Grandia Review: A Whimsical JRPG that Captures the Spirit of Adventure
Grandia comes from the PlayStation 1 era of JRPGs and follows the story of Justin, a fledgling adventurer that ends up travelling the world. While the game has some issues with the repetitive nature of levelling up abilities, the game ultimately won my heart with its ostensible charm and wholesome spirit of adventure. // Image: Steam
The conversation of JRPGs worth playing from the golden era of the genre - that being JRPGs developed from the mid ‘90s to the early 2000s - is heavily cluttered with games developed and published by Squaresoft. This isn’t for poor reason by any means - the company truly flourished on the SNES and PlayStation platforms, and the JRPG genre took major strides in the eyes of the public thanks to the huge success of games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII. Nevertheless, there’s ostensibly many fantastic JRPGs made by other developers and publishers from this era that are just as highly regarded, though perhaps don’t get quite as much attention in the modern era. One JRPG franchise that got its start during this era is one that holds a special place in many peoples’ hearts, even amidst so many amazing JRPGs released around its original release time frame. This franchise is none other than Grandia.
The Sega Saturn and PlayStation saw the release of Grandia, a JRPG whose influence can be seen in later RPGs, such as Ubisoft’s Child of Light, among many others. While its Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 sequel, Grandia II, is considered to be the best of the series and arguably one of the greatest JRPGs of all time, I wanted to see what the Grandia series had to offer from the very beginning. Thanks to the Grandia HD Collection, released on Nintendo Switch and PC in 2019 and seeing many updates and improvements afterwards, I played through the first Grandia title to see where it stands among other legendary JRPGs of its era.
While the Grandia HD Collection has been criticized for being a less-than-stellar port and optimization of these titles, I personally didn’t experience any major technical issues in my 40+ hour time with the game. That said, the game is also available on PlayStation 3 as a downloadable “PS1 Classic”, in addition to the original PS1 physical copy being another option, albeit a slightly expensive one. Nevertheless, I approached Grandia to see if it holds any weight as an enjoyable JRPG without any personal nostalgia guiding my affliction with the game. How was my overall experience with Grandia? Let’s talk about it and find out.
Similar to Xenogears, Grandia foregoes the more popular use of pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D character models in favor of 3D environments with 2D character sprites, along with rotational camera control. While battles still use pre-rendered environments, the overall aesthetic of Grandia has aged far better than other JRPGs of its era because of its use of character sprites on polygonal environments. // Image Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
If there’s a single word that can be used to describe Grandia, it’s “adventure”. More so than most other JRPGs in market, Grandia has a unique, wholesome energy in regards to telling a relatively simple story that captures that spirit of wanting to go on an adventure in a mysterious world and tackle whatever unknown forces that may be encountered along the way. The story itself focuses on Justin, a young boy that simply seeks to adventure around the world and maybe even investigate the fabled “end of the world” along with other mysteries he comes across. The story of Grandia, at least starting out, is one that has relatively low stakes compared to other JRPGs, and yet the spirit of adventure is something that injects the entire experience that Grandia provides with ambition, youthfulness, and fun.
This is seen in the game’s overall writing too, which has a remarkably whimsical tone. Grandia has the magic of a nostalgic, kid-friendly anime series about a kid going on an adventure with his friends. The various towns that Justin and co. will visit throughout the game’s runtime all showcase a world full of characters with unique lifestyles, worldviews, and concerns. Dialogue with NPCs doesn’t necessarily go for anything super serious or groundbreaking with worldbuilding or foreshadowing of any kind, but Grandia nevertheless provides a cozy experience through the dialogue seen in the various playable and non-playable characters that Justin will come across. While the story and overall tone of the game will be more elaborated on later, it should be noted that Grandia’s overall presentation of its story and world is quite impressive.
There is no overworld map as seen in many PS1-era JRPGs, as Grandia opts to use a World Map with various towns and dungeons to choose from. The player can simply select which location they wish to go to, and they instantly travel there. This is perhaps the biggest limitation to the game’s sense of “adventure”, as it’s arguably the only instance of Grandia being unable to provide a sense of scope and discovery to the player. When in actual towns and dungeons, the environments on display are quite grand. The player has access to a rotatable camera. Additionally, various spots on each map that zoom out the camera to reveal a bird’s-eye-view of the environment, though this turns out to be more of a band-aid for an issue with Grandia’s environments rather than a solution to anything.
The player doesn’t have access to a map of any kind, which can lead to players often getting lost, especially as some dungeons can give players difficulty in regard to knowing where they are. There were various instances where I found myself getting lost in Grandia’s large, sometimes same-y looking environments due to the lack of any kind of map. There is a mediocre compass onscreen that generally tends to point the player in the right direction, though there are occasional points throughout the story (specifically when there’s nothing left to do in an area) when the compass “turns off” and becomes effectively useless. Both the compass and bird’s-eye-view points serve as the game’s less-than-stellar means of providing navigation for the player.
Instead of many of its contemporaries, Grandia doesn’t use pre-rendered backgrounds. Rather, the title uses 3D background with 2D character sprites - a style seen in a few other titles like Xenogears and Paper Mario. A lot of PS1-era JRPGs struggled with communicating what parts of the environment were interactive and parts of the environment being hidden or hard to see due to fixed camera angles and/or using 2D images for environments. Due to the use of this art style, Grandia features environments that are mostly a joy to traverse through. While there are a few instances in the late game where it’s tough to tell what the player can interact with, Grandia mostly stands out as a JRPG that has visually aged much better than most other mid-90s JRPGs.
A commonality that Grandia shares with many of its JRPG contemporaries is its use of full motion video (or FMV) cutscenes. These are few and far between, but when they do show up, they provide a blend of early CG animation and more traditional anime, hand-drawn animation, which works surprisingly well. Another aspect of Grandia’s presentation that is perhaps more controversial is its voice acting. Yes, this is a Japanese mid-90s video game with a fair amount of English voice acting, and its quality is about what you’d expect. While the amount of voice acting is impressive, especially considering most JRPGs of this era did not feature any voice acting for in-battle banter and out-of-battle dialogue, the quality of said voice acting reeks of mid-90s English dub cheesiness. Line deliveries are often awkwardly paced, with a line being spoken, followed by an awkward pause before the next line of text appears, followed by the voice acting for that line, and so on. There are moments when the voice acting is implemented fairly well, and contributes to the game’s overall wholesome, sweet charm. But there are also plenty of times where the dry, stilted performances can easily take you out of the experience. As is, Grandia’s use of voice acting is ambitious in terms of the amount used, however its quality falls on the lower end of the spectrum for voice acting quality for ‘90s English dub standards.
Grandia features a unique approach to traditional turn-based combat. In the lower right of the screen when in battle, character portraits appear on a timeline marked by “Wait'“, “Command”, and “Act” sections. Paying attention and making use of this timeline can allow for delaying and even cancelling enemy attacks, making way for exciting, strategic battles. // Image Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
Just like in most other games of its genre, players will venture through various towns where they can talk to NPCs to learn more about characters and the world of Grandia, along with purchasing and selling equipment to prepare for their travels through dungeons. When in said dungeons, players will encounter various enemies located throughout the environment, which the player can initiate battles with by walking up to them in the environment. Before discussing the battles themselves, it’s actually important to note the impressive implementation of ambushes.
Indeed, Grandia does not feature random encounters, but rather allows the player to ignore and encounter enemies at their own discretion a la Chrono Trigger. However, depending on where the player runs into the enemy from, the player can initiate an ambush on the enemy to get an upper hand at the start of the battle. Likewise, if an enemy runs toward Justin from behind, they will ambush the party, putting the player at an early disadvantage in battle. While this may seem somewhat standard for modern RPGs, this was far from a genre standard at the point of this game’s release. Ambushes via running into enemies from behind doesn’t necessarily make the biggest difference in gameplay, yet its inclusion in Grandia showcases this game’s willingness to stand out amongst its larger contemporaries, which is a theme that’s more evident in Grandia’s battle system itself.
Grandia’s combat uses a turn-based system not too dissimilar to Final Fantasy’s “ATB” system, however, the way in which Grandia presents its turn order actually plays a large part in outlining the strategic depth of combat. In the bottom-right section of the screen, players can reference a timeline that shows when each character have their turn come up, with the Agility stat determining the speed at which each character ‘s portrait moves along the timeline, effectively increasing the speed in which their turn occurs. During the “Wait” section of this timeline, each character is simply waiting for their next turn and can’t do anything. Once their portrait reaches the “Command” section of the timeline, the player can select what kind of action they want the character to perform. While there’s the standard “Defend” and “Cast Magic” actions, Grandia actually doesn’t feature a standard “Attack” command. Rather, there are two variants of basic attacks that each character can perform: a “Combo” and a “Critical”. A “Combo” attack performs two hits back-to-back, while a “Critical” attack performs a single, more significant if overall weaker attack.
So what’s the point of selecting one type of attack over the other? This plays into the “Act” section of the timeline, where each character can affect enemies’ progression on the timeline. Once an enemy passes the “Command'“ section of the timeline, they will begin casting their spell or run to a player-controlled character to attack - indicated by their portrait slowly moving to the rightmost “Act” section of the timeline. If the player hits an enemy between the time that the enemy has passed the “Command” section, but before they reach the “Act” section, they can cause special effects in one of two ways. Through hitting the enemy with weaker attacks (such as with the “Combo” attack), the player will inflict critical damage and deal considerably more damage. If the player decides to use a stronger attack between the enemy’s “Command” and “Act” phases, they can cancel the enemy’s attack, pushing them back into the “Wait” section of the timeline. Doing this can prevent enemies from using strong attacks and can help the player buy more time when they’re in a disadvantageous situation.
Strategy naturally comes into play when deciding which is better in any given situation: do you use faster attacks to deal critical damage, or use slower attacks to push back an enemy’s turn to buy time for additional healing or even more damage? This is in addition to enemies being able to deal critical damage and cancel turns for the player characters as well, which naturally brings about a fair amount of tense moments, specifically in boss battles.
For most of its runtime, Grandia is a fairly easy, forgiving game, though optional dungeons and the last few areas of the game specifically ramp up the difficulty and deliver some truly engaging battles that test the player’s understanding of the battle mechanics. While standard enemies that the player will come across will rarely pose too much of a threat, the boss encounters throughout the game are a specific treat, as they often exemplify the very best of what Grandia’s unique battle mechanics have to offer. When bosses necessitate diligent use of buffing, casting spells, cancelling enemy actions, and knowing when to prioritize damage output, everything about the battle system clicks and delivers an experience that’s exciting and engaging.
Grandia doesn’t always offer challenging battles for the player to overcome, but when it does, the result is some incredibly exciting and strategic action. Unfortunately, the more common encounters with basic enemies are dragged down by the game’s grinding, which will require the player to view the same spellcasting animations dozens of times. // Image Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
The battle system is overall very solid, even if it could have benefited from featuring more challenging, strategically demanding fights. With that said, how do characters progress and how does overall progression feel? Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. At the beginning of Grandia, I felt that the rate of progression was agonizingly slow. Characters acquire experience points from defeating enemies, a traditional form of RPG character progression, however the amount of experience points that characters receive from enemies consistently feels too low relative to the amount needed to level up. Early on in my playthrough of Grandia, I felt a bit dissatisfied that defeating many enemies didn’t push me that much closer to a level up, and when I did level up, stat increases were fairly minute. I was worried about how satisfying character progression would feel in the long term.
Those worries started to cast themselves aside as the game introduced its magic system a few hours in. Unlike most RPGs, Grandia gives the player more experience points that just the general ones received from defeating enemies that work towards the character’s overall level. Each weapon type and magic type can be individually leveled up, with each level increase of each weapon and magic type raising a specific stat associated with the weapon of kind of magic. For example, using Earth magic enough times in battle will cause the user’s Earth magic proficiency to level up, and each level up for Earth magic proficiency will increase that character’s strength stat.
After enough level ups of Earth magic, the character may learn a new Earth spell, allowing for further progression with the magic type. Similarly, using a sword to attack will accrue experience points in sword proficiency, which upon a level up, will increase the character’s strength stat, while other weapon types may increase the character agility stat, and so on. Raising a weapon’s proficiency level increases a character’s SP, which are used to perform skills associated with each weapon, while raising proficiency in a magic type raises a character’s MP, which allows for a character to perform even more spells without needing to heal.
This system gets even deeper when characters know multiple magic types. At each town, there’s a shop where player can exchange Mana Eggs (rare items that are located in each dungeon) for allowing one character to learn one of four magic types - those being Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. In addition to each magic type raising a specific stat, elements can combine with each other to create additional spells for characters to use. If a character knows Fire and Wind magic and has leveled both of them up a few times, they will learn Lightning magic, which raises proficiency for both Fire and Wind magic when used, though these spells generally cost more MP to cast than Fire and Wind spells to compensate.
It’s a deep system for growing characters that feels like a better realization of Final Fantasy II’s progression system. Unfortunately, there’s a consequence to this style of progression. Since casting magic is essential for raising character stats throughout the game, players will find themselves casting spells practically every battle, which halts the flow of a battle to trigger 5-10 second animation of the character performing the spell. These 5-10 second animations cannot be skipped nor sped up, and as a result, the monotony of watching these same animations play out gets tiring fast.
Grandia doesn’t feature grinding for experience points in the traditional sense - in the grand scheme of things, a character’s overall level doesn’t matter too much. Rather, players have to grind for experience in weapon and magic proficiencies to raise their stats, which ultimately results in casting multiple spells over and over, watching the same, long animations play out. It gets admittedly tiring, and it oftentimes feels slow. Though, the actual gains from having stats increase through leveling up weapon and magic proficiency is quite significant. By the end of the game, I had grown my weapon and magic proficiencies so much that practically nothing could stand in my way. While the overall progression is satisfying, the repetitive nature of repeatedly watching spellcasting animations makes the grinding process feel a lot slower than it needs to be. Bafflingly, the Grandia HD Collection port of the game does not include any way to speed up or skip these animations - something that I feel would have significantly improved the overall flow of the game.
Despite spellcasting causing grinding to feel arbitrarily slow and a bit frustrating, the wholesome, adventurous tone, characters, and world of Grandia kept me coming back. There are very few games that capture a feeling quite like Grandia does. Simply put, Grandia has a very special, positive energy to it that gives it a unique identity among most other JRPGs. // Image Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
There were admittedly times where the game’s slower, repetitive nature caused me to need to spend some time away from the game. While the core combat was fun, especially in more difficult encounters seen in the game’s optional dungeons, I was ultimately overwhelmed by the amount of time needed to raise weapon and magic levels. I could have easily walked away from the game and put my time towards another game with a better implementation of character progression. So why didn’t I? What kept me coming back to Grandia?
It was the charming allure of adventure that kept me coming back to Grandia. If there is anything that the game absolutely nails, it’s creating moments of awe through adventure and wonder. It invoked a child-like sense of wanting to learn about wonderful aspects of a world. In a sense, Grandia transported me to a world where I was allowed to want to be an adventurer that wanted to know more about the world - just as Justin and his party. Grandia’s wholesome focus on adventure, making friends, and learning about ancient secrets of the world gives the game a wonderous, magical feeling that helps give the game unique identity and charm that stands from almost any other game I’ve played.
Grandia’s story isn’t focused on delivering complex drama with deep character arcs - it simply wants to take players on a journey with the protagonist - and there’s value in that. While there certainly are stakes and moments of darkness throughout the story, the overall adventurous tone of the game conveys a jubilance that made me earnestly want to see the game’s story through to its end. I ended up getting surprisingly attached to the game’s cast by the end of the journey. And for that, I saw justification for persevering through the slow, repetitive nature of developing weapon and magic proficiency levels.
Especially in an era where RPGs are leaning towards telling more complex, adult stories, it was incredibly refreshing to visit the world of Grandia. The battle mechanics are satisfying and strategic, but the true magic of Grandia lies in the ostensible charm of its storytelling, worldbuilding, and characters. Grandia invites players to give in to their natural senses of adventure, wonder, and curiosity, and it gloriously succeeds in doing so. While the game is somewhat held back by repetition, namely with needlessly long spellcasting animations, the whimsical story and strategic combat make for an experience that has overall aged decently well. Grandia is something special, and deserves to be played by anyone willing to channel their inner child and go on a wonderous, mysterious, satisfying adventure.
Final Score: B+
Thank you very much for reading! What are your thoughts on Grandia? Do you think it deserves its status as a JRPG classic? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter @DerekExMachina!
