This was the game that was supposed to rival Final Fantasy. This was the company that created Lunar. This was the composer of Lunar: The Silver Star's Grindery theme.
Maybe I was expecing too much.
First of all, I want to take a moment to correct many Grandia fans who think Lunar is a Grandia rip-off. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Lunar was released in 1992 for the Mega CD (Sega CD in America). Grandia came much later. The fact that Grandia resembles Lunar causes me to believe that Game Arts wanted to make another Lunar, but lacked an original idea. They took the main idea from Lunar, changed things up a bit, and called it Grandia. This is where my biggest problem with Grandia lies, the story.
You have your basic "Young boy and friends becomes a man, and save the world from evil" deal. Pretty ho-hum by itself, but many games have managed to save themselves from that story line with a memorable cast or a different approach to the story. Alas...there is no salvation for Grandia. The story is over halfway through the first disk. You'll be able to firgure the whole thing out in no time flat, and nothing will surprise you. The characters make things worse. Supporting characters join the party only briefly. There's no time to develop them before they leave. Even the main cast is terrible. I was completely indifferent to everyone in the game. I actually wished Gadwin had eaten Sue for dinner! And Puffy too! By the time I reached the main continent, I thought, "Boy, Vic Ireland could have done wonders with this translation." Yes, it was that bad.
The graphic are very good, but this only makes me despise Grandia even more. Why did such good graphics go to Grandia? Why couldn't a deserving game, Wild Arms, have gotten them? Why does Justin get to knock over brooms as he runs by them? Rudy deserves to knock over brooms, not Justin. Grrr. Grrr. Angry. Angry.
And the sound! Oh, the pityable sound! Idaware must have been drunk when he wrote the score. Idaware is one of my favorite video game composers, but he really bombed on this one. 1991 J-pop sounds better than this. The voice acting is also very bad. It's cheesy. I don't mean first season of Power Rangers cheesy, where it's so bad you love it. I mean "God, if I hear them the voice actors one more time, I may ask you to strike me dead" cheesy. The only reason I gave the sound a 5 is because of one line. Torwards the beginning of the game, there is a battle in which the opponet screams, "Die by this nerve gas!". That line made me cry...because I was laughing so hard. I don't think it was intentionally funny. I purposely hit reset and played that battle over about three times just to hear that line.
All in all, Grandia is a one disk game stretched into 2. It's highly disappointing. Rent it, beat it, forget it, but don't waste money buying it.
This was the game that was supposed to rival Final Fantasy?
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