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Year Released: 1997

Platform: Sega Saturn (1997 version), Sony Playstation (1999 version)

Developer: GameArts

Behold, dear readers, a console RPG where the developers placed well thought-out stories and characters over “L33T” 3D cutscenes and blond spiky-haired punks with an inferiority complex. Main story after the jump.

GameArts, a developer known for unappreciated hits such as the Lunar series. Despite the catastrophic mess that is the DS incarnation of the series, the predecessors were one of the few games of the industry which set the bar for story in games ( and kick-ass anime cutscenes too). The trials and tribulations of the lovers Alex and Luna, a bad-ass armored mofo elf Ghaleon as an antagonist, and its wonderful and humorous localization makes it cherished and reminded by all who played it, as well as giving most who missed out a harsh lesson that titles like Lunar will fetch up to 200 bucks on Ebay when not bought soon enough.

However, I’m not going to give praise to a game other writers on the net covered very extensively. As the title above mentioned, I will share with you the joys of another GameArts classic which unfortunately got drowned in a sea of both Final Fantasy VII imitators and by its own lackluster sequels. I talk about Grandia the first.

Back in 1997, Grandia was supposed to be the killer app to counter the Playstation’s Final Fantasy 7. Unfortunately, despite Grandia being good-looking for its time, 3D and prerendered sprite-based art ruled audiences old and new, and FFVII set the template for console RPGs up to this day (flash wins over substance, 40-60 hours of meaningless grinding and meaningless fetch-quests and filler; if you want to be blunt about it).

2 years and way too much school later, a port for the U.S was made for the Playstation, albeit with a few consequences I will go on to later. Yes, gamers, the late 90s was a time where it took 2 years or longer for someone to retranslate a whole game to be sold to the States, so stop your forum board whining where you think Blue Dragon is taking ages to be localized. It’s only 8 months, suck it up.

With the whole Saturn history surrounding this title, I was dying to play it. This was also the same year where I had the equivalent of the SATs going on in my school days. I remember I also had a copy of Thousand Arms with me and having a tough time explaining to my school buddies what the hell it was about (it’s an RPG with a dating-sim tossed into it? What’s a dating-sim you say? Err… you just have a conversation with a chick in the game and choose the correct answers so you can “bed” her…Stop laughing, it’s not porn!)

What made Grandia a little more appealing than Final Fantasy VII in my book? For starters, the story, or to be more accurate, it was more of how the story unfolded and the pace it was being told to the audience. Justin, a fourteen-year old, is a young boy with wanderlust in his mind. He wants nothing more than to be like his father, a former great adventurer. When an opportunity shows itself in a form of a trip to the Angelou ruins, Justin and his childhood friend/ accomplice Sue, who rears a flying marshmallow called Puffy , stumbled across a holographic image of a mysterious woman named Liete who tells them to “cross the other side of the Great Wall to uncover the secrets of the past”.

Yeah, there’s a Great Wall dividing the big continent where Grandia was set in. And, yes, your young intrepid band of adventurers barely able to legally drive will eventually scale the damn thing. Justin’s adventure eventually involve the military, a dying civilization needing a big fix, furries with swords and a penchant to party, and Justin’s own path from being a boy to turning into a responsible human being.

Grandia showed me, and others lucky enough to play it, that you do not need huge shoulder-killing swords, childhood friends with shoulder-killing knockers and pretty boy villains with half-assed motivations to make a story. Yes, Grandia’s story isn’t going to set the world on fire, but the way it is presented is spectacular. Gamearts did a fine job making a typically gung-ho teenager seem plausible and believable. The love story between Justin and Feena, a fifteen-year old adventurer who he stumbled into on a ship, is classic blooming young romance that doesn’t elicit nausea but instead makes gamers root for Justin and Feena. It’s just as good as how Lunar: Silver Star Story, another GameArts title, does its own tale of love. One big difference: in LSSS, Alex and Luna were already established as a couple in the beginning. At the beginning, Justin is to Luke as to how Feena is to Obi-Wan, except without the back pains and, well, the dying halfway while blowing up the Death Star part. The student-mentor relationship turned to another level when Feena learns a thing or two on what makes an adventurer: determination, persistence, and self-sacrifice. And both being the opposite sex, their feelings become more and more apparent as the adventure takes a turn for the massive.

It was also a bit touching when halfway through the game, Sue, a longtime party member and the youngster of the group, had to leave permanently because the adventuring is taking a huge toll to her health (not many 8-year olds can hike up to 50 miles to a nearby town, let alone scale up huge walls and ruins without breaking a sweat). This emotional point in the game also showcases one innovation not done often to most games outside Grandia’s sequel: whenever a party member leaves temporarily, their weapon and elemental spell points can be transferred to your current party. As an added bonus, whenever you rest at an inn, your party members all have dinner together and engage in conversation before calling it a day. All dialogues are accompanied with well-drawn face portraits, from normal to embarrassed (I’m a sucker for Sue and Feena’s comedic face portraits). It’s these small touches which flesh out the characters in the game and should be done a bit more often for RPG storylines.

The game too isn’t half bad, in case you’re wondering. The battle system got a lot of critics praising and gushing and for a good reason too; it’s that good. Think of it as a semi-real time system, like Baldur’s Gate. When you start a battle, there’s an IP Gauge where character’s turns, represented by icons, are determined on who reaches the end of the bar first (faster and nimbler characters obviously would reach the end faster than the average characters).

When a character’s icon reaches the end, you give him or her commands, like attacks, spells, item usage, the usual. Your normal attacks are divided into two, Quick and Heavy attacks, with the Quick attack dealing out 3 hit combos, and the Heavy attacks which is a one-time attack which slows down enemies, pushing them back in the IP Gauge. Spells also take a bit of time to cast, so you were vulnerable to a Heavy attack which would cancel your action overall.

Leveling up is also given a new spin of things on Grandia. Apart from gaining stats, you also can level up your weapon skills. In Justin’s case, you get to use either an axe, a mace, or a good old-fashioned keen sword. Continued usage of the sword would grant you more levels for your sword, while your other weapon skills stay stagnant, and would open up more special attacks for your sword. Of course, if you want better skills, you have to boost up your other weapon’s levels, since the high-powered Dragon Cut requires all weapon skills to be at a high level. The real question would be why anyone isn’t bewildered at the fact that a 14-year old and an 8-year old would be so proficient with three types of combat tools at a very fast rate, let alone run around with said weapons without adults raising an eyebrow.

Then again, if your main character’s mother used to be a pirate who stole and plundered for a living, I guess we can blame the child’s upbringing on bloodlines and genetics.

Spell skills also have levels you need to build up, which consists of earth, fire, water and wind. Leveling up on one particular spell type would make you cast spells of that type faster, and leveling up two or more types would open up a larger repertoire of spells to inflict onto unwary foes. All characters are allowed to cast spells, provided they are given a mana egg.

And boy, what an ensemble of characters, both party members and NPCs you come across. Before Shadow Hearts raised the bar for outlandish designs, Grandia has, apart from Justin, Feena and Sue:

1) A trio of military brats who act like prepubescent Valley girls while commanding the largest military force of the country, yet could not contain a trio of minors in a holding cell for very long.

2) A trash-talking elf-like village chief’s son who wields a mean chakram.

3) A profit-grubbing drug-selling rabbit who happens to be a gypsy.

4) A village chief who thinks it’s reasonable to chuck newlyweds and new couples into an active volcano on a catapult.

5) A country bumpkin who gives a mean left hook and is apparently married to a cow sage ripped straight out of a Moomins comic strip .

When you’re in a dungeon area, be it a ruins or a lush forest filled with mist, your enemies are visible to you, so you can avoid most encounters if you’re fast enough with your movement. When you approach enemies from the back, you get ahead on the IP Gauge, meaning you get to strike first. Likewise, when enemies approach your party’s back, they get ahead on the bar. That is a situation you should avoid, especially in the later levels when it piles heavy enemies onto your battle screen. Luckily, save points in this game fully regenerate your party’s health and cure any status ailments they acquired while fighting. The fact that all these huge and minor touches aren’t implemented in most mainstream RPGs is beyond my comprehension. People, this is an industry where it’s okay for game companies to advertise their upcoming titles on other people’s tombstones.

Dear sweet Lene, military aide-de-camp and integral key to the storyline’s padlock

Too bad it didn’t do much success in the States as expected. Some say it was a few years too late, some say it wasn’t pretty enough. My guess? The voice acting. Although the ‘quality’ got better halfway on the second disc, hearing Sue screech like a cast member out of a Pokemon cartoon and antagonist Colonel Mullen’s VA sleepwalking through his lines is more than enough gamers to mute their TVs or stop playing the game altogether. In a time when Megaman Legends wowed its audience on its sound production and in-sync voices, the subpar effort of publisher ESP and GameArts does for Grandia’s localization was unacceptable.

There was also that bit in the beginning where a coffee shop Justin and Sue was, in actuality, a night club which served alcohol. Apparently, Nintendo’s doctrine for censorship in the early 90s has been passed on to Sony of America, albeit a watered-down version. Nonetheless, if you want to see the awesomeness that is Grandia, the game should be on sale in most bargain bins on EBGames or Gamestop, last I checked. Don’t worry too much about the sequels of this title, as they are mere shadows of their former selves story-wise, with part 3 being the most asinine of the lot. Yes, Square-Enix, throw off character development to cover up the loops and plot holes of your newly acquired IP, why don’t you?

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Grandia has grabbed me both by the heart and soul, then and now, and it should be on every gamer’s shelf.

Muchos Gracias to ncsx.com, vgmuseum.com, and some French websites for the pictures!

Next Week: Something completely different, hopefully. Or possibly an old co-op game; we’ll see how the summer breeze blows.

Technorati : FF VII killer, GameArts, RPG, a look back, love