I now have a new champion as a new favorite game... that is this remarkable stand out of a game Grandia III...
Square Enix will be firing off the first of three RPG mega cannons this February with Grandia III – and what a report it is. The game’s charming storyline and characters, unique and fast paced battle system, and fantastic graphics could have gamers forgetting about the wait for Kingdom Hearts II and Final Fantasy XII.
The game begins in the tiny village of Anfog. We follow the story of young Yuki as he tries to build an airplane that can make it all the way across the sea, just like his idol Sky Captain Schmidt. With the help of his best friend, Rotts, Yuki has built and crashed a total of 18 planes so far. But this time they’re hoping things go differently. During the night Yuki sneaks out of the house and takes the plane on its first flight. It turns out that his protective mother, Miranda, has stowed away and manages to bring the overloaded vessel down. As they crash, they notice a young girl named Alfina being chased by a band of soldiers. Mother and son team up to fight off the goons and take Alfina back to their home. It turns out that she is on her way to the capital city of Mendi so Yuki and Miranda agree to take her there. And so the adventure begins.
You’ll soon find that the game wastes no time ramping up the challenge. Once you head out of town, your party will be stuck in battles where they are outnumbered two to one. But at least this will quickly accustom players to Grandia III’s unique battle system. All actions are tied to the IP Gauge in the upper left corner of the screen. This is basically a circle showing your characters’ turns on the inside and enemies’ turns on the outside. The blue section or the gauge means fighters are in wait mode. The red section means the character has selected a move and is getting ready to unleash it. And the yellow part means a move is in action.
If Yuki's mom can dish out this kind of punishment, imagine what happens if you don't clean your room.
Your characters have two basic attacks: combo and critical. Critical is a single strong hit and combo is several weaker hits. What’s special about these attacks is you can knock enemies up in the air with a critical hit and then follow it up with a combo from another character. This initiates an aerial combo that allows you to strike several more times than you would with a regular combo. Critical hits can also cancel an enemy’s attack if performed when the enemy’s icon is in the red zone on the IP Gauge. Characters can also cancel attacks with certain special moves like an E. Honda-caliber rapid knife stab or a jumping down slash. Characters can learn new special moves at random points during battles, but not all of them have the ability to cancel.
Magic in the game is based around five elements: wind, fire, lightening, water, and earth. But not all of these powers function in typical RPG stereotypes. Attacks and buffs are handled by wind, fire, and earth while water takes care of healing and lightening usually has a paralysis effect attached to it’s damage.
Players can only equip enough magic spells to fill up their specific amount of slots, which expand over time. The same goes for character skills. Skills are basically passive stat boosts that are always on. You can either buy skills and spells straight up or extract them from skill books and mana eggs. The good thing is that these items don’t just take up space in your inventory. Each character can equip a skill book and mana egg for an extra boost that doesn’t take up any skill or magic slots.
Yeah, that's about right.
There are no random encounters in Grandia III so you don’t have to worry about having to battle every two steps. Monsters will try to chase you down to initiate a battle, but you can gain the upper hand if you can pull off a sword slash to stun them first. If you pull this off and then walk up to a stunned enemy, your characters will have the enemy group surrounded at the beginning of the battle and be slightly ahead on the turn gauge. The reverse can happen if an enemy chases you down and touches you in the back to initiate a battle.
In dungeons you’ll also be able to jump chasms, climb ladders, blow up rocks with explosive fruit, and a whole lot of other stuff. You can also hit the square button to send out a dome of light that will highlight treasure locations.
And what good RPG would be complete without some gambling mini-games thrown in? Grandia III’s game of chance is called Arrange Dice. Players get a row of six cards numbered 5 through 10 and can arrange them in any order they choose. Then the dealer rolls a set of dice. If the total from the dice adds up to a certain card, then that card is highlighted. Players get five rolls to line up at least a three card row. The biggest score you can receive is from a five card row, and that will put your number of gambling tokens or “medals” through the roof. These medals can then be used to purchase items you won’t find anywhere else. Arrange Dice is a fun diversion, but since it’s all based on luck rather than skill it won’t keep you busy for all that long.
Aww crap
I only had a few very small gripes with Grandia III. The camera rotation mapped to the right analog stick works great, but there doesn’t appear to be any sort of re-centering button to get the camera to fly directly behind you. It just gets really tedious after awhile. Another thing I wasn’t too keen on was the fact that you can only “set up” magic at certain shops and save points. Why can’t we just equip new magic and skills when we want to just like every other RPG?
For the most part, however, I was thoroughly impressed with the game. The characters are ridiculously charming and the storyline is one of the best in years (as far as RPGs). It will make you laugh, get you misty eyed, and most of all, completely suck you in. Most RPGs begin with disaster and you spend the whole game trying to fix it. Then in the end you finally get a blast of happiness and resolution. But Grandia III pulls your characters through the highs of realized dreams and new loves, and the lows of complete devastation with all of the skill of the most engrossing novels. And the main villain is such a complete badass. Not only does he look pretty darn cool, but in his first appearance onscreen he cuts a god’s head off. I sure as hell don’t want to run into him later in the game.
I also really enjoyed the battle system. It manages to pull you out of the whole mindless “let’s all attack one guy and then the next, and the next, and the next” RPG fighting style. The cancel system encourages you to whittle down the enemies as a whole instead. Plus, you’ll always be trying to chain attacks together for massive aerial combos. Even standard enemy battles will demand all of your strategic thinking skills.
Anyone who considers himself an RPG fan should seriously consider Grandia III when it releases this February. It can definitely hold its own against Square-Enix’s other two RPG heavyweights on the horizon.
