I used to be a huge fan of the Grandia series. While the first game in the series pissed me off with the endless fetch quests, horribly cliched storyline, and tedious skill leveling system, the following two games in the series either fixed or downplayed the flaw aspects while making the core gameplay completely kick ass. Game Arts' Grandia 3 seems like a stepback from the great story pacing of Grandia 2 and the gameplay systems of Grandia Xtreme, along with introducing a myriad of other problems, to create what is probably the worst game in the series.
The story of Grandia 3 revolves around a teenage boy that stumbles upon a female 'Communicator' being chased in a forest. From there on, the boy decides to protect the girl as she tries making her way home. While the basic story is certainly better than the story found in Grandia Xtreme, that doesn't make it an improvement. My philosophy on story points are that "If you can't make it good, then at least don't make it long." Considering the low quality of storyline, character development, and writing, there are just way too many cutscenes in this game to be justified.
While the story is approximately crap by modern RPG standards, the core battle system still shines, despite having a more simplistic development system than the previous two entries in the series. For those that have not played any games in the series, it is basically a turn-based battle system that takes complex timing issues into account. In the upper left portion of the screen is a circular chart that has an icon for each character and enemy in the battle. Each character has their own speed to moves them towards the COMMAND marker. Once a character reaches that, you are allowed to input a command for them. Next comes the charge time between the command and the action. Some moves, like physical attacks, take place immediately, at which time your character will start running towards their target and start swining when the enemy is in range. Skills and spells, on the other hand, have finite charge times, so you have to lead your shots, so to speak. Lastly, some attacks disrupt the enemy's plans, either by cancelling a command that is waiting to act, or by pushing the enemy further away from the command marker. It works both ways, though, which can make some fights fairly annoying.
An egg system returns, as per the previous Grandia games, but overall the skill and magic systems are simplified. Characters directly equip skills and spells, and they are each allowed one egg and one skill book, which bolster certain types spells and skills to varying degrees, respectively. Special moves are unique to each character, use SP instead of the MP used for spells, and level up through repeated usage.
Unfortunately, the game still comes down to grinding enemies to gain levels. The dungeon design is somewhat interesting, and you can stun the visible enemies on the map screen with your sword, but there are no real sidequests to speak of. As a result, you need to kill the same enemies over and over to be anywhere near strong enough to beat some of the more difficult bosses. By the end of the 23 hours it took me to beat the game, about 10 of those were spent shamelessly grinding.
The graphics and sound are both decent enough, though many of the enemy models are reused from Grandia Xtreme, and the character animation and voice acting are both bad. The environments are colorful, though, so that redeems the game aesthetics.
In the end, I really liked the battle system of Grandia 3, especially during some of the boss battles, but the many weaknesses of the game leave a bad taste in my mouth. A cool battle system does not make up for the bad voice acting, storyline, characterization, or world design.
THREE out of SEVEN
-Extraneous thoughts- (highlight to read)
-Alonso is the only cool or interesting character in the game, and is only in your party for thirty minutes.
-The last boss battle is anti-climactic, ditching everything that is cool about Grandia boss fights.
-The dialogue is absolutely worthless.
-The lack of real sidequests makes me a sad panda.
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