[h1][b] TLDR: A charming and wholesome adventure buried under dozens of hours of too many dungeons, grindy progression, and combat too shallow to justify its length.
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[h1]PROS: [/h1]
➕Great adventure vibe and story - feels a bit like Indiana Jones
➕Classic JRPG gameplay
[h1]CONS: [/h1]
➖Locked to 30 FPS
➖Camera and bland world can make navigation challenging
➖Lacks QoL - no speed up/battle booster, autosave, ect.
➖Clunky combat can often lead to wasted turns and missed attacks due to poor AI navigation/getting stuck
➖Learning new abilities is a Grind (capital G)
➖Unbalanced difficulty - enemies can wipe your party in a single turn if they go first vs. enemies never getting a turn to attack if you go first
[h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [4/10] [/b] [/h1]
The game world is pretty large. It’s dozens and dozens of various maps of different biomes that take you through the story. There is a good amount of exploration and items to find in the dungeons, most of it is currency (gold) or consumable items with each dungeon only containing a couple pieces of gear, generally.
The game throws so many dungeons at you that I started to get fatigue after doing the first 2 optional dungeons. As I stared at the 3rd and final one and looked at the map, I seriously considered if I wanted to continue.
The narrative starts out as an interesting adventure, but tapers off. The best I can describe it is kind of like a kid version of Indiana Jones with the thrill of adventure driving Justin, the protagonist, into lands never traversed by man. It’s exciting at the start, but after about 50 hours in, I was very ready for it to be over….then it goes for another 30 hours past that. Right when [spoiler]Sue leaves the party[/spoiler] is when the narrative starts losing its appeal.
[h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1]
The gameplay loop revolves around traversing through a dungeon for story purposes. The dungeons can be a pain to navigate, though some are pretty short.
The progression system is simple, yet grindy - you unlock new moves by leveling up magic, which takes dozens of casts of terrible spells in combat.
There’s equipment, but noting that really shakes up the core combat, which consists of a turn-based approach, but everyone is on an active time gauge, and attacking enemies, or getting attacked, can stall or reverse your gauge.
Melee attacks are completed by the character running at the enemy, which the AI often gets stuck and runs around, losing out on their turn.
Towards the end of the game, progression falls off a cliff and even with the characters best moves, you’re still bound by limited SP and MP to perform them, thus falling back to the same old basic attacks.
The difficult can range from stupid easy to cheaply difficult. Most of the game is laughably easy, with most encounters ending before the enemy can get a turn off due to constant attacks freezing their turn guage. However, if you get ambushed, which means if a monster approaches you from behind on the overhead map, they go first, and you’re often at the mercy of whatever powerful or weak moves a monster has. I’ve had combats where a monster spammed 3 AOE attacks, instantly killing 2 of my 4 members before I could even act.
[h1] [b] Graphics (Quality/Technical) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1]
Poor. It’s obviously a PS1 game, but the remaster does absolutely nothing other than make it run on modern systems and a better resolution. The maps are terrible, the camera angle makes it often hard to navigate and the menu UI is cumbersome when you can’t even easily shift between characters.
The technical side is actually very good. Aside from being locked to 30 FPS, which isn’t terribly noticeable when the graphics look like poop, but I didn’t crash once. Even when leaving it on for hours at a time. Solid port.
The only “Bug” I encountered was the terrible AI that misses their own turns due to getting stuck on other sprites.
1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD
[h1] [b] Audio – [6/10] [/b] [/h1]
The music is okay, nothing really special.
The sound effects are a bit surprising, there’s even sound for footsteps.
Most surprising is voice acting. It’s not fully voice acted, and it’s not the best quality, but for its age and the PS1-era, props to that.
[h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [2/10] [/b] [/h1]
Not great, there doesn’t seem to be much divergence from the storyline path. No player choices or builds to do, no options or classes of the sort to shake up the gameplay style. The only reason to ever replay this is for the story or achievements.
[h1] [b] Final Verdict – [4/10] [/b] [/h1]
Grandia, oh Grandia. I first played this game when I was a kid. It was one of my first JRPGs ever. For the life of me I can’t remember if I finished it, so I was absolutely determined to finish it this go, hence my playtime.
Grandia does one thing well - the lighthearted story feels like a real adventure that every kid wanted to have. Yes, I’d say the story doesn’t really end up lighthearted as you do the usual trope of saving the world, and it does taper off near the middle to the point of screaming at your screen, “WHAT?! ANOTHER dungeon?!”. But it does have a beginning that’s hard to compare. It’s an adventure that I’ve thought about and remember much of these past ~25 years, so that’s saying something.
But beyond that, Grandia is just really hard to recommend. I spent 90+ hours finishing this game (my save file time, not Steam time), and I’d say that’s about 30+ hours too much. The game just continues on with yet another dungeon and the combat system isn’t deep enough to support playing that long. Near the end I have every ability unlocked and there’s literally nothing to do but get some levels….and it’s been like this for a dozen hours! The game would be much better if it were more focused and just cut out a solid ~25% of its content.
Overall, I cannot recommend Grandia. It’s simple story and simple mechanics do not justify the length of the game and the amount of mediocre dungeons thrown at you.
[h1] [b] Recommend? (Price) [Y/N] [/b] [/h1]
[h1]No[/h1]
$20 for this consider its age and severe lack of QoL is a big no. Even on sale for $10 is stretching it. Honestly, I would say $5-7 is a good price point.
You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR
