There's so much I like about this game, but I'll say the bottom line first, it's just WAY too damn long for what it is.
While the combat is possibly the best part of the game, the gameplay is essentially 80% battles. The grinding of skills is awful, especially when you can't skip spell animations.

I got up to Cafu but I can't go on anymore. The world is interesting, but the exploration is lacking. The world doesn't look the best (maybe the HD version makes it look muddier or something?) and the map and minimap orientation is terrible. This is one of my biggest complaints, I never know where I am, no matter which town or field I'm in.

I can definitely forgive the lack of an in-your-face story, it doesn't try to do anything crazy. It's about the exploration, the adventure. It nails that feeling, no doubt.
I wish it was voice acted more than just a few important story scenes, and I wish the dialogue was better. It feels extremely stilted sometimes.
Lots of complaints but I do love a lot about this game; maybe I'll enjoy Grandia 2 more.

Always wanted to play this, and while the remaster itself has its issues, the underlying game is incredible. It is biologically impossible not to fall in love with Grandia's characters. I was already finding the character design, their interactions and their story compelling, and then Sue and Puffy did their cheer attack, and that was that. Love.

While the overall story is a familiar one - an organization of baddies is digging into ancient ruins and awakening powers they don't fully understand and certainly cannot control - the details greatly differentiate it from similar stories I've played before. The light steampunk setting, the way the story unfolds over a massive amount of terrain, the cross seas adventuring, the naked medusas and guitar-wielding bad guys - great ideas are packed into every corner.

The remaster itself is a bit sloppy. I'd greatly have preferred the original pixel art over this very smudgy "smoothing" of the artwork. And the game is far too easy, only really rising up to a challenge on optional dungeons or a few major bosses. But the wildly engaging and smart battle system keeps even the easy fights fun.

All in all I loved this game, the world, the characters, the quest the systems. I just wish the remaster did it more justice.

Was hyped to play this finally because I loved the second game in the series but it's pretty meh. Kinda dig the simple adventure story on offer but the localization is noticeably bad, and the battle system isn't nearly as interesting as where it would get to in II. Not helped by the fact that this is a sub-par remaster - there's a smear filter on all the pixels that you can't turn off, and there's none of the QoL features you'd want on a modern remaster of an old JRPG, which is a real problem because Grandia has noticeably long magic animations and you have to use them a lot.

I got far enough in it and am curious enough about it to still flirt with the idea of going back to it one day, but it's definitely one you should play on an emulator.

Make sure to play the Japanese dub, not the atrocious English one, and remove the lazy smoothening filter on the sprites. This isn't nostalgia; the sprites look terrible. Anyway, "Grandia" would have been amazing when I was 12, but it quickly goes into a lot of JRPG-ness I find even more trite now and I just didn't care for the story at all. It doesn't help that any female with an iota of sex appeal is going to have that exploited (Sue luckily escapes this), and it's actually a pretty sexist game. Narrative nonsense. Some dungeons play 5 second tracks that will not. stop. looping, even when the rest of the soundtrack is great. But it's hard to not love Justin and some story beats, even if the overall story is perfunctory and clichéd. And the combat system, which is highly acclaimed, is as every bit of good as you've heard.

As a jrpg enthusiast I often ask myself for what reasons I keep playing this genre. Grandia makes me realize that one of them is adventure.
Story is classic with some cool characters and an interesting vilain but it's more about the journey. It's also one of those few games where you have a true canonic romance.
The world is so lively, each town is truly inspired with different cizilations and cultures. NPCs have different dialogues each passing days.
Combat system is one of my favorite not simple but not convoluted at the same time. Unfortunaltey the game is a bit too easy to truly enjoy it. And it feels great to play an old jrpg without random encounters and ennemies don't even respawn.
Music is wisely used to create epic or truly sad moments. Graphically it got a 90s cartoon aesthetic vibe to it.
Even if the game does age well there's still some flaws.
Dungeon are long and uninspired and there's no map so you're constantly lost. You can't skip animation spells which make combats a bit tedious. For french speakers the translation is really lame.
But overall it's such a classic.
I'm happy to have take part of this grand journey and I'm pretty interesting in trying Grandia 2 someday.

Grandia for the PS1 was one of my favourite games growing up. The unique levelling system (at the time), character sprites, combat system and actual sense of adventure always stood out to me. I've finally gotten around to playing through the HD Remaster after over maybe 15 years since I last finished the PS1 version.

Storywise, it's not bad. It's nowhere near the best story I've experienced, but it was good enough to make me want to progress. The mysteries of Alent and the Angelou civilisation were something I was genuinely invested it, especially back on my first playthrough all those years ago.

The combat system is fantastic, and only gets improved upon in Grandia 2, which has one of my favourite battle systems of all time. The combat system allows you to plan out attacks and spells, with the added risk/reward of cancelling out your enemies attacks if you use a critical hit or another powerful move whilst they're in the middle of their animation or charge up. This goes both ways as enemies can cancel out your attacks if you decide to use a skill that requires a charge up time and you get hit during it.
It was definitely a unique system when the game first released, and even now I think it's aged very well. The only downside I can give to it is that the animations for most spells and some skills take a long time to play out, which can be a real pain when you're trying to level up your spells, as it'll make fights take a lot 3-4 times longer.

The levelling system is something I loved about this game. Whilst you do have your usual exp and character levels like most JRPGs, you also level your weapon skills and magic skills by frequently using them, which also give permanent stat bonuses. For example. Justin is able to use a Sword, Mace and an Axe, and by using them in combat, he can level up the respective weapon skills and and learn new moves by doing so. The same goes for magic. It's s great system that promotes using different weapons and spells to improve each character's stats and learn powerful new moves and spells.

On average, the game should take around 35-40 hours to finish. There are a few optional dungeons, but they vary in length and doing all 3 will probably add around 4 hours overall. They're not in the post game though, and can be missed if you progress too far into the story.

Overall I definitely recommend this game to all JRPG fans, especially if you still appreciate the classics.

""""Remaster""""

This is how not to convert a game jesus christ. Whilst there's been some rather extensive patching to fix the crashy buggy mess this is - nothing has goe to fixing the problem that it looks like shit. It has the unfortunate distinction in both the assets and upscale work being pretty horrible - most notably having some incredibly heavy smoothing applied to all the sprites - as well as being really inconsistent. These god-awful sprites now run across weirdly sharp 3D environments with muddily-textured buildings all over the place. Oh, and since the widescreen conversion is also borked, you'll be able to see outside the map at a hilarious frequency.

And sadly the game itself is a bit too trite to make up for it. It's endearingly saccharine, but there's very little tension in the plot for a good chunk of time that makes the whole thing feel pointless. And the characters seem like they've been pulled straight off the peg from TV tropes with basically no nuance or awareness. It's like a children's TV show JRPG and there's just no hook here in the adventure or narrative.

If there's a hook, its the battle system, which is a genuinely interesting mix on an ATB system - but it's also slow as hell and can't carry what's otherwise a very dull experience on it's own.

Oh, and the food eating segments are comfy as hell I guess.

Fortunately, there was just enough here to make me try out Grandia 2 afterwards - which so far I'm finding is a massive improvement on this original game in every way - refining the good combat core and throwing in some actually pretty good storytelling.

As for this though, it's not worth the eye strain.

This review will be quite biased due to loving this game as a child-hood favourite of mine from back on the PS1! It's always a delight to see a game that you loved get updated, but you must be asking exactly how "updated" can it be.

My stream of the game

Visually, there isn't much that can be done for the character models, being 2D, much like the pre-rendered images in FF9, but reversed. Instead of seeing smooth characters walking around a blocking image, it's 2D characters with imperfect animation walking around a smoother 3D environment. This isn't as bad and it even enables you to notice things in the environment that you may not have before back on the old SRT TV when sat down on the floor after a hard day of going to school, getting bullied and now time to escape!

Anyway, for those who are already fans, this is a easy pick. The inclusion of achievements enhances the game as it pointed out locations and things that I had never done before. There are also no major game-breaking bugs or issues that you generally see when the remake is half-assed as I have experienced with certain FF games that get upscaled.

The music comes out a lot more crip too, so again, if you're already a fan, go ahead and join on the adventure again!


For those who have never played this game:

Story:
Grandia is a JRPG where you play as Justin, a boy who wishes to become an adventurer like his father before him and his before him. The game starts with cryptic images of an ancient civilisation and voiced lines from the general of the Garlyle Forces (The Military) General Baal, as he wakes up from his dream and discusses vaugly their mission with his son Colonel Mullen and Lieutenant Leen.

We get to view out the window to the nearby town of Parm where we play as Justin who is proving his worth to the bullies in that he'll discover hidden items to prove he'll be a real adventurer one day! The real adventure begins not too long later when you get investigating ancient ruins that the army just so happen to be investigating.

Gameplay:
Combat is done in a turn-based style, somewhat familiar to the ATB system in FF7, however, when one of your character's turn is ready, combat is paused so you can take your time to choose between combo, critical, magic&moves, Tactics, Defend, Item and Escape.

A concept I love in this game and have not seen in others (besides it's sequel) is that even though it's turn-based, the map is fairly open where characters need to move next to each other to attack, allowing certain bosses to have abilities that draw people close to them for a limited AoE attack that can be extremely brutal. This allows you to put your more magic-focused characters to stay out of close combat and time to intercept them as the enemy has to walk to them.

Combo is a basic attack where you swing twice (or more if equipped with a certain item) and dealing basic damage. You run up to the enemy and swing away.

Critical is where you take a moment to make one big swing. This is a single hit with more damage than a single swing, however, it is able to cancel out a enemy's action if they're in the process or charging up a powerful move or spell.

Magic & Movies: Self explanitory. You gain moves based on your weapons and your skill with each one, same with magic. It's not always obvious how big an area of effect might be, so be certain to note it down in your head, but most fall into the category of either "single Target" or "All ..." so you shouldn't get too lost with this.

Tactics: For those who want to let the AI do battles for you. Good for grinding, but I never used this myself so I can't comment on how good it is in any aspect.

Defend: You can choose between either putting up a strong defence, often making most attacks do minimal or no damage or Evade where you can run to a different spot across the free-form map that you fight on.

Item: Easy to understand. Pick an item to use like potions, food and even equip a different weapon. This is great if you want to level up multiple weapons or use certain weapons for certain enemies. i.e. Holy mace VS Ghosts

Escape: Another easy one. You attempt to run from battle, allowing you to abandon it, but the monster will still be on the map to face you if you wait around too long.

The leveling and magic system in this game really interested me and I've not seen much like it before apart from in certain really old-school RPGs. Leveling the character does the normal things, increased stats and amount of xp for the next level. However, you also have xp and levels in weapons and all four magic elements.

The weapons are often for moves, but can also be blended with magic to create some epic displays of power. Every weapon level comes with it certain stat increases, such as how I laughed at how powerful I made Sue because one of her main weapons (throw) gives you a bonus to strength with ever level and so I focused on that. Magic does the same so you'll often focus on earth and fire for your heavy hitters due to the stats that they improve.

Magic is must the same. The more you use it/more enemies you hit helps it level up quicker! Certain spells it can be VERY easy to level up, such as water which gives you all your healing spells, starting with heal. With the SP spare you can heal outside of combat and collect xp from doing so.

Just like with weapons, as you level them up you unlock new abilities, or in this case, spells. Not only that, but some spells require two seporate elements to be at a certain level and they give xp to both elements at the same time. Combinations like below:

Air + Fire = Lightning Magic.
Air + Water = Ice Magic.
Earth + Fire = Explosion Magic.
Earth + Water = Forest Magic

Each one having it's own unique spells that can't be obtained alone such as poison, magic block, move block and even buffs and healing. This certainly makes for a grind and because of how you only see a ????????? for every ability you don't have, it's exciting to find out what that spell is that requires such a high level of fire and only on Feena? The characters have access to unique spells too so you can't be certain what one person might have, however, the basic spells you get when you first get each element is always the same.

The fully-animated scenes of this game always blew me away and was why it was on two discs on the PS1 and for me the nostalgia was great as they are still well-crafted and beautifully animated, however, they aren't perfect. There's only so much up-scaling can do with old footage after-all, as demonstrated in this highlight of my stream of this game, around my Birthday and the only reason I streamed it: https://youtu.be/erQAR1XaJjk

I believe the game still performs well and you can find many endless hours of fun through the adventure! That said, I will once again admit that I am biased so this review isn't as free of it as most others that I write are.

Second RPGotQQ played for 2022. This one pretty easily makes its way into my top RPGs of all time. For spending roughly 50 hours on it, the pacing in this game is excellent. You really get the feeling of a "zero to hero" adventurer story. The characters are generally pretty well written and the battle system is just superb. I only have two issues with the game, and they're relatively small. The English voice acting can be pretty flat and uninspiring, and the lack of maps combined with environments that look pretty similar can lead to feeling lost or turned around more than you'd probably want.

It's been a while since I played a game for this long, and I absolutely loved this one.