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.