Grandia

"A total waste of my precious TIME! :("

Grandia is the game that came out around the same time as Final Fantasy VIII... only much worse. I still cannot believe I wasted my time on this...

Plot/Story - 3/10

Most reviews hail the story of Grandia. Ok, so I play... and play... and play... 60 hours later (over a period of some long weeks), still nothing has happened. Well, nothing worth mentioning anyway. It’s just one fricking dungeon after another, with minimal dialogue. BO-RING! So what exactly is the “story”? Anyway, it’s about a kid named Justin who wanted to go on adventures. His best friend Suu tags along, and they meet an adventurer girl named Feena along the way. Oh, haven’t we heard that one somewhere before? And guess what will happen? Don’t think too hard. It’s just what you’d expect.

No real plot development takes place until the last five hours of the game. This just amazes me... in a bad way. This game nearly bored me out of my mind before it starts to speed up a little. Too bad the last five hours were not close to being enough to recover what was lost in the first 60 hours. Plot twists? None. Everything was straightforward. Surprises? Depends. If you’ve played enough games or watched anime, everything is just so predictable that it hurts.

Characters - 4/10

Hmm, I can’t remember many of them but everyone seemed to be the same type - happy-go-lucky adventurers. The lack of diversity makes this game seem more like a children’s fairy tale than RPG. Mind you. I don’t mind lighthearted RPG’s at all, but even most of those have at least one serious character to even out the cast. But nope, not this one. Another flaw is, certain permanent characters don’t join until... the last few hours of the game. Therefore, their personalities were never really developed. Oh, wait, most people’s weren’t. Never mind. Oh, and of course they were all static.

The main villain was also not complex at all. Your stereotypical bad guy who wants to take over the world. Blah, blah, blah. What was his name again?

Gameplay/Controls - 2/10

Annoyingly long-winded and boring dungeons. With those irksome rotating camera angles, it’s even harder to find your way around. Everything looks the same! It was hard for me to even continue playing at some points because of how frustrating the navigation is and how vaguely the surroundings seem to suggest the right path. What I mean by that is, say you go into a dungeon, after being confused for a while, you come back to the entrance, you will not know that this place is the entrance. You might think it’s the right way to the second part of the dungeon because nothing distinguishes it from its environment. Because of the lack of creativity of this artist, everything in a single area looks the same. Every time I turn the angle, oops, I’m lost again! This is a waste of time, no fun, and just annoying.

In terms of controls, instead of a regular menu system, they managed to come up with this awkwardly extraneous “spinning wheel” system. It bothered me for quite awhile. That is really my only gripe in this category.

Battle System - 5/10

Battle system is boring, to put it fairly. Why do fans think this is a good system? Virtually the only thing that matters is your special attacks. You’ll probably end up using those over and over again. You’ll have 3 pages of magic per character, but guess what? You won’t be using them because they deal next to no damage. You can also level them up (denoted by stars) by using them a lot. You’d think that increases their power... but no. They increase SPEED. Oh what the? All that work to make those little character icons move a little faster!?

Anyway, in battle, your characters and enemies line up on a meter and there’s a certain point near the end where you select moves, and when the characters reach the end, they execute that move. What’s so innovative and great about this? Might as well be immediate turn-based (Like FF10’s), without all the troubles of putting a bar there.

Graphics - 3/10

Exactly what is so great about these ugly graphics? Everything, I repeat, EVERYTHING, is pixilated. I realize most RPG’s are pixilated at some point... but everything? Yes, that includes all character sprites, all town images, all dungeons, etc. Plus the graphics just does not flow smoothly! Every time I turn the camera angle, everything looks like they’re shaking. They must have a lot of earthquakes in their world. Oh, did I mention that I hate those rotating camera angles?

Sound/Music - 3/10

Not great music. So-so at best. None that I can even remember besides the battle tunes, though I remember them for not-so-good reasons... I remember the first battle music tune was so annoying that I had to mute my whole way through battles. Finally it got better when I was fighting those soldiers. Oh, something decent at last! Does this last? No. After the soldiers it’s back to that annoying music. The battle music got better on the second disc, but still not in par with contemporary RPG’s.

Putting the music aside, there’s the voice acting. Oh, please, no! My poor ears! The voice acting is absolutely monstrous! What did they do? Pull random people off the streets? I thought anime dubbing was bad, but this is so much worse! They talk exactly like as if they’re reading off a script. Not natural at all. Tons of phony emotions and forced exclamations. And why do they talk so SLOW? I cannot understand how anyone can think this horrible voice acting is tolerable. It highly distracts me from the game. At times when the characters finally have “serious” moments, I end up laughing because of how fake they sound.

Challenge - 6/10

The poorly designed dungeons and rotating camera angle system makes it annoyingly hard to find your way around. Challenge? Yes. Bothersome challenge. The game requires not strategy, but luck (in finding your way around dungeons). Not a good kind of challenge at all.

On the other hand, battles are ridiculously easy. The final boss was the most pathetic push-over being I have ever fought. He never even damaged one HP of me! With a few special moves he was dead. Pitiful.

To Buy or to Rent?

I regret wasting 65 hours on this “game”! I want my hours back! My suggestion to you is, don’t touch this game unless you’re really, really, really bored. Even then, it’s better if you just replay one of your favorite games or play a better game. Lots of those out there!

OVERALL - 3/10

Three words can accurately describe this game: Hyped, Overrated, Boring. I can’t believe a game like this gets such high scores. Am I reading correctly here?

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/04/03, Updated 01/04/03