Grandia thoughts

Let's start with what I like. The story, characters, and their interactions/dynamics were very enjoyable.

The first part of the game with Sue was always so lively because of the Justin-Sue dynamic, and Justin-Feena-Sue dynamic. Then she just left, which felt kind of random but I guess I see the point it was trying to make (your old comrade can't be with you anymore, stuff's getting serious etc.) Though the Justin-Feena dynamic developed pretty predictably and Justin of course has to be a big doofus until he isn't.

And Mullen. He isn't a bad guy, he's just not open to alternatives to what he perceives as the necessary path forward. And honestly, that's kind of relatable, even as one who likes to come up with novel ways of getting things done. Heck, that personality trait is probably how he was empowered to do a mutiny in the first place. Watching him throughout the story was very interesting.

However, it feels like everything in the story is slightly underdeveloped, ESPECIALLY at the endgame.

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I appreciated the overarching themes of the game. Adventuring? Hell yeah, I do that. I really can't just sit in one place for too long. Getting to experience Justin's adventure and watching his understanding of the nature of his adventure change was enjoyable. And the transforming of his wanderlust, and later his love for Feena, into the will to save the world from Gaia was done well IMO.

The thing about the Spirits always extending a hand to humanity, yet humans being the ones to close themselves off from the Spirits and indulge in their greed and vice, reminds me of the roles of God and Satan. The line of "if humanity and spirits' wills are united, any miracle is possible" reminds me of wu wei, or other conceptions of "adhering to the way". And Gaia is basically Satanic cancer. Which is also basically Zophar from Lunar 2. On that point, many of Grandia's themes and character tropes were present in the Lunar games that Game Arts had released previously. Nothing for me to complain about because I like those games.

The thing about everyone having their role. It's a good reminder. Many of us are not where we'd like to be, but we're placed according to the needs of the world. Recognizing that is a good way to get the strength to carry on. I feel like the game kind of speedran this point by squishing it mostly into a couple scenes near the end where Justin feels totally worthless (except for Guido dropping that line earlier on in the story), but it's good nonetheless.

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When it comes to specific memorable moments that I appreciated:
- Leen and Mullen getting along with Justin and Feena (respectively/separately) in the Twin Tower. I could already tell that they did not have bad intentions, but that dungeon was a fantastic bit of character development and lore revealing all at once. Also Leen's love theme is superb.
- Leen's final decision to sacrifice herself to buy time for Justin and Feena, believing that they could take down Gaia. Not sure why she magically got reborn as-is in the epilogue though. That seemed totally random and pointless.
- Meeting Liete in Angelou. Must be sad just sitting alone in a room in the sky with a bunch of your AI clones to liven up the place. She didn't get the Lucia from Lunar 2 treatment exactly, but she definitely wanted to take matters into her own hands rather than just being the Lonely Keeper of Angelou History, and I actually like her a lot as a character.

Still, some of the other themes were clearly underdeveloped. The whole thing of Justin and Feena's special power (due to Feena learning about caring, according to Liete IIRC) didn't really seem to manifest itself properly at the end, except that Justin was chosen by the spirits and whatnot.

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The music is, overall, great: the theme song, title screen music, Sue going back to Parm, the scene with Justin and Leen in Twin Tower, and the Disc 2 battle themes come to mind. But the Disc 1 standard combat theme starts to get so boring, and much of the ambient forest/wilderness themes early on are also extremely boring and repetitive. The music back in Parm was also good, at least.

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The battle system is cool. Buffs and stat upgrades feel well-balanced; no character totally sucks, nor is any one character totally overpowered (mostly... once you get the half-SP ring, Justin can just sweep everything for decently long sprints. But he is The Adventurer, so he deserves it.) Being able to counter and cancel is fun. Some of the magic spells went unused by me, yet I can't write them off as useless; e.g. I never used poison, but it would've been useful for delaying enemy turns, if not to inflict extra damage. The SP moves are mostly all pretty good too, except Feena has a slightly underwhelming assortment by the end of the game. Ultimately, the game felt too easy, except for the Tower of Temptation. Digital Museum was more challenging (namely the three bakas' fight) and gave me more of a chance to fully exploit the combat mechanics. And this all makes me more interested in doing a playthrough of the Redux (~hard mode) mod some time.

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Alright, time to complain.

While I enjoyed the story overall, and there are certainly kino moments, the stories and issues of many of the individual towns feel like cliched filler that are just in there for the sake of being there, so that Justin has more "adventures" that he and his crew can magically solve just because they're the Great Adventurers. Or maybe that's the whole point, but it feels rather at odds with Justin's serious quest to make it to Alent and find the Angelou civilization, and it makes each of the towns and their people uninteresting in the grand scheme of things. Like, great, we need to go to some other town through another copy-paste forest that I can hardly see any of anyway, that has copy-paste enemies in it, as I spam the same magic spells over and over to grind up the XP, to solve some other Incident.

I guess I can respect Justin et al's dedication to being the good guys in that regard, and earning the respect of the locals always seems to end up in easing the way forward, so it does kind of work, to be fair. But it made the midgame feel tedious. To add insult to injury, many of the kino scenes that are present feel incomplete/too short, missing buildup or followup, or have too many convenient occurrences that feel empty. I mean, talk about an unsatisfying final fight.

On a related note, there were many overly fantastical moments that, even for a fantasy setting, just came completely out of nowhere for what feels to me like a comically large amount of storywriting convenience, such as:
- Guido's random ass flying manta ray rescuing Justin and Feena on two occasions
- The Grandeur just splitting in two perfectly from Rapp hitting some random ass buttons
- Justin handing over the spirit stone to Baal (!!!) despite Feena literally telling him not to, and nothing coming of it
- Falling into Baal's trap and then there miraculously being a rope to climb back out
- After the Feena's wings scene, it just fades to black and we find ourselves in a tent in the area south of Zil Padon, with not even the briefest of transitions.
- After Leen's sacrifice scene, we are once again teleported magically to a tent, and also Leen just magically comes back to life at the end of the game??

These sorts of things make these climactic moments just come crashing right back down. So many of these felt incomplete, as do several other aspects of the game.

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The dungeons are often tedious and repetitive. They may have a couple of unique elements, and some of them are actually quite good (such as the various ruins, Zil Padon temple, and Twin Tower) but they are mostly all just winding narrow paths. They're 2D dungeons in 3D, and even for that they aren't as open as some 2D games I've played. And there is hardly much enemy variety. Would you like to fight nothing but [bird 1] and [snake 1] for the entirety of a forest dungeon? You'd better, since the next forest will be nothing but [bird 2] and [snake 2].

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It's somewhat hard to appreciate the game world, since you can't see very much at a time and hardly get opportunities to gaze over the landscape. If that camera angle was the sacrifice for making the game world 3D, I have to wonder if that was really worth it. Can't help that it was the trend at the time though. Speaking of camera, the battle camera that just can't sit still. It really moves way too much and I don't like that.

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The loading screens for everything. I got acclimated to it, and yeah, it's Saturn/PS1 game, but it still sucks. You can't even open the damn menu without waiting for 5 seconds, and you can't pick up items without waiting for 5 seconds. Literally why? They're regular ass non-3D menus. It shouldn't take that long, every single time, for something so common and basic.

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The magic XP system is punishing and does not scale with anything but the number of targets you hit.  Levelling up some of the magic is a pain due to it being primarily based on number of uses/targets of the magic, so you'll have a slow time levelling up healing spells if you don't take any damage, for example. These factors make getting magic levels a very intentional process which is very tedious and prevents me from killing each set of enemies the way that I actually want to. In these regards, the magic XP system is a downgrade both from Lunar 2 OG's magic XP system where you could allocate a bank of XP where you actually want it, and also a downgrade from the Lunar 1/2 remakes' bog-standard learning magic skills based on character level. While there is bonus/penalty XP for low/high levelled magic/skills, it is rather unsophisticated and levelling up magic is still a slog (multipliers of x2, x1, or x0.5, by the looks of it. The 2x does not last for very long, only for a few levels).

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SUMMARY
Great game with huge potential, but falls short in its key strong point areas. Early 3D compromises affected my ability to appreciate the game world due to the limited camera angle. Many of the dungeons lack variety, and the great music score is sometimes overshadowed by overly repetitive dungeon/battle music early on. The battle system is awesome, but enjoyability is hampered by the game being too easy and the lack of enemy variety. Tedious forgettable filler in the early midgame, with many of the kino scenes half-baked or lacking the buildup/wind-down that they deserve. Also note the highly unsatisfying final fight. Good story themes and delightful character dynamics made the game enjoyable through everything. I think I can say I've definitely taken a liking to the game and its world despite its shortcomings, but I probably wouldn't want to replay the vanilla game again as a result of my gripes.