Grandia
 |
"Earthquakes are scary!" |
 |
After the Lunar series, Game Arts gave us this series. In in a nutshell, it's a series of games whose plots, while not particularly ground-breaking, are often screaming examples of why clichés are not automatically bad in and of themselves. Indeed they - the first game especially - show great enthusiasm in unapologetically playing with worlds of boy adventurers, spirit swords, ancient evils, and lost civilisations of the ancients. They also share a fairly unique and oft-praised 'semi-realtime' battle system.
Mixing the turn-based battle format often attributed to console RPGs with a system of real-time action, they pause for choosing a character's next move, but other than that, characters and enemies run around the field, often trying to dodge attacks or to reach an opponent in time to interrupt their coming actions. This is especially important, since spells and super attacks have different areas of effect and are vulnerable to being cancelled. Consequently, it's rare to have two battles play out the same way, even against the same set of enemies.
Games in the series:
- Grandia (1997)
- Grandia: Digital Museum (1998)
- Grandia II (2000)
- Grandia: Parallel Trippers (2000)
- Grandia Xtreme (2002)
- Grandia III (2005)
- Actually Four Mooks
- Aerith and Bob
- All in a Row
- Autobots Rock Out
- Bag of Sharing
- Book Ends: The story begins in earnest when Justin sails from Parm. He and Feena return to Parm harbor in the epilogue.
- Broken Bridge: The first two stopped you going back to certain places after particular plot points, this also meant this if you didn't know where the Bonus Dungeons were, you could easily miss them and the nice rewards they give.
- Bonus Dungeon
- Calling Your Attacks: Almost every spell and special attack has one or two for each character.
- Can't Drop the Hero
- Character Portrait
- Clipped-Wing Angel: Final Boss: First form, heavy hitter. Second form, dispenses meangingless status effects.
- Cognizant Limbs: Big baddies, such as bosses, tend to have multiple parts with their own attack timers.
- Critical Hit: Actually a selectable attack from the start. It's good for messing around with enemies' IP bar.
- Fan Translation: an English patch for Parallel Trippers was released in September 2011.
- Fight Woosh
- Flawless Victory: Beating a battle without taking a single hit point of damage (or status effect), and with each character taking only one turn, earns you a different victory quote and theme tune.
- Perhaps in Xtreme, a flawless victory also gives you EXP bonuses.
- Free Rotating Camera
- Gaiden Game: Parallel Trippers involves kids from the real world being transported into the universe of Grandia I; Xtreme is a dungeon crawler, with some of the dungeons being randomly generated. It was created to be an Evolution killer.
- Get on the Boat: Generally speaking, once you board a boat, that wraps up your business on that particular side of the pond; you won't be back. On the one hand, this spotlights the linearity of the series; on the other hand, it's an effective way of making gamers feel like they're on the opposite side of the world.
- Healing Checkpoint: Most games' save points heal you.
- I Fell for Hours: Justin and Feena being catapulted into a volcano. They have enough time on their hands to trade barbs. This is scene is echoed in Grandia II between Ryudo and Skye.
- Infinity+1 Sword: Averted. There are weapons that are the strongest, but the nature of the games makes strategy more important than the best weapons alone.
- Lost Forever
- Lost Technology
- Massive-Numbered Siblings:Justin and Feena have no less than six kids in the future.
- No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: Unfortunately, one of the major flaws of the game: it's exceedingly rare you have any other options on the world map beyond going to the next dungeon or restocking at the last town, and the circumstances always make sure that once you leave any region on the world map, you have no way of returning there.
- Point of No Return: Once you've crossed over to a new map, any place you visited previously is gone for good. Justified in that the heroes lack a Global Airship to quickly ferry them around the world, relying mostly on slow travel across oceans.
- Real Time with Pause
- Same Story, Different Names: Grandia's Angelou civilization mistakenly created the dark god Gaia through their own hubris, and were destroyed by the very same technology which built their great cities. Grandia II has a slight inversion of this story, with mankind enjoying the blessing from a benevolent god, but losing its autonomy in the process. The parallel between both games is illustrated in cutscenes showing humans making buildings appear out of thin air.
- So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: Averted, and then some. The departed party members not only leaves behind their gear, but all of their accumulated skill and magic points, which can be re-applied to any character you want.
- Status Buff: Recurring spells Diggin', WOW! and Runner.
- Tech Points
- There Are No Tents: Averted. The party sets up camp inside dungeons fields to regain HP; In Grandia II, the main hero has a positively palatial tent in his knapsack.
- Underground Monkey
- Welcome to Corneria: Averted. Your characters will have in-depth conversations with just about every NPC, with the conversations changing in response to events in the game.
- It's worth noting that the linearity of Grandia makes returning to old locations meaningless, since once you've gotten past the city limits, your job there is over. The developers could just as easily have greyed out the town names on the map rather then let you reenter. Yet you even have the option of revisiting old towns to check and see if their dialog's changed (it has).
- When Trees Attack: Man Eating Trees are a recurring enemy that shows up in forested areas. In Grandia II, they're actually disguised as part of the surroundings -- until you get close.
- Gaia, the main antagonist of the first Grandia, is a bizarre amalgam of plant and insect.