Grandia
Unfinished Game #5
Type of Game
Adventure with a capital A. Friendship, love, all words beginning with A. The complete absence of adult accompaniment, also with capital A's.
Release date on our machines
March 2000, awestruck adolescence with a capital A, just the same. For me, anyway.
Developer
Game Arts Co., Ltd., which has been making games since 1985, including Wing Commander, Alisia Dragoon, lots of Lunar titles, and lots of Grandias too.
Publisher
Ubi Soft Entertainment Software for us little Europeans who have forgotten adventure for centuries (probably for the best).
Grandia first appeared on Saturn in 1997. Free information without context, just to get off to a bad start. Always set the bar low, in the hope of making a better impression at the end. For other leadership advice, ask someone else; anyone will do. In any case, thank goodness Grandia got its PlayStation version two years later! Who would have known about it otherwise? Poor Saturn, so unloved, so poorly sold. I could have supported it at the time, but I didn't, so it's a little late to cry about it now. Grandia, on the other hand, I discovered at my best mate Randall Geyser's house. He used to find gaming gems on PlayStation, though I never quite knew how. He always told me they came from his sister's boyfriend, but I never got any more details than that. I wouldn't be surprised to learn one day that the guy in question created The Pirate Bay and is now in exile somewhere in some tax haven or other. As a result, Randall always showed me Japanese RPGs on burned CDs that could only be played with Action Replay, that little magic box that plugged into the back of the console. That's how he introduced me to Breath of Fire 3, Final Fantasy Tactics, Legend of Kartia, Vagrant Story... and possibly others, although it seems highly unlikely that I would have forgotten them. Once he was weaned off Ocarina of Time, this time on his PC with an emulator, he immediately dove back into a big game on Play. Yeah, we called that console the Play, sorry. To my great relief, Link was finally going to leave me alone, but I keep this aversion secret to avoid being lynched.
Grand Hiatus
The big game in question? Grandia, of course, I have to start talking about it someday. From the very first minutes, I loved what I saw on the screen TOO much. So I refused to be a spectator, as I am with 90% of the games I pretend to have known. With this one, I knew I was going to throw myself into it headfirst! When Randall lent it to me, I grabbed the box like a mad dog and started playing as soon as I could. Then... I stopped cold, without even remembering the real reasons why. Probably because of a bunch of cars driving really fast in Gran Turismo 2, or some crazy guys with paranormal abilities in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, but I can't remember the exact moment. Since my mate had already finished it and wasn't going to replay it just to show me, I never got past the first few hours of the adventure. Memories almost erased, credibility virtually non-existent... perfect conditions for writing an article!
Grand A.I.
I'll be back, I'm going to start a YouTube playthrough, just to pretend I remember everything. Hey, we get voices during the dialogues? I don't remember that. I find it a bit annoying, at least in English. Luckily, it doesn't happen in every conversation, otherwise it would be a nightmare! And it would have taken three or four more discs to store the audio files. On the other hand, I like the portraits with facial expressions, drawn in a style that's less divisive than Legend of Kartia and more appealing than FF VIII. Introducing the main protagonist: a sort of arrogant, megalomaniacal kid who thinks he's the best adventurer in the world, even though he's never ventured beyond the first manhole cover on his street. He dreams of revolutionising the discipline, even though his father and grandfather were explorers before him... and lost. Lost in the sense that they died, that is. I don't know if the developers intended it that way, or if I'm just being picky, but I find it hard to warm to this kind of guy.
Who would want to travel to the other side of the world, braving a thousand and one dangers alongside such a carefree and pretentious chap? Her best friend Sue, apparently. A best friend who idolises him and who isn't much better off, being a silly, euphoric kid who doesn't give a damn about anything. Come on, I have to say something positive to balance things out. Ha, that's it! I've got it! I love the concept: putting adventure first, rather than a convoluted storyline, complex mechanics, or just the need to go and beat up bad guys; original and well thought out. OK, we could have had all that in addition to the adventure, I... yes, I agree. Grandia manages to convey its love of movement like no other title can. At least, none that I've known before or since. Honestly, who starts their team with an apron for armour, a pot lid for a shield, a saucepan on their head, and a wooden toy for a sword?
Well, it works! Of course, it quickly evolves into something more traditional, and we end up encased in chain mail forged by gods, wielding a weapon enchanted five hundred times by the most powerful wizards, carrying around ancient artefacts that unleash tornadoes of flame in eight dimensions at once. It's a shame they didn't stick with the originality of the beginning, even if it's just a minor detail. Imagine if Justin ended up fighting with a fossilised wooden fork that belonged to a chef who died millions of years ago! Or if he protected his skull with a metal colander extracted from a meteorite from another galaxy!!! That would be crazy. Or not. I never managed to become a game designer, and maybe there's a good reason for that.
Getting started couldn't be easier. It's quite similar to Secret of Mana in the way it handles combat in ‘near real time’, with an initiative bar that still requires a bit of responsiveness on our part. I've played Secret of Mana even less than Grandia, so you'd do well to trust me on this. The progression system also seemed very conventional to me, but logical and effective. You increase your weapon mastery by using it, you improve your spells by casting them, and you unlock others of the same element through perseverance. It seems to me that the more damage you cause during fights, the faster you progress, but I could be wrong. And I'm not going to replay the game myself just to clarify this point, that's fine. Others do it a thousand times better than I do, and I can watch them do it during my working hours, too.
You manage a group of fighters, between one and four, with diverse and varied profiles (but basically warrior, mage or support), except that you never choose who you can or cannot take on board. People come and go as the story unfolds. This makes everything more realistic (like giving up the apron, much to my regret), except that unlike the progression system, here realism encroaches on coolness, so no, I don't agree. Frankly, we're made to play a super cool chick from the beginning of the game, and after twenty hours, she leaves the troupe never to return. TWENTY HOURS of getting attached to the character, and then we have to forget her. Whyyyyyyy? FEENA! COME BACK! I LOVE YOU... oops. That's exactly the kind of damage it causes, QED. Well, at the same time, I understand her. Who wants to put up with that wanker Justin to find out whether or not there's anything behind the Wall?
No, I would have rather punched him while he was walking along the edge of the Wall in question, and not to keep him safe. That's what I did back then, and I lost, so I left it at that. That's it, now I remember where I stopped playing! And so we enter the classic loop: meeting people, fighting, collecting stuff, advancing the storyline, new area, meeting people... etc. I'm not criticising, I love classic loops. But even if we whinge a little when this or that charismatic companion kicks the bucket, we never tire of the convoluted storyline. Hey, that's the first time I've ever written that word in my life. Probably the last time, too. There are enough twists and turns to keep you on the edge of your seat, as long as you appreciate the relatively childish nature of the universe. I do, so that's fine.
We live an epic adventure, we live life to the fullest, ignoring all the responsibilities imposed by the depressing daily lives of normal people! No mental load, no bills, no weekly police searches because I embezzled money from... ah, maybe I'll keep that a secret too. All wrapped up in an often very inspired retro-futuristic atmosphere. Steam trains rub shoulders with flying fortresses, warships straight out of the Second World War, and bio-mechanical entities. Not to mention the mystical, dreamlike, spiritual phases in settings caught between two not-quite-parallel universes. You always need these metaphysical delusions, otherwise you wouldn't call it a real JRPG, right? Well, the graphics don't really do justice to all this, which is a shame, as they're still pretty basic for the PS1 in 2000 (even if the game was already three years old when we discovered it here, okay).
But in fact, contrary to all expectations, this polygonal 3D has aged much better than in other games of the same style. I can't explain why, but it has stood the test of time. While I'm on the subject of JRPGs, and since we're already on a tangent, let's take a quick detour to talk about the representation of women. There have always been women in JRPGs, of course. But here, there seem to be more than average. Honestly, it's almost 50/50 with men. And they're seen in rather important positions. Now, that doesn't mean Grandia passes the Bechdel test, far from it. The three enemy captains only talk about their boobs or their handsome admiral, and the love interest goes from being an independent adventurer to a whiny doormat because she has a crush on the hero (who doesn't even realise it, even though he has a crush on her too, the idiot). The rites of passage, like the big warrior who wants to make the protagonist grow up by forcing him to fight him in a duel. LIKE A MAN!
Yes, come on, before it just happened naturally, I'm just a big killjoy who doesn't really like the nineties. YES! I love the nineties, it's my whole life, OK? I'll stop answering myself! Absolutely. Still, we can see some effort here and there, which is enough to make this game more feminist than anything else released up until 2017. Except Rampage, of course. Anyway, what else do we have here? In no particular order: spirits to save, villains who aren't really that bad, several dialogue options, even if I don't think they influence the story. Lots of cutscenes and discussions, relationships between characters that are fairly well developed over time, and not too sloppy. At least when the characters in question don't run off FOREVER! FEENA! ARE YOU COMING BACK OR WHAT? An all-powerful military entity that hides lots of secrets and plots against the whole world, in the style of the Magisterium from His Dark Materials (best compliment ever).
A genocide of anthropomorphic crows, an impenetrable wall that hides a huge part of the world from ordinary mortals, and really cool levels despite the relatively outdated graphics. The ghost ship session, forgotten ruins with their ultra-creepy atmosphere, the Misty Forest, which successfully enters the pantheon of super-stylish forest stages, other more or less strange regions... etc. Some monsters really do have ridiculous faces. It doesn't quite reach the weirdness of FF, but it's not far off. A good JRPG bestiary, in other words. The ghost eels in Misty Forest are just brilliant. If I had played Grandia when I was five or six years younger, those eels would have given me a terror attack and I would have run off to turn off the console. And in all this, I've managed not to mention the Spirit Stone that Justin has had since his father's death, which is the key to everything. Proof that I haven't touched the game since 2000, and that I want to deliver as sloppy a review as possible.
Grand Adagio
The soundtrack comes from a certain Noriyuki Iwadare, known for his work on Grandia, duh. But also Lunar, Soleil, Ace Attorney, and more recently Super Smash Bros Ultimate on Switch. A rather respectable career, then. Not like my cultural background, since I know almost nothing about any of this. The opening credits are reminiscent of The Love Boat, okay. Others have said it before me, let's not jump to conclusions, even if I'm trying hard not to crack a joke. Technically, The Love Boat is also a declaration of love for adventure, so it's fine. For most of the other tracks, I notice a very strong influence from anime music. Listen to the tracks without the gameplay, and don't tell me you don't have mental images of Miyazaki's feature films or episodes of Evangelion superimposed on the beret of that annoying Justin. Yeah, right? No? Well, yes. You can't not see them. Take other references if you want, but I'm sticking with these. In general, all the compositions give off a joyful and epic vibe, nothing dark or depressing, with a few exceptions (often when it comes to girls, expldrrrrr). And of course, we get the famous forest track, which perfectly lives up to its status above the rest. Why do all JRPGs produce such incredible forest music? There's a pattern I don't understand, even though I embrace it wholeheartedly. That said, I prefer to highlight the theme of the hero's hometown and his friend Sue, which single-handedly sets the tone for the rest of the game. Playful bagpipes, a melody that gives you a crazy boost of energy, arrangements with contagious good humour... frankly, I'm grabbing my purple bathrobe, my plastic bin lid, my bicycle pump and setting off to conquer the world right now. See you later!
Grand Miasms
Stuck in pre-adolescence, I really should have pushed myself a little harder to at least get past the halfway point. Tony Hawk and his mates, who were just as cocky as Justin, could have waited a bit, given how much time I spent making them fall flat on their faces while messing up my tricks. In my childhood gaming life, saturated with RTS games on the computer and fighting or racing games on the console, this was a breath of fresh air that would have done my open-mindedness a world of good.
We could have gotten caught up in endless debates with my mate Randall, and we would have played Grandia II together on PlayStation 2, another masterpiece that I'm equally ashamed to have missed. And we would have rented a flat, and we would still be living under the same roof today, playing Golden Axe, Diablo IV, or lots of awesome retro JRPGs imported by his brother-in-law, who was involved in some shady business. OK, I'll take Diablo IV off the list, for obvious reasons of ethics and self-respect. I'm sure we would have had a blast, anyway. Clueless, immature, but happy. Like Justin, ultimately. And incels too, no doubt, but kind-hearted ones, I hope. Now there's an interesting idea for a parallel universe.
Follow Grandia publications on social media !
