Having just played Grandia II I have to say you'll probably find the same experience that you did with Grandia I. It doesn't really live up to the hype. The battle system IS as good as everyone says fantastic, and the characters are good, but everything else is just sort of...meh...
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So I finally finished Grandia...
- Thread starter Prince of Space
- Start date
madara said:
But the original poster is pretty reasonable in his post. If you read his complaints, it centered almost entirely on characterization - that several secondary characters irritated him to no end (although, I believe localization has a bit to do with it... I only played the Saturn version).
The other complaint was about lack of difficulty. Grandia is my favorite game of all time as it is, but if they upped the challenge a bit, I would mark that as an improvement.
Prince of Space
Banned
Thanks, I can and did. Like I've said, I enjoyed the battle system and think that, despite its age, it's still one of the best out there. If both games had more challenge to them, thus forcing one to utilize the nuances of combat, I'd've loved it even more -- and would've kept my complaints directed towards little things like the story.madara said:
As it is, once you unlock each characters' ultimate attacks, there's no real need to fight fair anymore. Just use those and return to the save point when needed.
Shouta
Member
Tsubaki said:
Localization for the English Grandia is fine, it's the voice acting that's bad (bad acting, decent picks for the voices). I always have to state this whenever a Grandia thread comes up. I can see how one can be annoyed with the secondary characters (boy, some of the stuff they say is cheesy) but I personally liked them quite a bit. My only complaint would be that they didn't get enough screen time and they gave Rapp that really badly acted (but funny) voice.
Sure... though with the way things are going, I think we'd only see a real "remake" on DS. Any PSP Grandia would likely just be a direct port with the only "added content" consisting of nasty Princess Crown/Devil Summer/Harvest Moon/Tengai Makyo style borders. :/Dragona Akehi said:Our only hope to properly relive Justin's adventure is on a portable now.
It's funny though; everyone complains about lack of difficulty and usage of the battle system of Grandia 2, and then along comes Xtreme that fixes that, and everyone hates it. Granted, Xtreme's plot and characters were terrible (except for Brandol, he rocked) but the gamplay was enough to carry it, as it's the thing that makes Grandia stand out anyways. Definitely my favorite of the series because of that.
The thing about Grandia Xtreme is that all battle system and nothing else.
Granted, for the most part the difficulty of GX is very welcome although I don't think it forces you to learn/use the system any more than Grandia and Grandia II. But then again, the way I played G/G2/GX is to utilize the system regardless of whether enemies need that much effort to be killed. (ie I played strategically, even if the enemies were kinda lame and easy.)
The only addition aside from difficulty, were the combined attacks that characters can do with each other. It's cool and all. Not necessary, but still cool.
But there are many many downsides to GX that made me despise it.
- Little variety in locations:
The game has a single town in the whole game. Part of the enjoyment of Grandia games is reaching that new place and marveling at its beauty. Particularly the towns had their own personalities and I would typically spend an 30-60 mins just walking around, talking to people and getting to know the town.
Dungeon design also is pretty bland.
- I really don't dig the transition from the 3/4 overhead perspective to the behind the character perspective (a la Eternal/Skies of Arcadia). More of a personal preference than a gameplay one.
- Mediocre music, whereas I adore the music for G/G2.
- Lack of the more fluffy parts that other Grandias give (story, characterization, etc)
- But although battles are generally cool, gameplay does equate to battle system. Some of the other game-critical aspects, like exploration, are lacking. But more importantly is the ridiculous game design the game has. At first the concept of enemies getting harder as you leave a dungeon seems appealing - revisit a dungeon and fight beefed up versions. But then as you play it, it becomes a nightmare.
I got to a point either close to the last boss, or perhaps it was the last boss, where my party was severely underpowered. Keep in mind that when I play, I go to a dungeon and entirely clear it of enemies to explore. Therefore, I fought every battle there was to be fought in the game. But the boss killed 3/4 of my party in one turn. My only living character died the next. There is a serious balance issue here. Never in a Grandia game, was I ever forced to level - that's BS that other lesser RPGs pull to extend game length. I fought all the enemies that were offered in the game, and should have been at the right level. But wait, you say... this is intentional so that you revisit old dungeons and fight harder enemies!
Ok, so I start going back to old dungeons I've cleared. The enemies are indeed beefed up. They're not hard in the fact that they're lethal... but the enemies have a considerable amount of hp and take more effort to kill. I'm spending like 5 mins on each battle. I clear the dungeon and notice that experience points are not proportional to the effort to kill enemies. I got like 100 exp for killing an enemy, when I need 10,000 to level. You get the same experience points for killing the beefed up version as the regular version!
But oh wait... the dungeon is already cleared... and there's no new areas to go to and I haven't leveled up... an hour in this dungeon and I've only gotten 1/10 of the way there. I'll still die in two hits if I fight the boss... so what can I do? Revisit a dungeon again... the enemies get even MORE buff, requiring more time and energy to kill... for the same lousy 100 exp.
This is when I realized that Grandia Xtreme was a cruel joke played on the public. I guess it might appeal to those who are so anal that they fight over and over and over again (hey, the Squareheads do it all the time!). But is it any fun? Yeah, it was for the first few times but after the 1000th battle, all bets are off.
Grandia Xtreme is a betrayal, pure and simple.
Granted, for the most part the difficulty of GX is very welcome although I don't think it forces you to learn/use the system any more than Grandia and Grandia II. But then again, the way I played G/G2/GX is to utilize the system regardless of whether enemies need that much effort to be killed. (ie I played strategically, even if the enemies were kinda lame and easy.)
The only addition aside from difficulty, were the combined attacks that characters can do with each other. It's cool and all. Not necessary, but still cool.
But there are many many downsides to GX that made me despise it.
- Little variety in locations:
The game has a single town in the whole game. Part of the enjoyment of Grandia games is reaching that new place and marveling at its beauty. Particularly the towns had their own personalities and I would typically spend an 30-60 mins just walking around, talking to people and getting to know the town.
Dungeon design also is pretty bland.
- I really don't dig the transition from the 3/4 overhead perspective to the behind the character perspective (a la Eternal/Skies of Arcadia). More of a personal preference than a gameplay one.
- Mediocre music, whereas I adore the music for G/G2.
- Lack of the more fluffy parts that other Grandias give (story, characterization, etc)
- But although battles are generally cool, gameplay does equate to battle system. Some of the other game-critical aspects, like exploration, are lacking. But more importantly is the ridiculous game design the game has. At first the concept of enemies getting harder as you leave a dungeon seems appealing - revisit a dungeon and fight beefed up versions. But then as you play it, it becomes a nightmare.
I got to a point either close to the last boss, or perhaps it was the last boss, where my party was severely underpowered. Keep in mind that when I play, I go to a dungeon and entirely clear it of enemies to explore. Therefore, I fought every battle there was to be fought in the game. But the boss killed 3/4 of my party in one turn. My only living character died the next. There is a serious balance issue here. Never in a Grandia game, was I ever forced to level - that's BS that other lesser RPGs pull to extend game length. I fought all the enemies that were offered in the game, and should have been at the right level. But wait, you say... this is intentional so that you revisit old dungeons and fight harder enemies!
Ok, so I start going back to old dungeons I've cleared. The enemies are indeed beefed up. They're not hard in the fact that they're lethal... but the enemies have a considerable amount of hp and take more effort to kill. I'm spending like 5 mins on each battle. I clear the dungeon and notice that experience points are not proportional to the effort to kill enemies. I got like 100 exp for killing an enemy, when I need 10,000 to level. You get the same experience points for killing the beefed up version as the regular version!
But oh wait... the dungeon is already cleared... and there's no new areas to go to and I haven't leveled up... an hour in this dungeon and I've only gotten 1/10 of the way there. I'll still die in two hits if I fight the boss... so what can I do? Revisit a dungeon again... the enemies get even MORE buff, requiring more time and energy to kill... for the same lousy 100 exp.
This is when I realized that Grandia Xtreme was a cruel joke played on the public. I guess it might appeal to those who are so anal that they fight over and over and over again (hey, the Squareheads do it all the time!). But is it any fun? Yeah, it was for the first few times but after the 1000th battle, all bets are off.
Grandia Xtreme is a betrayal, pure and simple.