Grandia is a game I played over and over when I was younger, and now, nearly eight years down the line, I decided to give it another go for nostalgia’s sake.  Many of the flaws escaped my notice when I was just a wide-eyed kid, new to the RPG genre and still fascinated by the idea of a storyline in a video game, but what I loved about the game- the fun battles, the colorful characters, the sheer sense of fun and adventure- have all aged like a fine wine.

Grandia is a traditional RPG developed by Game Arts, the creators of the Lunar series, initially for the Sega Saturn in 1997.  The first North American release came to the Playstation in 1999, right in the middle of what many consider a golden age for Japanese RPGs, or at best a highly competitive market for the genre on the PS1.  It released mere months after the likes of Suikoden II, Final Fantasy VIII and Game Arts’ own remake, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. That it managed to stand out enough to spawn a successful series is remarkable, but it was easy to understand why once I sat down with the game again.

For starters, the presentation is still solid after all these years.  The graphics consist of 2D sprites on fully rotatable 3D backgrounds, similar to games like Xenogears and Breath of Fire IV.  The sprites are colorful and represent the characters quite well.  The animations can be a tad on the choppy side, but they’re expressive, fun, and there are a lot of them.  As with many PS1 games, the 3D hasn’t held up well, but it’s still far from laughable.  The graphics overall are nicely done, with no major holes or any need for the player to pretend something is happening- everything unfolds as you see it.

The voice acting ranges from average to bad (usually bad), and although the translation is well done and the voices fit the characters well, it’s always awkwardly timed and sounds like it was recorded by a high school theater club.  The dialogue scenes actually play much better without the voice acting, due to each character having a plethora of character portraits conveying every possible emotion to go along with the scenes.  They switch in and out constantly as the character speaks, and sometimes even specific situations (such as Leen being soaking wet or Justin waking up with bedhead) have their own portraits that are unique to that one scene.  That attention to detail goes a long way toward establishing the character’s personalities and giving life to the dialogue.

The narrative itself bears many similarities to Studio Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky, and like the film there’s a sharp contrast between the two halves of the story.  In the beginning we’re introduced to the main character, Justin.  He’s a troublemaker living in the port town of Parm who dreams of following in his father’s footsteps, discovering the lost civilization of Angelou and becoming the world’s greatest adventurer.  He fits the “determined to be the best [blank] ever” archetype perfectly, being so determined that nothing can shake his determination, and often inspiring others with his determined determination.  Despite the cliche, he’s a likable character and his enthusiasm really permeates the entire game.  After the spirit stone his father left him leads him to an encounter with a mysterious priestess who tells him to travel east to the lost capitol of Angelou, it’s time for Justin to cross the ocean to the New World and begin his adventure.  But because he has the spirit stone, he’s often forced to tangle with the sometimes intimidating, often hilariously incompetent Garlyle Forces- the military force that’s excavating ruins for some mysterious goal, and who provide the game’s chief antagonists at this point.

After a surprisingly poignant parting scene between Justin and his mother, Justin crosses the ocean and meets the other principle character, Feena.  She’s a confident and competent ally- never a nag, a designated healer, nor a damsel in distress- and the romance that springs up between the two is refreshing in its lack of needless, tacked-on drama.  They don’t hate each other at first, but then suddenly fall in love.  Rather, Feena progresses naturally from companion, to friends and finally love interest as they adventure together.  In fact, nearly the entire first disc is similarly lighthearted and innocent, even humorous at times, as Justin continues to surprise people with his resourcefulness and refusal to back down from impossible tasks.  The game often pauses admire the scenery or bask in a new discovery, most memorably when Justin and company become the first people to climb the huge wall known as the End of the World and see what lies on the other side.  The bombastic soundtrack really sells these scenes, which give a sense of accomplishment simply for progressing through the game and establish Grandia’s world as truly vast and unexplored.

Then, at the start of the second disc, the plot finally decides to show up and cause a complete 180.  The sense of adventure gradually dissipates to make room for the “epic” story.  Justin goes from likable kid to chosen one, and immediately begins spewing idealist philosophies at anyone who’ll listen.  He is, of course, always wrong, and only manages to survive and make fools of the more intelligent and reasonable characters through the magnitude of his plot armor.  Feena becomes whiny and feeble, crushed under the weight of her sudden “mysterious power”, causing her to bicker with Justin and then need to be rescued by him.  The Garlyle forces, as it turns out, were enacting a plan by General Baal to resurrect the ancient evil that destroyed Angelou (presumably just because) using the power of the spirit stone.  There are big CG cutscenes of towns being destroyed and a predictable ending, but by this point I was invested enough in the characters and the game in general to see the 40-hour quest to its conclusion.

The game’s battle system is one of, if not the best in the genre.  The flow is similar to the active-time battles of the Final Fantasy series or Chrono Trigger, but with several additions and modifications that add strategy and depth to every encounter.  If you’ll look in the lower-right corner of the blurry screenshot above, you’ll see the IP bar shared by all characters and enemies.  The first 80% is where characters wait for their turn, and the player inputs the commands once they reach the last segment.  The final 20% is the wait to execute the command, which could be anywhere from five seconds to instantaneous.  Simple commands like Combo (the standard attack, hits twice), Critical (a more powerful single strike, not as strong as both hits of a combo but containing some special properties I’ll explain later), or Guard will come out instantly, whereas special moves and spells can take time to charge depending on the character’s proficiency with the move.  The combatants are not locked in place, either.  They move around the battlefield and stay wherever they end up, not unlike the Lunar series, which lends to some extra strategy with area-affecting spells.

What really sets the battle system apart, however, is that aside from command input and execution of special moves or spells, it all plays out in real-time- meaning every character and every enemy is moving and acting simultaneously.  This allows for some unique strategies that are both intuitive and easy to pick up.  Combatants are momentarily stunned when attacked, which can be used to stall an enemy until a specific character’s turn comes up.  Hitting an enemy with a Critical will set them back about 50% of the IP bar, or if they’re waiting to execute a move, potentially cancel it altogether, sending them to nearly the beginning of the bar.  Hitting an enemy who’s currently attacking counts as a counter and does extra damage.  These same rules apply to the characters, of course, which forces the player to strategize on the fly with attack and defense timing, as well as target priority.  Everything adds up to create an deep, intuitive, lightning fast and unpredictable battle system that I never got tired of, and often had me actually wandering around looking for battles.

Part of the reason why is the skill system the game utilizes for learning abilities and spells.  Each character has a skill level for each type of weapon they can use and for each of the four types of magic you can teach them.  Points are gained through use, and a level up brings minor stat boosts and better proficiency.  Once certain requirements are met across one or multiple skills, the character will learn a new ability.  The game keeps the names and properties of the abilities a secret, but not the requirements to gain them.  So the good news is, you’ll always be working toward a new ability.  The bad news is, you will always be working toward a new ability. Because the only way to level up a skill is to use it, the strategy is almost always taken off of how to best win a battle and placed, instead, on how to spam the same moves as many times as possible.  You may find yourself limiting one character to a single useless ability (say, a spell that grants a minor defense boost or an area attack that does an irrelevant amount of damage) for two straight dungeons just to grind the skill level.  While this does provide another incentive to keep engaging in combat, it also makes the entire game feel like one big grind.  On the other hand, this may not be a bad thing, because it’s also so addictive that it may end up being the very thing that keeps the player going until the ending.

Exploration in the game is somewhat limited, which seems ironic for a game with such a heavy storyline focus on adventure and discovery.  The towns are big and well-designed, but due to the near absence of side quests and the game’s linearity never leaving the player with any question as to what to do next, there’s generally very little incentive to explore them once you’ve located the shop and the inn.  The world map is a literal map with towns and dungeons listed on it, and destinations are chosen like on a menu.  Instead of having a whole countryside to explore, locations are generally divided up by fields or mountain ranges the player must traverse like a dungeon before the next location on the map becomes available (although they very thankfully did not go the Suikoden III route with this idea- you only have to clear each one once).

This brings us to the dungeon design: one or two early dungeons got my hopes up that they’d all be full of  traps, puzzles, difficult to reach treasure chests and the like.  This concept is woefully underdeveloped, as the dungeons mostly alternate between wide-open areas and long series’ of identical corridors, very occasionally interspersed with something falling on you for minor damage (and even that’s mostly phased out by the second disc).  Enemies appear on the map along with a liberal amount of treasure chest, loose items and sacks of money.  The battle system and the skill system, along with the surprising quality of the items you can find, make it rewarding enough to explore every nook and cranny of the areas, but as the majority of the game is spent doing this, it can get tiring after a while.  Unless you’re a big fan of dungeon crawling, this isn’t likely to be a game you’ll play in particularly long sittings.

If I have one chief complaint, however, it’s that the game is just too easy.  Enemies pose no threat against even normal attacks, and there’s no reason to conserve your special moves or spells since the save points will fully heal you.  Even most bosses will only be able to attack once or twice before you completely lay them out.  This means the fantastic battle system partially goes to waste as some of the deeper strategies are largely unnecessary.  There’s a limited inventory system where each character can only carry twelve items (not counting what they have equipped), which under normal circumstances would lend to the “adventure” theme of the game by forcing the player to prepare before leaving for a dungeon and ration items once they’re there.  However, besides the very beginning of the game when there was no magic available (and maybe not even then), I never used a single item.  This was not a conscious decision, there was simply no need.  This, coupled with the linear story progression, makes for a game you’ll breeze through without trying.

However, in the end the flaws don’t manage to detract nearly enough from the overall experience to not give Grandia a strong recommendation.  Ten (or rather, twelve) years later, Grandia remains a memorable and enjoyable experience, and one of the better games on its platform or in its genre.  There’s a lot to love here- whether you’re an RPG vet or a genre newcomer (like I was when I first played it), it’s an adventure worth embarking on.