Pretty and addictive game, but that's about it.
The game follows the quest of our male protagonist, Yuki. Flying has always been in Yuki's blood. Together with Rotts, his best friend, they somehow managed to build their 19th air ship. The weather is perfect for flying and Yuki took flight. He thought that he's finally going to emulate his childhood hero, captain Schdmit, his ultimate flying inspiration. He thought. The nice cool weather took a sharp turn, and to make matters worse, his engine couldn't work. It's no good, and that damned plane looks unsteady.The ship's gonna crash, but something caught Yuki's eye. It's a blond girl, her eyes seem to tell something, but he's not in the mood to think.
The name is Alfina, and according to herself, plays the role of a communicator. She's one of those chosen ones who are responsible for communicating to the guardians, and to relay their wise words to the rest of the world. It's a heavy responsibilty, and Grandia 3 sees the story of Alfina, as she seeks the truth behind her role.
The good: A proper review on any Grandia games would always have to include its fantastic battle system, wouldn't it? Like its predecessors, Grandia 3 effectively eliminates all random battles, one frustrating aspect of a RPG which many game makers struggled so much to shrug off. You control Yuki, the hero, in a fully rendered 3D world, be it dungeons or towns. Enemies are seen on the same playing field, and it's really up to you if you want to engage the battles at all. Battles ensue when Yuki contacts the monsters, or vice versa, and a whole new battle screen would be unveiled. Characters and enemies are totally free-roaming as they are scattered randomly across the field and would be moving around haphazardly. A hybid between active time and turn based gameplay, such system promises the best of both worlds. Each character has a 'loading' time before they could act. Once your character reaches his/her turn, and when the command is entered, there will be a IP zone for the action to charge and to take effect. However, the speed in which that happens would have to depend on the nature of the command and your character's speed. For example, items usage would take effect quickly, while casting powerful magic spells has to make do with a longer loading time. Now here's the fun part. While your character is charging in this IP zone, he/she will be susceptible to all kinds of attacks. The worst form would be what the game calls 'the cancel' attacks, as it would, as the name suggests, cancel the action and pushes the character out of the IP zone. He/she would have to wait for the chance to enter a new command again. Of course, for the benefit of gamers, such applies to your enemies as well. It is a deep system, as you would soon find out. You have the choice of 2 kinds of attacks: combo and critical. Combo is your straight-forward attacks which deal more damage , while critical attacks are the ones which require more thinking. The latter has the effect of cancelling an enemy attack, provided that you use it at the right moment i.e. when they are charging in their IP zones. This calls for a deep understanding on the knowledge of your characters' attacks- whether they are fast/slow, or are they long/short ranged. Coupled with your skills, magic, items use, and a powerful summon command(which you would acquire mid-way through), this could turn out to be the deadly cocktail for a highly addictive battle play. Presentation is perfect. Icons which represent both your characters and enemies are placed nicely on a spiral path where they will spin and take their turn to act. It's cool, neat, and easy to understand, to say the least. Everything mentioned here has been drilled to perfection in past Grandia titles, but somehow, Grandia 3 just managed to bring them to a higher level.
The graphics of the game is flawless, but that's only square-enix to you. Be it seaside slums, deserts, villages, or towns, all of which looked beautiful and in a word, impeccable. Character design is excellent, especially that of Yuki, Miranda and Dahna, who's all marvellous, and looked exactly what they ought to be looked like(like we know). Many of the dungeons look very different from each other, although it lacks logic when a lush plain is quickly followed by a sandy desert at the very next scene you enter. But this is afterall a fantasy game, so there goes. Fully renditioned cut-scenes, a SE trademark, are impressive too. It's very clear that the producers have spent a lot of time perfecting its graphics, and the result certainly shows.
Overall, character customisation is still good, although I much preferred those in previous games. Each character you control has access to 2 forms of abilities, skills and magic. Skills are mainly of passive nature which would trigger during battles while others would boost your characters' stats. Magic, on the other hand are equippable, and upon doing so, the character would be given the access to cast them both in battles or on the field. Both skills and magic can be bought in shops found in the world of Grandia, something which I don't really like. The number of skills and magic equippable are totally dependable on their levels on the repectively fields. For example, a character with a magic level of 5, and a skill level of 6 would have 5 magic and 6 skills equippable at his/her disposal. These levels will increase as you gain experience in battles. Understandably and predictably enough, magic users tend to have higher magic level while fighters flourished in their counterparts. In additon, each ability is also sub-divided into several categories. Magic is branched into fire, water, wind and earth magic whereas skills are categorised under technigue, physical and mind. Any characters can equip any of this skill/magic, but their effectiveness would vary. It is however, possible to raise their competence in the respective fields, and that's where magic eggs and skill books come in. Each magic egg and skill book comes with an innate boost on a certain field. For example, a rain egg would help boost water magic while a wizard book would raise the effectiveness of mind skills. So, it is really up to you how you want your characters to par in battles by equipping them with the corresponding egg/book for that desired performance. Any additional mana eggs/skill books which you chanced upon would not be wasted, as they can be extracted in the form of magic spells/skills in shops. This is essential for unlocking the most powerful skills and magic in the game, and as you would soon discover, they don't sell much of those in shops.
I am thankful that some aspects that are so accustomed to the Grandia series are being salvaged in this game. I used the term salvaged, because there's really not much of it left. Firstly, Grandia 3 allows you to control more than the 4 main stayers in your party, albeit in short spurts. This has been one of the game's signature and it really offers us some fresh experience.
Dialogues with townspeople are still sharp, which ranges from stupid to hilarious.
The bad: In my opinion, the 2 most important aspect of a Grandia game is its engaging storyline and the characters interaction. Unfortunately, both are found wanting in this new game.
The story is boring, if not, distorted. It started off with a young man with an aspiration for flying, but once a beautiful young girl appear, all of that enthusiasm suddenly evaporates to nothingness. That desire was revived late on, but it is a case of too little too late. The love story element is certainly applaudable, but at the expense of the main theme? Pity. The game tried too hard to incorporate too much element into the game and that proved to be their achillies' heel. Seemingly, they could not decide whose route the game should follow. Yuki's? Alfina's? Or even Emelius'? The story has been so over done and cliched in other RPGs, it's almost pointless to do it again. I mean, how many more times can you summon the most evil of monsters to take over the world? The game ended tamely, with the final boss fight more like a stroll than a challenge. A real shame.
Grandia 3 introduces a lot of characters, but not all had the development they so deserved. The game is so focus in their lovey-dovey story between Alfina and Yuki, calling Ulf and Dahna their sidekicks is almost an overstatement. It's regrettful how the game turned a blind eye to these supporting casts, many of whom could have easily been more interesting than our lead characters. This is perharps biased, but i simply loved those talks-over-the-dinners abundant in previous titles, as it allowed us more insights on the personalities of our cast. Sadly, this comes really far and between in this newest installment. When I think Grandia, I think character interaction. That just didn't happen for me in Grandia 3.
I am rather undecided on the sound factor. On one hand, some areas offered exceptional music scores. The final dungeon had a really good rhythm to it and it really put you in that the-game-is-finishing mood. The opening song is okay, but it resembles more like some cheap pop song than a memorable and genuinely infectious one. Unfortunately, that doesn't really applied to all areas. There is a particular desert town with such bad sound I actually tried to bypass it in order to spare my ear some torture. That's not all. Voice overs was horrible. Most of them seem to be talking at such mono tone it makes you wonder if they are really that interested in saving the world after all. As for my opinion on the guardians' voice-overs, now, that really is unprintable here.
The linear-ity of the game, or whetever you call that, is simply outrageous. Does it sound good to you that you would gain your air ship very early in the game? Now, the air ship can bring you nowhere except to where you have been(in some cases, you even can't do that) or where your story wants you to go? Does it still sound good? The game pratically offers no exploration at all, unless you count all those dungeon crawling as one. The world map is small, but it didn't matter in the end. I mean, what's the use of having a big world if you are not given the freedom to explore? The interface of the air ship control is good, with radio control, speed control, and a special radar which gives you a description of the place you are flying past. Again, this is just empty shell. Don't count on side quests to better your gaming experience, because there are none. To be fair, previous Grandia games didn't had much exploration as well but at least they had the good story to fall their back upon. This don't. The game, albeit coming in 2 discs, could be completed in less than 40 hours, and no, don't even start on the topic on its replayability.
Quite simply, the producers had paid too much on the game's battle system and graphics. This results in a highly unbalanced game with pretty graphics and hardly any substance in it. However, the fun and addictive nature of the battle system is undeniable, and could have well been its only saving grace. Grandia 3 is an easy game to pick up, but to RPG purists, don't hold your expectation too high on this game. Oh yeah, when I say ' Grandia series', I really mean 'Grandia 1 only'.