Grandia

Grandia

Grandia falls under the genre of role playing game or RPG and is the first title in the Grandia series developed by Game Arts. The game was published by ESP Software in Japan, SCEA in North America and Ubisoft in Europe. The game has an ESRB rating of E (Everyone) for Comic Mishief and Mild Animated Violnce.

Features

The story of Grandia takes place in a period of a steadily-advancing civilisation and the Garlyle Forces, a military organization has taken over the task of unearthing ancient ruins, seizing powerful relics for its own benefit. The story start off with the protagonist Justin resolving to venture outside his hometown of Parm and eventually discover something no one has ever seen before. Other playable character are Sue, Justin’s best friend; Feena, an agile fighter and accomplished mage; Gadwin, a knight in gold armor; Rapp, a cunning thief; Milda, a feral woman from the village of Laine; Guido, a travelling salesman and a history buff and Liete, a mysterious woman who contacted Justin in the Sult Ruins. Grandia’s environments appears as three-dimensional field maps and characters represented by 2-D animated bitmap sprites. The camera is fully rotational and follows the party from an angled third-person perspective. Players are given the opportunity to allows characters to learn new abilities through the use of a weapon and spell-element level system. The character would unlock a new ability after achieving a certain level by using a particular weapon or spell element. The game offers platers a variety of choices such as swords, maces, axes, whips and knives. The main character begins with no Magic but uncovers a thing called Mana Eggs which allows him to imbue characters with a new spell. Magic in Grandia on the other hand is divided to four groups which are Fire, Wind, Water and Earth. Repeated uses of a perticular spell allows the party member to increase their proficiency in that element, allowing them to learn other spells of that type. Besides that, once players have mastered the basic elements, more complex elements are available. These elements are Ice, Lightning, Forest and Explosion. As players progress through the game, they will have more choice over what spells and abilities their characters can learn.