Grandia Xtreme is a JRPG released in 2002 for the PS2 made by Game Art and publish by Enix, being a spin-off of the Grandia series, which is supposedly a more "Gameplay" focus, Grandia 1 was once of the first JRPG I have ever played and liked it, later I always played Grandia 2 which I loved, but weirdly I forgot a lot about it after playing it compared to other JRPG I played around the same time like Digital Devil Saga, meanwhile Grandia 3 which I only played years later is game that while I did 100% completion, I didn't really like, the gameplay had a lot of fustrations, and the story started good but fell off by the end, this was the last Grandia game I haven't beaten yet, and honestly I should have left that way.
The title is a exaggeration, I don't think it's a "Xtremlly" bad game, only games like Quiet man or Super man 64 deserve such titiles , it was just a pun on my part to make the title more interesting, but despite all my complaintes I still wierdly beat it, after 26 hours, why did I torture myself ???
Gameplay
The game like other Grandia games is a turn base battle system, where all combatants enemy or ally are in a circle that indicates the turn order, which is a real time affair, character that are ahead in the circle will likely attack first , when a character reach a 3/4 of the circle you can select what this character will do during that turn, in this game combat option are follow, Combo which is the regular attack in this game, it will deal 2 to 4 attacks depending on the character, Critical, which will attack the enemy only once but it will delay the enemy of even cancel their action if you do it right before their action, this is a very useful tool to stop enemies from using powerful magic, Moves which is basically special skills they consume SP which can be only regain by attacking enemies, Magic which consumes MP , AI which you can select the behavior of the AI so the game plays by Itself, I never use that option and lastly they escape option whee you escape from battle.
Most of what I mention works the same in other Grandia Games, and I like them gameplay wise, my issue with this game is mostly what's new in this game, like how you get new magic in this game.
Each character can equip a certain amount of Eggs, melee focus character can hold only 1 egg meanwhile Magic focus characters can hold up to 4, each egg has their list of Magic and their MP , so a base Water egg has 3 magic with only 30 MP meanwhile an End game Egg has 7 or 8 Magic and 130 MP, the Biggest issue is how you acquire them, you can get them in 3 way, randomly getting it in a treasure chest but it's a really low chance and I rarely got one after the midway point of the game, the other way is to fight a dungeon boss again, and get around 3 eggs, this wouldn't be such an issue if you had the option to go back to the Dungeon right before the boss, but that would be too convenient, because you also have to redo at least half of the dungeon all over again, some of them can take up to an hour to complete, and after certain points in the story like doing all elemental bosses or unlock the final Dungeon, all or your previews transporter points are reset and you have to redo those dungeons again with enemies that were buffed to match your level, to make sure that dungeon also take as long to complete as it did when you first visited it , the only other way to get more powerful eggs is by Fusion, where you combine 2 of your already limited eggs to make a new powerful one, I get that if the game gave you a lot of eggs you could exploit the system and get powerful magic from the early game, but I hate how few eggs I can get because of it, and how little I can experiment with Magic in this game, if that wasn't bad enough the MP that eggs have is very limited as well, Unless the enemy is resistant to physical attacks , using magic in this game outside of support magic feels like more trouble than it's worth , which is downgrade from other Grandia games where using magic not only felt good but also gave you plenty of MP to use magic to your hearts content and using magic level you some of your stats and gave you access to more magic, Magic in Grandia 1 is what made that game fun to begin with.
Another system that is also a downgrade from other Grandia games is the skill sytem, it work similar to eggs each character has a certain ammount of Book slots the ammount depends on the character and each book gives you a different ammont of skills slot , from 1 to 3 , and a different level of skill you can equip from C to A, my issue with this system is very similar to eggs, where Books are very rare to find, despite the fact that skills themself are very easy to find, to the point where your limited inventory of 30 items, will be full of scrows that you can either make a skill with it or sell for cheap at a shop, skills that you won't equip because you can't find the Books.
The battle itself are fine, mostly because it carries over what is good from Grandia 1 and 2, I explained the basic early, and for what's worth it works fine, my only big issue is that character won't be able to attack an enemy because one of my allies decided to run right in from of the charcter trajectory and they had to take a longer route due to that, making them unable stop to attack an enemy because of it, which happen some what frequent and was always fustraiting when it did.
Because there's always a time between chosing an Magic or Skill from the character actully use it, in which enemies can move around the map, some attack that I had planed to hit 3 enemies for example, was only able to hit 1 enemy, and because as I said before MP is very limited and SP take awhile to recharge, so it's always fustrating when to me, lastly battle feel like they last way too long, not only battle animtions are relativly slow, but I also enemies are spongy, they have too much HP for their own good.
If those issues weren't bad enought Dungeon exploration is also not very good, actully I think it's prety terrible, Evann walks way to slow , and dungeons are very big , sometimes the games tries to break up to monotomy by doing some light puzzle, but they are to far in between to make them any monotomos, after the halfway point in the game, it simply gives up , good dungeon desing and desides that the player has to have 35 levels of very simple dungeon desing that feel randomly genereted and sometimes the games breaks that monotomy by having a less bad dungeon in between those very boring secgments, and the camera in this game doesn't help matters either it feels too close to the character and you can't control it with the left analogue stick despite the fact that you could control the camera in Grandia 1 a PS1 game using the left anogue stick if you had dualshock controler, another big issue with this game is how you save it, there's only 1 save point in the entirity of this game , it's a Guy in the base town, the same guy that you have for some tecnical reason, you must talk to if you want to acess the town or explore the dungeon instead of using the doors in that room, that means you can only save whenever you find a teletransport point, this wouldn't be a issue if the game wasn't so stingy with it, but it only gives the player very few of these, and never before boss battle, sometimes you can be playing the game up to 3 hours without being able to save, and if you died because of a boss fight after 3 hours of not being able to save you would have to play it all over again I really hate that and if you really want to play this game, don't feel guilty in using save states here.
Graphics
This is a ugly game even for early PS2 game, it was released in 2002 yet looks like a Dreamcast barely any better than Grandia 2, the difference being that the camera is closer to the low poly playble character and low res textures, the CGI in this games look really out of place for a PS2, they look something straight out of the 90's
The environment have some highlights like the vocano in the Fire dungeon or temple in the water dungeon, but they are too far in between and not that especial enough to save the game.
Music
JRPG nornally have some fantasitic OST, Grandia however felt a little bit behind on that aespect, it was never bad music, but it wasn't exellent either, the music here is good, The music that plays when the army is the cneter stage on tha scene fits perfectly in the moment, it's sound menecing and Grandiose, which fits perfectly with the shady and untrstu worthy army in this game, the Dugeon music is lowekey but also fit witht the game, the Fire dungeon theme sounds like something that would play in a volcano.
My isssue as to why I wouldn't hate the music here higher it because of the battle music, there's 5 in total, and I feel like outside of 1 (The battle theme that plays when an enemy gets you by surpsie and has an advantage over the party) outside of it they don't fit the game, the regular battle theme sound something that would play in happy tropical adventure, not in long and extensive dungeon, the boss theme feels too "happy" and "exiting" something that would play in a boss fight against secondary comical villans not giant monster that 15 minutes to beat, I think a music that represent something that sound like a battle of atrition would have sounded right in the place, the Other boss theme is alright but it rarely plays, I wish it was regular boss theme instead, the Final boss them is not very epic and forgatable, for me the most import music in the game is the battle theme, and it's sad that this game miss the mark in those.
Story
Grandia 1 and 2 were mostly story base JRPG, Grandia Xtreme being a spin-off with focus on the gameplay, didn't promissed a good story, and sadly there's no suprise here, the plot here has potential but it's excution the writer didn't even try something interesting.The game starts with a lot of interesting plot points, Evann being a Ranger that had a apperntly very powerfull father that died relatily young, Myam had a family that die on a natural disorder disaster. and Jaid that failed to protect someone who he loved, not only that but the main character was already familiar the main antagonist since they knew each other from Childhood, and because the Party is composed of people from different races, they distrust each other and only work toughter because they have the same goal, this all sounds like a intetesting set up, and from the few good scenes this game has, the writting can shine, the issue is that those moments are so rare and the plot here is so shallow , that it can't shine and it's under devolped.
Evann and the whole Ranger thing , which is the reason why he was kidnaped by the army to being with is never explained, Myam which I find to be a realy cute child character with a interesitng backstory is never developed, same thing can be said about Jaid, and any other character in the party that had even less screen time, I get that this is supposed to be a gameplay focus game, but I hate how the protagonist the character with the most spotlight in the game is also the most annoying character, He's just annoying and stupid, with almost no redeeming qualities , sometimes as the leader of the group , he will do some good stuff and as the sole party member that will always be in the pary he has to say why the anagonist are wrong, but it feels forced he only does or say that stuff because he's a JRPG protagonist, not because he genuinly became a better person.
The antagonist are even less interesting, the first one wants more power for itselft just because he wants to be more powerfull and the Second one just want to make all people into one because War bad, it's very interesting or thought provoking.
There's a 100 Floor dungeon that you can complet to get the "true ending" but looking on YT it's just a glorified Good bye.
Conclusion
After think why I spend 26 hour in a game that I dislike in a peried of 4 days, I came to the comclusion that I only maneged to beat this game and not give it up because I was playing this game while whatching something else on Youtube, or else I would have already gave it up and not write this Reveiw, I just turned my brain off and enjoyed the Grandia battle system, it's very easy to do that as well because outside of the final boss , this a very easy game, and I only died because a treasure chest shape enemy that I took too long to kill one shooted my party twice, and made me loose 1 hour of progress in total, I think the reason why this game is so bad is because the devs only had less than year and half to make this game, Grandia 2 was released in Japan on october 3rd 2000, meanwhile this game was released in January 31st in Japan, this means that between the Relase of this game and Grandia 2 only 546 days had passed, considering that back then games had to be ready to ship a month before it's acual release date, it no wonder this game is so bad, they barely had time to make it and why content in this game was strech thin, anway this game is a waste of time please don't play it.
Pros
- + Grandia battle system
- + Decent Music
Cons
- - Books and Egg system
- - Tedious Dungeons
- - Story with wasted potential
- - Bad Antagonist
- - Annoying Protagonist
- - Scarce Save opportunites
- - Ugly CGI
- - Ugly Graphics
4
Gameplay
The base Grandia Gameplay is the only redeeming quality here, Character progression is horrible beyond belief , Exploration was made to waste as much time as the devs wanted,being a boring mess.
4
Graphics
They just took a mediocre looking Dreacast game into the PS2 and thought none would complain, what's worse is that it doesn't even attempt to make the game look good with a pretty art style.
3
Story
The story would have been good if they made it smaller and simpler like a SNES era RPG, instead they attempt to made a grandiose JRPG story, but forgot that they didn't have time or money for one.
7
Sound
It's Sound nice but nothing that I would listen outside of the game special because the battle theme here aren't very interesting
2
Replayability
Why would do this with yourself ?????
Sure you can do the 100 hour dungeon or mind max your character, but would anyone do such things
4
out of 10
Overall
Grandia Xtreme is a game that shouldn't exist in it's estate, if they had another year of development things could have gone differently , and being a very good game even, sadly what we have here is a boring mess.
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