Has all the charm and a better combat system than its Final Fantasy counterparts.
The game follows Justin, a 15-year-old from a family of adventurers, who dreams of going off exploring the largely unexplored world. He has a stone called a Spirit Stone that his late father gave him, which ironically has the same name as a stone of legend. In what may come as a major shock, the same name is no coincidence, and while exploring some ancient ruins of the Angelou Civilization with his friend Sue, the stone reacts and he is met by an image of a woman named Liete who says that all the answers are far away in Alent. And so the journey begins. For the great bulk of the game you're simply travelling a largely linear path to Alent, stopping in various locations along the way, with no "save the world" goal. You are, however, occasionally teased with the schemes of the Garlyle Forces, whom are also greatly interested in the same Angelou Ruins. In the end, this *is* a Japanese RPG so of course the world is in peril until you intervene.
On Justin's travels he encounters a number of allies, the key of which is Feena, another adventurer whom naturally plays a large role in the story along with the missing sister that she offhandedly mentions early on. The two and their friends travel through a wide range of lands, from mountains to savannas to deserts and ruins. Characters are done as 2D sprites while the world maps are in a fully controllable 3D, which you can spin into any of 16 directions. The maps have a number of interactive elements, like statues that fall as you walk by them, carnivorous plants that try to take a swipe at you, or ancient traps that try to harm those that enter the ruins. All enemies are also viewable on the maps, which you can ambush for initiative or be ambushed yourself if you're not careful. The environments are all well-crafted and have a great look to them, and are probably among the graphics best available at the time the game was made. The only drawback is that at times all this graphical detail can lead to a very noticable slowdown, especially in areas with a lot of NPC's on the screen and when you're rotating the camera while running through the field. There's also a few FMV's throughout the story, which are quite well done but didn't have quite the bang that the ones in Final Fantasy did.
The combat system itself blows Final Fantasy's out of the water, and is probably the pinnacle of the RPG turn-based battle systems from the PS1 era. You and your enemies fight on a screen, but unlike most RPG's they don't line up on each side. Instead they're all mixed together, and when you attack an ememy you have to run to it, which obviously takes time and will just increase the amount of time until your next turn by that much longer. Each person in the battle appears on a guage that shows just how long until their next turn will come up. The basic fight command initiates instantly and lets you take two swings at your foe, while there's a critical option that takes a little longer and delivers one big swing, which can interrupt spell casting and even knock the enemy back a little bit on the turn guage, delaying the time until their next action. Spells and special moves can either resolve quickly or take a while to charge up depending on your proficiency in them.
The character development system is also great. Each character can use a selection of weapons (swords, axes, maces, daggers, etc.), and each hit you land on a target gives them experience points in that proficiency. Each time you get 100, your weapon level increases and you get a few statistical boosts depending on the weapon (swords tend to give HP and strength, maces give more casting-friendly stats, etc.). No matter how low your weapon skill is you'll still do the same damage, but the lower your skills is, the higher it'll go up. Magic is handled the same way. You start off generally at level 1 in fire, earth, wind, and water magic with one basic spell. There are three levels of magic, one through three, and each has its own pool of magic points. The more you use it, the more points you get (and if it hits multiple targets your skill goes up that much faster - most spells can hit multiple enemies if they are surrounding the target you cast on). Once you hit a certain level, you gain a new spell. As you gain more levels, the casting time of that spell decreases. Some spells require a certain level in each of two types of magic, like a blizzard spell might need level 5 in water and level 6 in wind. Each character has their own special moves, which are learned when you get certain levels in various weapon disciplines (and sometimes a certain level in a magical skill). These moves consume SP, which you slowly regain as you melee enemies or get hit. In all, the system is far better than your standard levelling up (which your characters still do), it lets your character naturally gain skill levels at a balanced rate and forces you to use a wide range of weapons and magical skills to keep your character well-balanced. This system is everything that Final Fantasy 2 tried to do except it does it right.
The music in this game is decent, though generally not memorable and sometimes it tends to be recycled over different areas. There is also voice acting in some of the major cutscenes plus in battles (after a win, when you use magic or a special move, etc.). The voice acting is pretty, well, bad. But it's so bad that it's almost comical at times, so it makes it seem not as bad as it really is.
The game itself, as mentioned, is fairly linear. Also as you move on after certain points in the game, the previous zones are no longer available because you either crossed a major obstacle that you wouldn't logically backtrack across, or events that happen in the game prevent you from going back to the location you once knew. There aren't any side quests in the game, but there are three optional dungeons that are a bit more difficult than your average areas but grant decent rewards. There's a few areas where you need to backtrack (climb a mountain to reach a dungeon, then travel back down once you're done), but it's spread out pretty well. The whole game for me clocked in at about 60 hours, including the completion of two of the three optional dungeons. The game itself proved to be pretty easy for me, but I'm someone who doesn't try to avoid battles so I'm sure I stayed well ahead of the enemies on theh level curve. Those that pick their fights will probably find the battles to be a lot more balanced. I should also point out that this game has issues where it would randomly freeze up every two hours or so on my PS2. Once I dug out my PS1, I had zero issues with freezeups whatsoever for the rest of the game.
In all, Grandia is a great game that every RPG fan should consider playing. While later games in the series tries to recapture the magic of the original, none were quite able to. A few of the key characters are rather memorable, and while the overall story doesn't move too fast at the start, it really picks up at the end. Add that to probably the best battle system of its generation and you have a game you can't go wrong with.