overworld map and free-roaming exploration. Because of this, gamers will have more random battles and dungeon crawls. Unfortunately, someone got lazy and made all the dungeons look the same. Granted, I'm not really someone who raves about dungeon graphics, but honestly, every dungeon looks the same and traversing a dungeon down nine levels is not something you want to do every day.

Similarities: The Battle System is basically a stream-lined version of most SRPGs. You issue commands to your party (8 characters in GL2 and 4 characters in GL3) and then you watch everything unfold. The battle will not end until either your party is dead, the enemy's is, or you stop it to reissue commands. This makes battles much quicker; however, this means it lacks depth. In both Growlansers, you will only need to use like three spells before everyone attacks. In addition, there are no character-specific skills or spells. Everyone learns from the same skill tree. Outside of battle, the system is known as the Ring/Gem system. Wearing Rings increase/decrease stats. Each Ring comes with 3 slots ranging from 0-9. You then place Gems into these slots which give you abilities like Attack+10%, Poison Attack, etc. The thing is that you cannot place a Gem into a higher Ring slot. There appears to be strategy; however, once again, you only use a certain amount of Gems though there are tons in the game.

The story battles occur in what are called Missions. Like missions, there are certain objectives that you have to complete. They are much more elaborate and intricate and if you do not do exactly as they say, you will generally get a Game Over. Most missions are very well done and require strategy. Generally, you will have to do more besides "Destroy all enemies." Finally, the Missions in GL2 were much better in GL3, placing you in much more interesting scenarios (ironically, you see the words MISSION COMPLETE in GL3 more often than GL2)

Graphics
Like I said before, the graphics show their age. The character sprites look very similar to other SRPGs like Disgaea and Xenogears but they are very much less cartoonish with more detail. The character portraits are done in the anime style but the in game graphics are very nicely done. Spell/Skill graphics are very average which is characteristic of SRPGs; this will not come to be a problem for most gamers as you can skip the animation by pressing X. Most gamers will skip then anyway because it is quite monotonous to watch the spell over and over.

Replayability/Extras
GL2 is the master of replayability. There are multiple endings due to the 8 character party. Besides that, there are two events in the game that drastically alter the storyline and missions you do in the game depending on what you choose your Hero to say. You will have to play the game 2-3 times in order to do everything possible in their game. Fortunately, the game is relatively quick, taking most players 10-12 hours to complete and 4 hours on a New Game+

GL3 can take as much as 20-25 hours to complete. The reason is that you have to travel to areas and dungeon crawl. In addition, the game has a knack for not telling you where to go, so you may waste time wandering around aimlessly. This game also has multiple endings, but the process is not as daunting as GL2 because of the smaller party. A New Game+ is also available upon completion but it will take about 8 hours even if you are blazing through.

Conclusion
GL2 will remind fans of typical SRPGs because of the map system. Most gamers will fall in love with this game because of the characters and missions alone, sometimes blinded by the lack of depth this game has in terms of Gem combinations and storyline.

GL3 will remind players of some of the earlier RPGs like Suikoden and Xenogears. However, some players will be fed up with the dungeons in the game because there was no creativity put into them. To make it worse, the characters are not as memorable as GL2, meaning gamers will be stuck with characters they do not really like much longer.

I give these games overall a 7. I interpret a 7 as an average game that did just enough. However, it failed to go beyond this level to make the game appeal to more gamers.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/05