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Game 15 – Grandia (Switch) – 38 Hours
Grandia is a solid RPG from the PS1 era that has a lot of great things going for it. For my money, this is one of the best-looking role-playing games on the PS1. I just can't get over how beautiful the game’s use of 2D sprites over these intricate and detailed 3D models and environments. It’s a visual treat both in exploring the world, particularly towns which are bursting with personality, and engaging in the combat where the magic and attack animations are spectacular. Other small flourishes like the use of dynamic portraits during dialogue, with lots of fluid character animations, make it a very cinematic game as well. However, the voice acting was a little hit or miss to me. I do think it’s serviceable; the main issue for me was the adding of lots of dead air in between lines which made the deliveries feel more stilted and awkward than they were. I think for the time though, it's impressive. The music was a little inconsistent too. Some of the songs that play in dungeons in particular weren't that great. But, when a great song started playing, it fit the mood incredibly well. So you can see that one of the big draws for this game for me was its visuals, presentation, and overall polish that helped make a very engaging experience.
Now as far as the story goes, I thought it was OK. It wasn't anything particularly special it's a very cliche story with not a lot of surprises, but it got the job done and was entertaining enough. The game features a lot of cutscenes and again with the visual style of this game it made the story more enjoyable. The writing is pretty decent and again the voice acting helps drive home some of the more important moments. I loved the little moments where the groups shares a meal and conversation together before going to sleep, that really helped me connect more with the characters. I thought the characters were entertaining and I liked the budding romance between Justin and Feena, it felt very natural and believable.
Where I get a little bit more mixed feelings on is the gameplay. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the combat system. The use of timed sequencing of attacks to cancel out your opponent’s actions on a timeline added a nice layer of strategy, and the leveling up system for different weapons and spells kept you engaged in your character's progress over the course of the game. The magic system is very deep offering you tons of utility for fighting, which was fun to experiment. With all that praise, I do also think that this game is very unbalanced both in terms of its enemy encounter rates, and the percentage of time that you spend engaging in the combat. Easily after around 18 hours in I was getting sick of clearing what felt like dungeon after dungeon after dungeon after dungeon, back-to-back-to-back, with very little story to break up the monotony. And with no side quests or mini games to speak of you will just be fighting for probably 75% of this game and it got very old. That great leveling up system that I mentioned earlier also became more and more tedious because you have to constantly be switching different weapons or focusing on different elemental attacks and because you change out several playable characters at least three or four times, the micromanaging started to feel repetitive.
While the game for me overstayed its welcome, I still felt a lot of satisfaction upon finishing it. This is a really decent RPG that I was glad to have experienced and I've heard the sequel is great as well, if not better.