Grandia Xtreme

Grandia Xtreme
RPG - PS2
Memory Card - 8 save slots
1 player

Do you ever get the feeling that some games were made just for you? The art, the characterization, the gameplay - everything about it seems perfect. Grandia was that game. And Grandia this is not.

Although this is the third game, they chose not to call this Grandia III. If you came expecting it to follow the same conventions as the main series, you'd be in for a shock. What we have here is a blend of RPG and dungeon crawler. Sadly, many of the things I liked about the Grandia series are removed. There is a bare-bones story to give GX a framework. It's hardly as ambitious as the other Grandias, but it's workable. What is a loss is the lack of characterization. There are 8 characters this time, and none of them are ever fleshed out. You never really end up caring for their causes. Grandia has always been character-driven, but Xtreme de-emphasizes that. Grandia also sported really nice locales - dungeons & towns had very unique and imaginative designs. I always looked forward to finding the next place to go because the locations were so creative. In GX, there is a total of two towns. Two. But one of them doesn't even have shops. That's where the dungeon crawler aspects intrude on my enjoyment.

Everything centers on a single town. There you have the only shops and the only save point in the game. Think about that for a moment. That means that even if you've been in a dungeon for two hours (which is minimal for GX), you cannot save your progress until you head back to town. There is no quicksave offered. This is probably GameArts/Enix's idea of pushing the survival aspect of the game. But it ends up being impractical. A quicksave wouldn't compromise their vision of difficulty, but it would make GX a lot more playable. Instead, they limit sessions only to those times where you can dedicate 3 hour blocks to it.

Their attempt to alleviate this is pretty irritating. Scattered throughout dungeons are Geo Points that allow your party to warp back to town. Some Geo Points allow only a one way trip. Others allow you to go back to town, and then warp back. The problem is, everytime you re-enter a dungeon via Geo Point or otherwise, all the enemies respawn. So using the Geo Point allows you to save. But the penalty is you have to wade through another hour or so of fighting again. There are no Geo Points right before a boss.

Ultimately this type of design drags down Grandia's greatest selling point - its battle engine. First, the good. Xtreme has the most sophisticated iteration of it yet. It's still as strategic as the previous entries, where everything plays out in semi-real time. The action pauses everytime it's a party-members turn, but timing and position heavily influence your attack effectiveness. Some interesting changes are all related to your SP attacks. In previous Grandias, everytime you enter a dungeon, you would get HP, MP, and SP. In Xtreme, your SP starts at 0 every time you enter a dungeon. But it builds up with time, and also whenever you hit or get hit. This is nice because it allows you to use your SP attacks frequently, and believe me, you'll need it. In addition to the way it builds up, you're also able to do combination SP attacks. Similar to Chrono Trigger, there are double SP attacks and triple SP attacks. Once you initiate the attack, it needs to wait until all members involved in the attack are ready (ie all members have to have their turn available) before it executes. And finally, you learn SP attacks mid-battle. When you use your SP attacks, you build levels for that attack. When you hit a certain threshold, you'll execute (and thus learn) a new attack. You'll be fighting an enemy and executing an attack in your arsenal, and then suddenly, you'll be doing something completely new and usually more powerful. It's a pleasant surprise, and you'll be able to use the special attack thereafter.

Xtreme also takes skills and mana eggs to the next level. Similar to Final Fantasy IX, you need to equip skills in order to build their levels. Skills range from getting attack bonuses toward certain creatures, to boosting your agility rating to being able to counterattack when hit. Skills play a critical role and can decide life and death. In GX, enemies actually drop skill scrolls, so they are plentiful. The key is in leveling up those skills so that they can be useful. On the magic side, I really did not like how mana eggs were simplified in Grandia II. Luckily, Grandia Xtreme is a step in the right direction. Just like skills, mana eggs are relatively plentiful. But instead of leveling the eggs through fights, eggs are leveled by fusion. Mix a Level 1 Stone Egg with a Level 1 Fire Egg and you create a Level 2 Burst Egg. Mix a Level 2 Burst Egg with a Level 1 Fire Egg and you create a Level 3 Bomb Egg. Each type of egg has its own set of spells, so you may want to keep a lower level egg around for what it can cast. When you fuse eggs, sometimes you get random bonuses such as 1/2 casting cost, extra damage, etc. Conveniently, the game keeps a log of what types of eggs are required to make other eggs.

But as great as these systems are in improving Grandia's gameplay, it's the overall design decisions that bog the game down. There will be times where you will need to leave the dungeon in order to save. And as I said, all the enemies respawn when you go back to where you left off. So you're constantly fighting over and over again. To make matters worse, some bosses are unfair in that if you have the right equipment, you'll do fine. But if you don't, you'll only last a couple of turns. You'll probably know what to do the next time, but that means going through the dungeon again (or Geo Point, if you saved) and fighting an hour or three's worth of battles again.

To top it all off is what I believe to be the game-breaking flaw. Consider this: You can choose your party. Evann has to stay constant, but you can choose 3 of the remaining 8. In certain parts of the story, you are forced to use certain characters. But characters that are not in your party do not gain experience. So if you want to keep your party balanced, you have to go back to town and keep switching characters. If that wasn't bad enough, the enemies are scaled to be at a level around your highest party member. Since Evann is always in your party, he is easily 10 levels above your other party members. That means that although he can fight normal enemies ok, your other members are struggling. Some of them can only hit enemies for 1 point of damage. Sure it keeps the game challenging at all times, but battles end up taking a long time to fight. But when you consider that bosses can also slaughter your underleveled party members, it forces you to level grind. But wait, even the weakest enemies take 5 minutes to fight, and give you minimal experience... and if you eventually level your underpowered members, Evann ends up leveling in the midst of it as well, which makes the enemies more powerful and the whole cycle repeats. Absolutely tedious.

And that's what Grandia Xtreme is. It turned what would otherwise be a great system against the player. Consider this: I've owned Grandia Xtreme since its Japanese launch date. That's 6.5 years before I could finish it. The boredom of going through the same dungeons over and over, as well as the irritation of fighting the same enemies over and over drove me absolutely mad. Many have wondered if Grandia could stand alone on its fun battle mechanics. Grandia Xtreme proves that it cannot.