The original Growlanser is a game I always wanted to play since I got Growlanser Generations on the PS2. I really wanted to play the first game in the series. When I heard about the PSP port I was pretty sure Atlus USA would bring it over. After all, they had localized Growlanser V. Unfortunately, they never bothered to localize it. After a quick search on Ebay, I was able to find the original PSX version for 11$ shipped so I finally decided to give the game a try.
After putting around 45 hours into it (and being currently in the last dungeon), I have to say that the game is really good and up there with the best RPGs of the PSX era. Almost the entire game is fully voiced which was quite rare in the Playstation era for a game with a huge script like this one. The game also has over 50 mandatory story battles (and around 60+ if you do all the optional ones) which is quite good when you take into account that its sequel roughly have half that amount of story battles. Its also filled with many optional CGs to unlock, a city you have to develop, many side quests, 4 optional characters to get, 2 bonus dungeons, 8 alternate Tippy pointers to find, trading cards you can collect, coliseum battles and multiples endings where Carmaine is paired with a party member.
Battles are also quite varied in this one. Aside from the traditional Defeat All Enemies, you get missions where you have to prevent the enemies from breaching your defence; missions where you must destroy bridge before the enemy cross said bridge; missions where you protect NPC; missions where you need to attract monster away from someone using a bait; missions where you must find someone hidden on the battlefield; missions where you must prevent the enemies from destroying treasures; missions where the enemies has infinite reinforcements and you must use tactics to cut yourself a path and escape and so on. This variety is quite welcome in a long game with many battles. Performing well in those battles grants you extra holidays you can take to build relationship with party member you like the most. I also loved the fact that you can win battles that you are supposed to lose and that the dialogue will change accordingly to reflect it like in the other Growlanser games.
The story is also pretty good (well, up to the last 1/5 of the game). It does a good job at weaving together multiple small plots into a master story. I kept playing to finally get the answer to Carmaines mysterious origin, Mishas weirdness when she visits her home village, the secret to Ruises growsian power, Eliottes real identity, Julians quest to become an Imperial Knight and to settle the score with the demons that made Wallace blind. The pacing is a bit slow for the first 7-8 hours since you mostly do fetch quests but once you finally become a knight the story becomes really interesting.
Graphic wise the game uses sprites, prerendered backgrounds, CG and gorgeous anime portraits. Many areas are colourful and use many vibrant colors. I was quite surprised by the colors compared to II and III which appears much muddier to me. Here are some snaps I took from my playthrough that shows some of the areas and characters:
The soundtrack is ok for the most part but the highlights for me are definitely the Boss Battle theme and the Imperial Knight theme. Ive found the rest to be quite forgettable to be honest. The building of character relationships part of the game is well done but uneven for some characters. Some of the characters got the short end of the stick like Ariost, Xenos and Elliote. I think Elliote has like three events in the whole game and most of Ariost Holidays involves examining some of his inventions. They appear really shallow compared to those of Ruise, Wallance and Julian. The game is also very anime like in that regard as you have some not so incestuous relationships among many other stereotypes associated with anime.
The game does have some annoying flaws though. For instance, the path finding is really atrocious. When the path is narrow, your characters will often get stuck bumping each other mindlessly until they finally find the correct path to take. One area of the game is extremely frustrating because of this (Gevels dungeon). Some areas are so narrow that they are basically the width of one character. If enemies ambush you there youre stuck with only character being able to attack with his weapon unless you brought characters with long range weapons or spam magic attacks (which you cant if you want to save MPs for the boss battles ahead).
Moreover the game is also pretty broken balance wise. Magic is quite overpowered in Growlanser. Before the end of the first disc I had access to spells like Earthquake and Soul Force that have infinite range and that make the game really easy. For example, there are some battles where you have to cover a lot of ground to reach the enemy and most of your characters move really slowly (especially Wallace and Xenos). In these battles you can actually spam magic and the battle will be over before these two can even reach the enemy. Another similar battle is the one where you need to find Eliotte hidden in a tent during a surprise raid of your camp at night. The enemy attacks from the north and your team is located at southern part of the camp. You need to find the right tent before the enemy does which would implies a lot of walking around. Yet, you can spam earthquake over and over and win without your team or the enemy reaching the tent which kind of defeat the whole purpose of the mission.
Finally, the last 1/5 of the game is quite dreadful. At this point you get treated to ridiculous plot twists and recycled battles. By ridiculous twist I mean stuff like Carmaine is in fact a copy of a warrior who traveled through time with a magical stone and when he cries it focuses his spirit and creates a space time distortion that turn people into growsians. The battles arent quite as good in that part of the game either. All of the battles turn into protect civilians missions against the same monsters and the same bad guy that flees over and over again. This is repeated in every main town of the games. It seems the developers really started to get tired at this point. The game would have been much better if it stopped at the Gevels battle instead of dragging the story on.
Overall I have to say I enjoyed the game a lot and it helps a lot to understand Growlanser II (and a bit of III) as Growlanser fleshes the lore at lot more than II. Now I finally understand everything that happened with Lyell (major douche bag in I) and understand why Xenos (also a douche bag) has no problem joining with Wolfgang if Wein wishes to in II. Playing II before 1 does give away the twist with Julian but the twist is not very original if you played FFV or Persona 4. I would probably get Tippi kicked for saying this but I have to say that Julian portrait evolution shows that Julian's pretty good at hiding her stuff.
I also have a PS2 copy of IV I played for about 10-12 hours last year so I guess I should play that next or I can keep hoping that Atlus will bring the IV PSP port here
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really is all the better if you play it and mow straight on into GL2
. I have a soft spot or Yayoi too. 