Grandia

"A moving experience that will stay with you"

Grandia is not only a game that entertains us; it can also move us at times. In this game there are moments of happiness, sadness, suspense, anger, and other emotions that allow the gamer to immerse themselves into the story and feel the overall experience of it. The overall look and feel of this game is colorful and happy. It is for the most part, a light hearted and enjoyable adventure. However, like anything else, there are bumps in the path that you have to overcome. Anyway, I’ll do this the traditional way and just break it down.

Story 10/10
The story is usually the best part of a role-playing game. This game has a fun story just like any good RPG would. You start off getting introduced to the games main character, Justin. He is a kid with big dreams and a thirst for adventure. The game starts off slow, as you go through Justin’s hometown, getting to know it and searching for some items as well. Actually, this part of the game is covered in the instruction manual for the beginners who may have trouble getting started. Anyway, the overall story is about how Justin and his friend Sue adventure in search of a place called Alent to unlock the mysteries of an ancient civilization. He meets new friends along the way. However, the game does have a darker side to it as well. As the story goes on it turns into something much greater. There are many plot twists and things like that throughout the game that keeps it interesting for the most part. So the story has a good mix of light and dark elements to it that keeps it from getting stale. I can’t really give away how the story evolves because of the strict rules about spoilers and all that stuff so I’ll just leave it to you to find out for yourself. It starts out slow but it gets better finishing with a climactic ending. Trust me on this one.

Battle System 10/10
This is really where the game shines. The battle system is like to other. It’s set up like this: on the bottom of the screen is a little bar with little heads that represent the characters and monsters individually. The heads move across the bar at different rates; depending on WIT stats. Whenever a head reaches the COM part of the bar the character can input a certain command. You have several different commands to choose from. There is Combo, which is where your character attacks the enemy with 2 regular attacks. There is Critical which is one harder blow that is a little weaker than two regular hits but if the enemy is about to attack and you hit it with a critical hit it will cancel the move and put it back down the bar. This adds a bit of strategy to the battles. Then there is the Moves/Magic command which lets you attack with either a skill or magic. Skills consume SP and magic consumes MP. There is the Look command which just lets you look at all the enemies HP and what they are doing as their attack and the like. It’s nothing too useful. There is the Escape command which lets you escape the battle. Another command is Defend which has two options: Endure and Evasion. Endure means you just stand and you reduce the damage taken to you by 1/3. Evasion allows the character to move to another part of the battlefield. This is useful for getting out of the enemies line of fire or to keep your party from getting bunched up and susceptible to area attacks. Also, there is the Tactics command. This lets you set the AI for your party. You can either have it on all manual or different styles of fighting that the computer does for you. Finally, there is the Item command which lets you use an item. That is pretty much how the battles go.
Now for the out of battle system. Each character has different types of weapons they can equip. Two different kinds at least. Whenever a character strikes an enemy with that weapon they get experience for that weapon. So say Justin gets into a battle and he strikes an enemy with his sword, he will get a certain amount of experience for the sword. Whenever he gets 100 experience points for the sword, his sword skill will level up. The same goes for magic. The different types of weapons are Sword, Ax, Mace, Bow, Dagger, and Whip. Whenever you attack an enemy with magic, that basic magic element will gain experience. An example of that would be, if Justin uses the magic attack Burnflame on a group of enemies, he will get a certain amount of experience points for fire. Same as weapons, magic levels up for ever 100 experience points gained. The different types of basic magic are Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water. To gain a new spell/skill you must have a certain magic/weapon level. Another example: if Justin wants to learn Burnflame he must first get fire to level 4. So you have to continue using spells and weapons over and over to gain new abilities. It’s a change from the usual level up and gain magic attacks. There are mixed elements you can learn too. Mixing Fire and Earth magic yield Explosion magic, Wind and Water magic make Blizzard magic, Fire and Wind magic make Lightning magic, and Water and Earth magic make Forest magic. These mixes tend to be strong than the basic magic but are harder to learn because it requires two magic types to be leveled up. This may sound complicated but it’s really not. Once you see it for yourself you will understand it better. This battle system keeps the battles from getting old and repetitive. In this game you don’t even have to get into some battles since they are not random. You can see the enemies and depending on the direction you run into them will determine how the battle starts out. You can ambush the enemies or they can ambush you or it can be even. Anyway, enough rambling about the battle system, lets move on to a new thing.

Music 10/10
The music in this game is AMAZING. In my opinion this game has the best soundtrack of any game I have played. Most of the music is fully orchestrated. It really sets the mood of the events you get into and makes you get into the story more. Pretty much all the music fits into the game nicely and gives it a nice feel. You might want to check out the OST for this game because it’s good. Very good.

Sound Effects 9/10
The sound effects are pretty good in the game. There is even voice acting. Problem is, the voice acting could have been much better. But hey, at least it has voice acting. The sound effects are okay. My only complaint is that the voice acting could have been stepped up just a little bit. Still nothing too horrible.

Length/Replay Value 10/10
The length is pretty good. The game spans 2 discs and they aren’t really taken up by a lot of CGI cut scenes or anything. It’s mostly gameplay. There are also three bonus dungeons you can take on in the game. The monsters are harder and the dungeons are long and there are no save/recover points. However, the rewards are great. The dungeons can add literally hours onto your game time. I would say that if you rush the game and don’t do any optional things you could get through the game in about 40 hours. If you take your time and enjoy the game and do the side quests and level up your skills and magic the game could go on for over 70 hours. That is a pretty good sized RPG on today’s standards.

Graphics 9/10
Well, by today’s standards, the graphics on this game are lacking. However, you have to give this game some credit since it was originally on the Sega Saturn, so the graphics really couldn’t match up to today’s Playstation games. Still though, there are some blocky and bland textures in the game, which I think could have been better. I’m cutting it some slack because the game is older and it was on an old system. For the most part though, the graphics were good, a lot of bright colors and whatnot. Another cool thing is that all the important characters have their own avatars while they speak. This way you can tell their emotion while they speak. The graphics overall were great for the Saturn and a little bit behind the Playstation. It didn’t get a 9 because it was compared to the Playstation graphics; it was because of some of the textures in the game.

Overall 10/10
This is a great RPG that everyone should at least give a chance. The story is very moving when played all the way through and it will be a great experience. One thing I didn’t like was how the translators edited out many words and replaced them with stupid words. For example, instead of saying damn, the character will say something like bogus. I found that pretty lame but it’s nothing to cry about.

WARNING

Do NOT play this game on a Playstation 2 if you can help it. The game WILL freeze randomly and the music during battles will sometimes mess up and the game may not run smoothly at times.

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