Why Didn't I Play This Sooner?
Volume 1
Grandia
[img width=300 height=300]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mvYQ5wLSL._SL500_AA300_.jpg[/img]
Ok, I'm a bit of an RPG fan. One look at my collection will show that's a majority of my console games, but I'm getting better at representing more and more genres! Anyway even though I have a good deal of console and PC RPGs, I started with the Japanese bastardizations of the traditional PC and pen and paper role playing. The two sides of the ocean have different style, I believe that does not mean that one should be put down or discriminated against as there are still fans of both, just that Western ones have been gaining popularity in recent years as PC exclusivity is not pretty much non-existent.
Anyway now that I have that little rant done it is time to get started on this little micro review. Here I'm doing a little twist on my normal format on this blog so far where I kick down a bad game and beat the crap out of it while it is down, and instead find a game that I love and ask the question, Why Didn't I Play This Sooner? And I'm starting off with a console RPG for the PS1, I did not even know about this series until the third one on PS2, but hey, my parents were cheap and I was a child of the 90's, although completely separated from the internet, making it quite a bit harder to hear about some more obscure titles. Anyway, this is Grandia, originally released for the Sega Saturn, only in Japan, and then ported to the Playstation and released internationally. It was developed by Game Arts, the same company behind Lunar, the Sipheed shmups, and GunGriffon mech piloting series, and was published in the USA by SCEA, hence its exclusivity.
[img width=700 height=525]http://www.rpgamer.com/games/grandia/grand/themes/grandia_wallp_1024x768(dragonsquallz).jpg[/img]
I found this in near mint condition, complete, for an incredible price a couple weekends back and have just now started playing it in my free time. And I must say that this is a charming, unique, and fun take on the RPG genre. The battle system is fast paced and fun, making grinding fairly simple early on. Yet the battle system has some depth to it, which is explained as follows. Characters are fairly pre-built, able to equip certain items, most of which I've noticed so far breaks across gender lines, but I'm still pretty early in the game and that might change. It is a turn based system yet it sometimes does not feel that way as characters move on the battlefield depending on their orders and the speed of your other characters.
Send the hero, Justin to attack with his sword while his token childhood friend Sue uses her bow? Well Justin will charge in and slice the enemies while Sue hits them from a distance, and will move away from enemies, showing decent battle AI at least for your characters. You also level up each weapon type you have equipped by using it in battle, which leads to more hits per attack, a nice addition the usual level grind and attack power increase. The game also does away with random battles, instead opting for open spaces occupied by roaming mobs, you touch said mob and you go to the battle screen, meaning you can sometimes fight on your own terms. I'm a grinder though so I'll kill everything, then go back, recover, save, and fight everything again.
The game's camera controls are quite good, taking a cue from Xenogears to let the player use the shoulder buttons to spin it around and get a good angle to look for hidden treasures or NPCs to talk to. Anymore in RPGs I avoid the NPCs as they tend to be totally useless, because of the whimsical and comical nature of this game though, I found myself talking to them again, all of them, and laughing more often than not at what is said. From a man who is fine having nasty, rank B.O., to another man having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that his Sergeant woman boss is beautiful yet harsh, the perfect S&M mistress perhaps?
Now it is time to discuss at least the beginning of the game. You play as Justin, a young troublemaking rogue from the town of Parm, of course the town names will not make any sense, this is a Japanese RPG we're talking about! Anyway Justin has a childhood friend, like 90% of these games, named Sue, she in a twist of originality, has a flying bunny... thing, follow her named Puffy, which may as well be a pokemon.
[img width=558 height=702]http://images.wikia.com/grandia/images/1/14/Sue_Visual.jpg[/img]
These are the two you start off with and the game starts with a treasure search of sorts, the opening has you getting chased off by a man for digging through his shed, then Justin goes back to his archrival Gantz (which is the name of an amazing manga and much less so anime) as they are in the middle of a treasure hunting contest. By now the player should be laughing, oh laughing heartily. The reason I say this is because the voice actors are horrible, absolutely awful, terrible, with inflections completely wrong. But, you can hear from their performances that they are having fun with their jobs of reading these lines, it is horrible, but laughably bad, making the acting and voice overs do a complete 180 spin into the realm of awesomely bad. Something that helps the voice acting become this way is the fact that the writing is actually quite good from what I've seen so far. I mean I can walk up to some random man in Justin's mom's, Lilly's, restaurant and tell him he has B.O. Only for the man to retort that his scent is a manly scent that is brought about by the working of metal, and brawn. Best. Game. Ever.
[img width=640 height=507]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c42/Stoirmeacha/bra.png[/img]
Now after finding all the treasures you go back to Gantz in time to see him getting scolded, then Justin and Sue run by and escape to Lilly's restaurant. Of course, like every Japanese RPG, Justin's dad is nowhere to be seen, yet he is referenced as a great man and even better treasure hunter. You get this nice dinner scene after a bit where Justin is able to speak to both Sue and Lilly, getting dialogue options. This is actually quite a nice idea to stuff in some light character development between major scenes and acts in the early part of the game, I'm too early to know whether or not it continues until the end, but I'll let experience say that eventually, I get too far away from home to do that on a daily basis.
Justin just dreams to be a great explorer and treasure hunter, so after going for a visit to the local museum and breaking a statue, he gets a nice envelope that lets him into the nearby ruins that are being excavated. Now you head there, first grind, and then head into the ruins, meeting three Sergeants on the way, all women, and all angry and annoyed at everything. They revel in their power to discipline their troops and when Justin approaches them with his letter, one of them rips it up and tosses it down a hole. Not one to give up, Justin goes down into the ruins anyway, probably thinking in his head a less clever way of the words, Disregard Women, Acquire Currency. Here is where I am currently at in the story, not very far in, but since the beginning all I can think is, Why the *^%$& didn't I play this sooner?
[img width=555 height=729]http://troll.me/images/joseph-ducreux/disregard-women-acquire-currency.jpg[/img]
Its still early in my playthrough, but this game did what a good game should do, catch your attention early and keep hold of it with style, wit, and great voice acting. Now I am rather anxious to get hold of Grandia II & III, too bad my local game store has them and wants to charge twice what they're worth. I shall wait and then work my way to getting them through the internet like series of tubes. Until next time, stay classy my friends.
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