Grandia came out in Japan in 1997, and first hit English-language store shelves in 1999. 25 years later, it was remastered in the Grandia HD Collection, comprising the first 2 games of the series. I hadn’t played Grandia when it first released, but I did play a little of the sequel shortly after high school. (Ain’t it grand to be that old?) I was excited, therefore, to see where the series all started.
I wish I could say that I came away with more positive opinions of it, given that it’s such a beloved game to many people.
Grandia
Genre(s) – JRPG
Original release date – December 18, 1997 (remastered on March 25, 2020)
Available on – PS1, Sega Saturn, PS4, PC, Switch,
Played on – PS4
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think Grandia was a bad game, per se. It had a lot of interesting elements that definitely made it unique for the time of its original release. But I think that beyond nostalgia, it doesn’t hold up that well by modern gaming standards.
It can be really tricky to review a remaster. Do I try to put myself in the mindset of what players might have experienced originally, or do I look at it from the point of view of someone who’s experiencing it for the first time now? Or do I try and take both aspects into account? I try to do the latter, but it isn’t always easy when I have no prior experience with the game’s original release. Most of my opinions come from my current experience, with me only trying imagining the context in which it originally released. So please, take my review with a grain of salt. I’m not trying to insist that the game is bad or that people shouldn’t enjoy it. Merely that I can only review based on my own experiences, and sometimes that includes missing some context from the original time it debuted. Just because I was alive at the time, doesn’t mean that all the old games automatically vibe with me.
A STORY THAT DIDN’T LAND WITH ME
A lot of my problem with the game came from the story. It’s not terrible, but it’s quite unbelievable, even by fantasy standards. The protagonist, Justin, starts off as a young man who romanticizes adventure. Which is fine enough, a decent start for a lot of “young person saves the world” narratives, but he goes from being a kid who pretends that a beat-up pot lid and a dirty apron are legendary weapons, to matching wits and strength with the so-called greatest adventurer ever after only a couple of days on his adventuring journey, eventually changing how literally the entire world functions.
This boy is 14. And maybe it’s because I’m a Certified Internet Old Person, but it’s really hard for me to connect with that sort of narrative now.
In fairness, I don’t think I’d have as big a problem with Justin’s character progression had it not been for that opening segment of tracking down all the “legendary equipment” in town. It made him feel much younger than he was, making it even harder for that player-game connection to form. I legitimately thought he must be about 10 or so, not 14. The rest of the story may have been fairly bare-bones for a good chunk of the game (young adventurer goes out into the world to uncover the truth of an ancient civilization, only to be hampered by the military), though by the end I was fully invested and actively wanted to see where Grandia was leading me, rather than feeling like I was just going with the flow of events, one to the next.
It’s just a shame it took until past the halfway point of the game to hit that investment for me.
UNIQUE BATTLE SYSTEM…MOST OF THE TIME
The battle system was interestingly unique, however, and far more complex than it appears on the surface. It’s turn-based, and uses an ATB (Active Time Battle) gauge, but if you time things right you can interrupt enemy attacks and push them back along the ATB line, giving other characters more time to make their own moves. Enemies can also do this to you, so it’s a double-edged sword that requires players to pay some attention to the field of battle, rather than just button-mashing until the fight ends.
Characters are able to equip multiple different kinds of weapons, which they gain experience points for during battle and thus eventually skills based on the level of their weapon experience. It’s the same for elemental magic: the more you use a spell in battle, the quicker you’ll be able to cast it in the future, but also you gain experience points for that spell’s element, leading to more and stronger spells in the future.
I admit I didn’t play around too much with magic while playing Grandia, though, as I largely found it unnecessary. Healing spells were great, especially given the game’s limited inventory system, and the starting spell for Earth boosted the entire party’s defense (which was great for boss battles, especially since the effect stacked), but I rarely encountered anything with an elemental weakness that needed to be exploited, and so offensive spells largely went unused during my playthrough. It was a really interesting system, learning spells and skills that are based on what you have equipped, but in my opinion it was underbaked, better in concept than execution.
Occasionally frustrating was the way sometimes characters would get stuck on each other while attempting to execute commands, since location on the battle field mattered. Rather than everyone being in a neat lineup, party members and enemies would move around the field of battle, and every action had a range. If you’re too far away from an enemy, you’re not going to be able to smack it with your sword, so you have to scamper a bit closer. But when Justic gets caught between Feena and Gadwin and can’t push through, sometimes you run out of time to even use the attack, and then you have a wasted turn. Like many aspects of Grandia, this felt fantastic in concept, very creative, but that concept didn’t always mesh well with practical reality.
NOT MUCH SIDE-CONTENT, BUT ENOUGH
There were occasionally bonus dungeons scattered around the game, which I’d stumble into while exploring the 3D maps. They’re tough challenges for the most part, but they’re the sort of challenges that I enjoy in games, so I was happy to take them on. Mostly in terms of level-grinding, but still. It works for me!
Come to think of it, though, the bonus dungeons were, to the best of my recollection, the only side-content that Grandia had. The story itself was remarkably streamlined, though that’s definitely a case of “your mileage may vary.” The primary focus being on the story will be nice for plenty of players who prefer a story-first experience, but for those looking for a bit more longevity in the game, the lack of side-content might be a disappointment.
I didn’t beat the final bonus dungeon, though: the Tower of Temptation. I have no idea what lies at the top of the tower. Some day I’ll probably go back and grind my way through it out of sheer curiosity, but that dungeon became available so close to Grandia‘s finale that I wanted to press on with the story rather than take time out to explore the limited side content.
If it sounds like I missed any interesting side-quests, please, let me know in the comments, because that might influence whether or not I replay Grandia in the future.
THAT’S ALL SHE WROTE
As I said at the beginning of this review, Grandia isn’t a bad game, and I can see why a lot of people remember it fondly. And it’s good for it to have gotten a remaster so that others can experience a game that was previously locked on decades-old consoles. It did a lot that other games at the time didn’t, and I can absolutely respect it for that. It originally released on a console and at a time that became rather famous for its experimentation and innovation, and I can see that Grandia was absolutely a project sourced from that ethos. “What if we made a classic JRPG, but with some fun tweaks that the new technology allows us to play around with.” Not everything done under that philosophy will work, but evidently it worked well enough to spawn a franchise, one that continued to play with and refine some concepts that were started right here.
But on the whole, it just didn’t strike that same chord with me. Maybe it was the awkward beginning not resonating with me, maybe it was feeling constrained by the very limited MP access (and fairly useless spell pool) and item capacity, I don’t know. I’m glad I played it, I’m glad to have seen the beginning of a beloved franchise, but aside from that bonus dungeon, I’m not sure I’ll have the urge to play Grandia again.
But I do remember appreciating Grandia II a lot more, so let’s see if that one holds up better!
Quadnines 
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