Awesome battle system and a so-so story.
The battle system would be the games other major point of awesomeness. It is very deep and allows for an excessive amount of strategy that will take quite some time to start to notice. I wish I could explain it to you here, but it wouldn't make any sense at all unless you've played the game and know about it. So, you'll have to just take my word for it. Your characters are for most part memorable and likeable. However, the games starting cast (trying not to spoil anything) is not the same as it's ending cast and after these characters are dropped out of the game the question of "what happened to them?" is never answered. I don't know if the designers forgot about them or just wanted to leave you to make up your own future for them or what, but I would really like to know where they went. You can't find them in towns nor can you communicate with them in any way; lame. After that you'll find some okay characters to join your party. The main ones are really the focus of the game, but come the end of the game the magic wasn't quite there. The oppurtunity to set off some fireworks and show off the main theme of the game (*love*) was 100% there and only about 10% executed.
The sound in the game is okay. The opening theme is fairly catchy as is some of the dungeon music, but there's also some you would rather not here anymore than you have to. Same goes with the "catchphrases" the characters shout out. A few more would have been much obliged. Some of them are just intolerable, while others are just on this side of being tolerable. Gameplay outside of battles is very linear. There aren't really any sidequests nor optional boss battles or anything like that. Having some of those things would have added a lot of needed value to the game. The dungeons have virtually 1 path all the way through and you fight enemies and pick up items along the way. That's it. You get a plane, but there aren't extra places to visit or anything like that and it's really a shame. So, I may have been a little cruel to the game, but all in all I enjoyed most of it. The first disc was done very well, and disc 2 had a few moments of real enjoyability. In my opinion, play disc 1 to check out the battle system and get the main concept of Grandia III into your body. When you hit disc 2 just call it a day and move on, you won't miss much.