Grandia
Editorial Review
If you can place up with the cutesy graphics, Grandia is one of the longest, most compelling, and most character-driven role-playing sports meeting you’ll ever spin in your PlayStation. By the time we finished this massive quest, we really cared about the game’s characters. (By comparison, our interest in Final Fantasy VII was focusing more on getting from one transition movie scene to the next).
The main tale line is standard role-playing fare. The powerful General Baal has plans to let loose something of a Pandora’s box on the world, and you can guess whose job it is to stop him. Grandia provides a world packed with colorful characters who are fun to talk to, and the unconventional combat system lets players pick and choose their fights. The characters in your party grow, as do their magical skills and weapons, meaning there’s always some new accomplishment just around the corner that keeps players adventuring long into the night. Role-playing fans should be overjoyed that this conversion from the Sega Saturn classic was made, as it provides weeks of solid adventuring that never becomes a chore. –T. Byrl Baker
Pros:
- An entertaining adventure with loads of fascinating characters
- Characters, weapons, and spells all increase with experience
Cons:
- Quirky, cutesy graphics won’t appeal to everybody
Buy Cheap Grandia
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Weird how some people regard Grandia as the best Saturn RPG and one of the best on the PlayStation. While Grandia possesses some fascinating qualities, it is completely dismantled by a series of devastating flaws that cripple the game. This review will be formulaic, but it will get the point across.
The graphical engine was very excellent. 2D characters and 3D environments that can be rotated at will. I like nuances, and Grandia possesses many. I like knocking over teapots and making clotheslines as I walk into them. The spell effects were dull, but, and the FMV, while technically excellent at the time, just wasn’t exciting.
The music is overwrought and nearly asinine. The main themes seem bombastic and pretentious, as if the game is saying, “Come look at me, I’m vital!” The compositions are impressive musically, but they feel emotionally hollow. There is one song, a piano & violin duet, which I loved. It was completely gorgeous. I also liked how the combat music changed as the game nonstop. RPGs often frustrate me by giving me the same combat music owing to the entire 40 hour game.
In Grandia, using specific kinds of magic or weapons makes you more skilled in that capacity. Naive gamers have said that Grandia’s character progression system is innovative and fascinating. It is not innovative, in my mind, and not fascinating. Such systems have been done in 8-bit Final Fantasy sports meeting and reams of Japanese RPG with lower profiles (the SaGa sports meeting come to mind). Also, because the game is so long, you’ll probably learn every spell and weapon technique about 50% though the game. Since this removes any real incentive to engage in combat, all future battles are suffocating in how dull they are.
The combat is dull. This is mainly because it is incredibly simple. I didn’t spend extra time advancing my characters (I tried to end the game ASAP, in fact), so I certainly wasn’t too strong. Still, not a release boss offered any form of challenge. Even the final boss felt like not anything more than a ponderous standard encounter. It seems evident to me that a game cannot be exciting when there is no threat…no sense of danger or challenge. This wouldn’t be _that_ terrible if the battles didn’t take so long. So, you get thousands of long, dull, unadorned fights over the course of the game. The dungeons are amateur in design, and made about 10 times more dreadful because of the combat. There’s also a gauge in combat that shows when when each character will take an action. But, this does not make any real approach because all the characters go at different speeds, so it’s just a funky gimmick.
The tale is not terrible, but it is terribly told. It uses about every hackneyed Japanese RPG element imaginable, but it doesn’t remedy this conundrum with fascinating characters or compelling twists. The translation is just dumb. Sony broke it down to unadorned diction and pure, fatuous juvenalia. The “romantic” relationship between Justin and Feena is basically insulting — it has the maturity of an elementary school passion. Sue is an utterly pointless character, who’s involvement in the tale is unadorned arbitrary and ridiculous. What is the creature “Puffy”? The game never clarifies. I expected some kind of enigmatic quality to the creature, with a revelation disclosing all at some point (like Nall in Lunar). This never happens. It’s stupid. The voice acting is hideous. Attemps at humor fall flat. Attempts at emotional expression are cringe-inducing.
The game took me about 50 hours to beat (though I tend to be slower than some). In my mind, the game is about 35 hours too long. So, expect the “meat” of the tale to be padded with superfluous side-quests packed with obnoxious combat and torturous dialogue. I like side-quests…when they are optional or purposeful. In this game, the side-quests are neither. Adventures in a ghost ship or on a mysterious prehistoric valley might sound fun on paper, but without vital tale revelations or fun gameplay, it’s dull. Contracted about 10 hours of the game is pretty fascinating. But that’s a mere 20% of the game. In school, that would be an ‘F’…a FAILING grade.
The game is just tedious. It’s dull and insipid and hackneyed to death. I’m sure there will be many who say, “Grandia rulez! you lie!” and give me a “not helpful” vote. I didn’t write this to please anyone…I wrote it because I reflect Grandia does not deserve the praise it receives. Heed my word, and perhaps you will save 50 hours of you life. That’s a long time! 50 Law & Order episodes! A genuinely excellent RPG! Reflect about it.
Rating: 1 / 5
When I first heard this game was coming out,I thought, “oh man, one of those dumband corny sports meeting”.But i was incorrect! this is a cool game with a splendid storyline,cool characters,excellent character voice-overs, and the item system is simple. Over-all,this is a splendid game!
Rating: 5 / 5
it is a splendid game it’s a fun and a long gameand if u reflect it’s simple you reflect incorrect i av completed the game three time and am not even bored and am doing it all over agen i wud by this sports meeting
Rating: 5 / 5
I’m rather baffled by all the clear reviews for this game. I bought it a couple months ago after reading all the excellent reviews and thinking this game must be a bright gem that has withstood the test of time. Well, now I’m rethinking that thought… No doubt many people will disagree with me, but on with the review!
Graphics (6/10): Sigh. Everything is pixelated. I’m not sure whether the graphics for this game were considered excellent when the game was released or not. On the bright side, the character designs are excellent as well as the towns. The dungeons are another matter, but more on that later.
Music (6/10): I still can’t figure out why people claim this game has a splendid soundtrack. I’ve even heard people claim that Grandia’s music is some of their most favorite of all time. I marvel if Grandia is the only RPG they’ve ever played? Anyway, the majority of the tracks weren’t too terrible. Unfortuneately, I remember some pretty terrible ones. There’s one jungle where the “music” seems to only be ambient jungle wildlife sounds, which got irritating after the 50th bird call. Unlike others, I found the Gumbo song to be one of the most irritating village themes ever. It’s okay right at first, but then starts to grate on your nerves the longer you stay in the village. One more thing-the voice acting deserves mention. It’s terrible. I rank it as the worst voiceing I’ve ever heard in a game. It sounds like they literally pulled people off the street and offered them $10 to read off some shape. Terrible.
Characters (7/10): The characters are fascinating at first, until you realize that everyone’s the same. All possess the same courageous, pleased-go-lucky adventurer personality. I have not anything against light-hearted sports meeting, but everyone really did seem to have the exact same personality; there was just no balance to the party. Speaking of party, there was a high rate of people joining and then permanently leaving, this (or something else?) really meant that no one really got any siginificant character development. Most everyone had no back tale of interest (or at all) and were not well developed.
Tale (5/10): Here’s where Grandia really starts to “sag in the saddle”, so to speak. The first 1/4 of the game and the last 1/4 are fascinating and engaging. I really loved the start in Parm; rummaging owing to people’s houses, reading Justin’s diary for some droll tales, and laughing at the way any alcoholic references were changed to “coffee”. Man, those were excellent times. Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there. The middle of the game becomes a neverending series of space filler events. The first couple “villages in need” or “musty ancient ruins to explore” didn’t bother me at all, but after that, I started to feel like I was stuck on the wheel of karma or something. It just got really repetitive, until I just knew the next village I came to would have to be saved by me from some disaster. Well, what I refer to as the “main” tale selected about the last quarter of the game, but it wasn’t nearly original or fascinating enough to make up for the huge amount of space filler crap in the middle. By then, only my sheer will potential kept me playing to the end.
Battle System (8/10): Not anything really incorrect with the battle system. It’s a variant of turn-based, with a small bar in the corner indicating who will go next. While the bar does let you see when you’re characters will go, I didn’t really find it all that useful. What keeps this section from a exact score is the abilities-and how you level them up. Using them over and over again strengthens your magic, but not how you’d expect. SPEED increases, not strength. I found this very frustrating and pointless. The alacrity doesn’t really increase enough to make much difference- and leveling spells takes forever.
Gameplay (4/10): Was the rotating camera really necessary? I’ve played sports meeting with rotating camera angles (like Xenogears) that worked just fine, but in this game it doesn’t. The conundrum lies in dungeon navigation. If the graphics had been better, or if there had been better dungeon design, perhaps navigation wouldn’t be so perplexing. It’s really hard to tell where you are because the dungeon design is so bland and repetitive; there are usually no landmarks with which to navigate, with the result that I in fact wound up back at the entrance thinking it was the exit. On another note, something else that bothered me was the fact that even by the end of the game, you couldn’t really return to much of anywhere you had been previously. I kept expecting be able to return to Parm eventually, but no such luck.
*NOTE: This part’s an extremely vital part–the game is glitchy. It would freeze randomly, forcing me to reset and start over. The cds themselves were in excellent condition with nearly no scratches of any kind, and I’ve heard this same complaint before, which leads me to believe the glitches are a flaw of the game design. This is a huge turnoff–this added in extra frustration to an already dull game. This flaw knocks points off the score.
By and large (4/10): Note this score is not an average, it’s my subjective by and large score. I must say, given the flaws of this game, I’d never play it again. It’s too terrible really, it could’ve been a decent game if the makers had cut out the middle of the “plot” and fixed the glitches. I really wouldn’t recommend this to anyone unless they absolutely have played every other excellent RPG out there and are just dying for something else to play. Even then, it may be better to just replay an ancient favorite instead.
Rating: 2 / 5
Well, after a couple of months, I have finally beaten Grandia. All in all, the action of the game was excellent, the progression system fantastic, although the combat-laden progression of the tale got tedious at times. In general, I would have beaten such a game in a couple of weeks, and it would have received 4 (maybe 4 and a half) stars.
HOWEVER…
This game took me a couple of months because I could not STAND the glitches. Ever so often, the game would freeze up on me, which caused me endless frustration. Were it not for the fact that I could save so often (which in general makes a game very simple), I would have returned the game long ago. But, I stayed the course, and the game itself was pretty excellent. I have to drop a star off of its rating, but.
Rating: 3 / 5