I bought Grandia (the PSN version) three months ago, as I figured a portable JRPG would help to keep me sane during my internship. It was originally released in Japan in 1997 (the same year as Final Fantasy VII, so a comparison between the two is actually quite fair) and has a pretty good reputation.

Basically, it had a lot to live up to.

Grandia does a good job of blending 2D sprites and 3D environments.

Playing as Justin, a young boy who dreams of being an adventurer, the beginning of the game sees you running around your home town on a fetch quest.  I found this pretty dull (and started to feel cheated out of my £5) but stuck with it because of what I’d heard.  Thankfully, the story does get going eventually — even if it is pretty standard fare for a JRPG; young boy sets out to discover the history of an ancient civilisation, yadda yadda yadda… and ends up saving the world.

One of the things that surprised me most about Grandia is just how well it has aged.  Whereas FFVII‘s chibi-style characters look absolutely ludicrous by today’s standards, and the constant back-and-forth between blocky chibi and detailed battle model is a little jarring, Grandia‘s combination of 2D sprite-work and 3D environments is superb, and ensures a consistent feel in both the field and battle.  Even in FMVs, characters are rendered in 2D as high-quality cartoons.  The battle and level-up system are also different enough from the norm to feel innovative even compared to recent RPGs, and I will give a basic rundown here.

Battles (of the “collide-with-an-enemy” rather than “random encounter” variety) are a mix between turn-based and real-time.  Between turns, characters and enemies cycle between three states (Wait, Command, Act) at a speed dependent on their stats, and the action pauses whilst issuing commands in order to give the player some time to think.  All the usual commands are there (Attack, Magic, Defend, Item, Escape), but Grandia also includes a Critical Attack option.  This doesn’t deal more damage than a usual attack (as one might expect) but potentially causes the opponent to stagger, interrupting them if they are in the Command or Act stages or increasing their Wait time otherwise.  If played tactically, it’s possible to time your Critical Attacks such that the enemy never gets a chance to retaliate — and this makes for some very interesting battles indeed.

Like in all good JRPGs, the world is teeming with monsters.

As for the level-up system, simply fighting and winning battles is not enough to make your characters stronger.  Use of a particular weapon or magic attribute will affect the way your character grows (every 100 Sword points will increase your Strength stat and Skill Points, whilst every 100 Fire points will increase your Wit stat and MP, for example), and this system is completely orthogonal to the experience you gain in battle.  Learning new moves and spells is dependent on this system (rather than your character’s level), and so without switching weapon types regularly, or mixing up the roles of each character in battle, you’ll find yourself severely underpowered before long.

Unfortunately, the game is let down by a few minor flaws.  The voice acting is pretty terrible in places; the dialogue can be pretty corny; and the plot doesn’t feel as epic as some other games in the genre.  Additionally, towards the end the game suddenly seems to decide that a consistent party line-up would be boring; characters decide to leave for no reason, or join for such a small amount of time that it’s difficult to become attached (or care when they eventually depart).

Nonetheless, Grandia is charming, challenging and (thanks to the PSN re-release) great value for money.  If you’re a fan of JRPGs, there’s really no reason not to play it.