Grandia

"Although grandia's apparent audience is that of a younger class, it can be an enjoyable experience to all RPG gamers young and old."

Adventures. Dreams. Exploration. Kids with desire. Knights wielding legendary swords. Sounds like something that your 1st grade child would enjoy. Not for most of us though, right? Wrong. Although it may sound kiddish and child friendly in concept, it is actually the expansive world of a game called Grandia. Originally released on the Sega Saturn in Japan, Grandia captivated audiences with its addicting combat system and Saturday morning cartoonish but yet gripping story time and time again. So, wanting to make a bigger boom with this strangely fascinating game, Working Designs ported Grandia to the highly successful, particularly in RPG's, Sony Playstation. Although Working Designs expected a good turnout for Grandia, they didn't expect it to be considered by many the RPG that took down the almighty Final Fantasy VIII for the best role playing game of 1999. Whether you believe this statement to be true or not is yours to decide, but I personally can say Grandia is a good deal of the reason that I am such a fan of RPG's today, and it is undisputedly a tremendous game.

Now, as I mentioned, Grandia seems so 1st graderish from start to finish. A hot blooded youth from the stereotype friendly town of Parm named Justin comes in to possession of an artifact called the spirit stone. Through this stone, he stumbles across the first clues of the ancient and legendary Angelou civilization. Cool, huh? Well, Justin took that a bit further, deciding he would find the ruins. Sounds like a quest of personal gain, no? But don't all RPG's start like that? Key word start.

As Justin and his childhood friend, Sue, set out to find the Angelou, they will stumble across quite a few different characters. Again, the Saturday morning nostalgia is unmistakably the forefront of these characters, although Working Designs made them realistic enough for a reasonable plot to be developed. Although not nearly a deep enough plot to rival that of the Final Fantasy series, Star Ocean the Second Story, or other highly popular Playstation RPG's, the story and characters can grip their subjects long enough for an enjoyable experience to be had. Although slow at times, the plot moves along just fast enough to keep you playing just before you decide that its gotten a bit too slow for you. In its defense though, a game of Grandia's length would have difficulty pulling off a fast moving plot a good percentage of the time in any case.

However, Grandia's somewhat lackluster story is more than made up for by its intriguing and innovative combat system. Of course, combat system must start with character skillbuilding and development. In Grandia, everything gains levels, from your characters themselves to the branches of magic they specialize in. Grandia reminds me in many ways of massively multiplayer online role playing games in the respect that skillbuilding is a necessity, and considerable time will be given away to this very cause.

First off, the magic. Along your quest, you will come across items called mana eggs. At your next town, you can purchase one branch of magic for one character, selecting from the four magic elements; fire, water, wind, and earth. You will begin with a basic level 1 spell. As you use that spell, you will gain experience points for your magic. Eventually, your magic level will rise just like the level of your characters. As this happens, the effectiveness of your spells will rise and your spell selection will broaden, giving you access to more powerful and unique spells. Even further down your path to the ultimate mage, you will begin to combine the elements you have, (there's enough mana eggs for all your characters to eventually get all four elements), and you can use four new branches of magic made from hybrid elements including blizzard, lightning, forest, and explosion. Eventually, as well, the magic abilities you have gained will help you in other things.

Moves, or character specific attacks, play a huge part in being successful in Grandia. It's where the art of balance is taught, and to be victorious, it must be mastered. Along with magic levels, each individual type of weapons such as swords, knives, whips, and axes also gain levels the same way magic does. You then combine your weapon and magic skills to form moves, the same way you get new magic spells. Starting to sound familiar? Some moves, such as Justin's Heaven and Earth Cut, only require advancement in a few different sorts of weapons, whereas Feena's ultimate spell, Time Gate, requires heavy experience in wind and water magic, but no weapon training is required. Even more intricate is moves such as Dragon Cut and Lightning Whip, moves that require set levels in both weaponry and the use of magic. Although keeping track of all the different levels just one character must keep up to date on can be disorganized and annoying at first, Grandia proves itself as having a very in depth and likable character development system, which carries over to Grandia's excellent combat. My only bone I must pick with this system involves the magic. Each magic spell is assigned to a level, either 1, 2, or 3. Although these levels seem to be randomly assigned, (level 3 spells aren't necessarily the strongest), it is very hazardous to have to deal with three different sets of MP, one for each level of spell. Why all the spells couldn't be put together is still a mystery to me, and I found myself attempting to cast the Burnflare spell only to find that I don't have enough MP. But I swore I had enough! Ah, but not enough level 2 MP, but I had plenty of level 1 MP. As you can see, quite confusing at times.

As I've made reference to already a few times, Grandia's combat system is outstanding and very well played out. You have a long bar that at first reminded me of a more graphical ATB system, much like Final Fantasy, but it is quite different. On the left side, you have the faces of all persons, plants, animals, or other forms of existence involved in the battle. Depending on what armor and other clothing they're wearing, their face will move at a particular rate across the bar. When it reaches the right side they may act. Then, if they are executing a big attack, I.E. magic spell, move, or feared enemy attack, they will start to shoot sparks. At this time the opposition can attack them with a special sort of attack, breaking the casting or preparing for the opponent's attack and sending them back to square one. This can be the turning point in a pivotal battle, and it saved, and almost killed, me quite a few times. Another advantage is that should you be against Grandia's excellent battle system, low on health, or just pressed for time, you can attempt to avoid battles, since the enemies can be seen on the field screen. Of course, if you're snuck up on or caught in a rundown, you'll be caught in an ambush, which, in Grandia, is definitely not a good thing. Opposition takes advantage of ambushes the best they possibly can, sometimes getting almost two full rounds in before your first attack can be thrown back. The best part though is that you can do the same to enemies. Sneak up on some unsuspecting critter and put 'em out before they can even turn around. Quite fun, just like the rest of the combat.

Grandia is a fairly linear game, with everything being given to you in a very straightforward manner. There is no overworld, simply a basic point and click feature to get from place to place. There are quite a few dungeons to be explored, most of which I found tremendously fun. Being that there were so many, having to take extra time to level up was not a common occurrence, and with the fun battle system, trudging through dungeons wasn't quite as monotonous and tedious as it could have been.

Grandia's approach from a graphical standpoint is also interesting, and it for the most part is a pleasant equation. Grandia uses 3d backgrounds, but it makes use of some well designed 2d characters. The 2d characters in a 3d world can look a bit out of place sometimes, but it didn't look nearly as awkward as I'd expected it to look. The character designs are also well done, with the lush cartoonishness simply radiating from every character. My favorite dimension of Grandia's graphical presentation though would have to be the enemy designs. Working Designs made sure that before the game was shipped off to be played by millions that it had a colorful cast of enemies. Unfortunately, do to Grandia's long trek through its broad world, some enemies begin to become recycled a good way through the game. However, even the recycled characters are pleasant to the eye, ranging from plants to insects and all other assorted creepers, crawlers, and critters.

Grandia's backgrounds are much like its forefront….Lush and colorful. Each individual area has been touched up with nice detailed effects from realistic looking grasslands behind you to eerie darkness in some ruins spreading out from you on all sides. These visuals aren't particularly stunning, but they do their job in setting a mood quite nicely.

The final graphical aspect is the battle graphics. While most of the graphics are just standard fair, there's one area that must be mentioned, that being the spell animations. Grandia did an excellent job of portraying magic spells visually in conjunction with their effectiveness. The early and less effective spells are nice to look at, but they aren't very effective in battle, nor in dropping the jaw of their beholder. However, as the more powerful magic spells are opened up, you will see some spectacular effects from bright bursts of flame to chilling columns of ice glittering across the battlefield. Just one more reason, aside from their obvious effectiveness in battles, to work to see the ultimate magic spells that Grandia has hidden away. These tremendous battle magic animations, along with lush and colorful characters, enemies, and environments make for a not unpleasant graphical package that should not be frowned upon.

As well as being relatively pleasant to the eyes, Grandia brings a nice set of audio to the table as well. The score is excellent in parts, with battle tunes being extremely catchy. Grandia features three different standard battle themes. The first disc has two excellent battle themes, one for standard battles and a more upbeat, better-get-ready-to-run sort of piece for when you are ambushed. Disc two features an excellent battle theme that I still listen to via MP3's very frequently, as well as a cool remix for the purpose of ambushes. The in game music is also pretty well done, with many of the game's emotional storyline sequences having scores that fit them like a glove on a hand. My only complaint with the score is that many songs seemed to be thrown in as filler. Whereas half of Grandia's score is memorable and lovely to hear, the other half consists of repetitive measures of exotic percussion or constant drones that are supposed to form a backdrop for some of the game's many dungeons. However, when a full musical piece was implemented, it is definitely some of the better music offered in an RPG, and it sounds damn close to reality on top of that.

Grandia was one of the first RPG's to use voice acting. Thankfully though, the voice acting appears only in key situations, as most of the voices sound forced, or in Justin's case, very corny. The opening sequence and one particularly adrenalin pumping sequence towards the game's conclusions displays what the voice acted samples could've been, but unfortunately, these two are the only two I can remember as standing out in my mind with a pleasurable recollection.

` The rest of Grandia's sound is quite well done though. All of the sounds during field play are real, from footsteps varying on different surfaces to the lid of a treasure chest opening. The battle sounds are also of a high quality. Unfortunately, this is where most of the game's voices are, so that detracts from the excellent battle themes and sounds, but if you can zone out the annoying, ''Prepare yourself! This is it! Yeeaa!'', you will find the battles to be a nice listen, particularly again with the sounds of the more powerful magic spells being cast.

Grandia is a fun game, but not a hard one. If you're looking for a challenge, look elsewhere. This was one of my first RPG's the first time I had the joy of playing through it, and even my newbie self only lost to any given boss no more than twice. As long as you can grasp the many levels you must keep track of without any difficulty, Grandia will be like taking candy from a baby.

Graciously though, Grandia's lack of challenge is made up for by its length. When everything is accomplished, Grandia'll clock in around 70 hours for the average player. Add in about an extra 10 or so hours if you find yourself lost in wide, expansive worlds easily.

So, what do you think of those adventures and dreams that sounded like Tommy's favorite Saturday morning epics now? Although its themes are very kiddish in concept, it is an excellent game to be enjoyed by old and young alike. If you are a fan of the genre, then I highly advise you picking up Grandia. It is a very cheap buy now, and if you are even remotely interested in a good, long adventure that'll leave you begging to get in another battle, than Grandia's your cup of tea. But if you're only in RPG's for the deep, fabric-of-life questioning plots and complicated, almost psycho lead characters, then play something from the Final Fantasy dynasty.
Final Score: 8.6

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/06/02, Updated 06/11/02