Grandia demo released

[10.11.99] » The latest issue of Official PlayStation Magazine features a lengthy playable demo of Grandia, and the GIA brings you full impressions.

   The November issue of Official PlayStation Magazine (featuring Crash Team Racing on the cover) has hit store shelves, and the demo disc it comes with holds something sure to interest many RPG fans: two playable, English demos of Grandia. One demo allows the party to explore the first town; the other places it right in the middle of a dungeon for a spin with the game's battle system. The complete English intro and a "movie theater" mode featuring three random CG movies from the game.

   GIA agent Fritz Fraundorf has played through the demo; in addition to taking over 75 screenshots, he offers his impressions on the demo's contents:

   "The 'Town' demo begins with our youthful, would-be adventurer hero, Justin, deciding he wants to catch a ship to travel to another new continent. (His motivation for travelling lies buried in the segment of the game before the demo.) Justin and his friend Sue are then given the chance to explore Parm, their hometown. The city is massive -- for once, it actually resembles a city, instead of a cluster of houses and a lot of homeless people. Fortunately, tapping Select zooms the camera out to an overhead view that lets you see the town from afar.

   "However, the first thing I noticed about Grandia wasn't the large environenment, or the rather pixellated graphics, or the excellent music. It was the dialogue. It's bad. Really bad. While the text is mostly grammatical, it's incredibly banal and poorly-written. Most of the townspeople's dialogue is embarassingly stupid (see the town shots for numerous examples), and the item names sport numerous mistranslations (Sue comes equipped with a 'Sun Best'). The crowning moment comes when you stumble across a picture of a cherry labelled 'banana' -- Professor Daravon may not be the most coherent fellow around, but at least he could identify common fruits.

   "I also found both playable characters are cloying and dislikable: Justin is a totally generic hero save for his extreme stupidity (he's apparently unable to tell the difference between 'cold bread' and 'not warm bread'), and Sue is so bubbly and clueless that I frequently wanted to slap her. The plot is also rather lame so far; the entire demo is spent running around town, fulfilling various fetch quests.

   "Fortunately, the 'Battle' demo holds much more promise. You're given a developed, three-person party (Justin, Sue, and newcomer Feena) and dropped into the middle of some mountains. The mountains are quite maze-like, though there's a number of blue magical happy points that allow you to see your surrounding from afar. Instead of being tucked away in chests, items lay out in the open; you can just run over to them and grab them. Grandia features no random encounters; you can always see the monsters coming and dodge them -- always a welcome feature.

   "The battle system is unique; while reminiscient of the ATB system of Final Fantasy fame, it's less action-oriented. Icons representing each party member and enemy slide across a blue bar in the lower-right corner of the screen. When one of your characters' icons reaches a point three-fourths of the way across the bar, the action freezes and you choose a command from a Secret of Mana-style ring menu. The action resumes, and when the character's icon reaches the very end of the bar, he or she performs the chosen action.

   "What makes this system interesting is that you can also see when the monsters will act, giving you a chance to try to kill a certain enemy before it can attack. This takes planning, though: an attack against an enemy far away actually takes longer to execute, as your character has to run across the battlefield to attack. As a whole, the battle scenes resemble an actual battle far more than those of most RPGs ('Let's stand in a line and hit each other!'). Just be warned, it takes time to adjust to the chaos.

   "Just based on the demo, Grandia could go either way. The story and dialogue are as trite as they come (and the pixellated graphics could also use some work), but the music and battle system are both enjoyable. Hopefully, the final version will contain enough depth to ease the pain of Justin and Sue's banter."

   The full version of Grandia ships October 28th. In the mean time, be sure not to miss the numerous demo screenshots for a survey of the game's visuals.