Video Games : Grandia III

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from: Square Enix

: Grandia III

Price: $45.00
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Amazon Maximum Age: 20 years
Amazon Minimum Age: 144 months
Binding: Video Game
Brand: Square Enix
EAN: 0662248906010
ESRB Age Rating: Teen
Label: Square Enix
Manufacturer: Square Enix
Model: 662248906010
Platform: PlayStation2
Publisher: Square Enix
Release Date: September 08, 2006
Sales Rank: 1331
Studio: Square Enix

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Grandia III continues the Grandia series, taking the adventure to the skies. Take on the role of Yuki,a young man with dreams of flying his own plane. Testing his homemade design one night, he crashes and discovers a stowaway - his mother, Miranda. As they bicker, a young woman runs past them, chased by horse-riding soldiers. In trying to save the beautiful young psychic, he's thrown into a strange new world and a grand adventure.



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - What ever happened to that one guy?!
My title pretty much sums up this game; the plot is full of holes. But that's not the only thing, there are many other faults of this game which overall make it nearly unplayable. Continue on, brave readers, for the rest of my review.

Graphics (10/10): Let's start with the good parts of the game. The graphics of this game are absolutely beautiful. Everything is lovely, right down to the leaves on the trees. Even your characters look excellent. Everything is just amazingly great.

Music (6/10): The music is pretty good, nothing too memorable though. But, the music seems to fit the scenes and isn't irritating. There is one exception though. The Baccula settlement music is irritating beyong all reason and is quite possibly the worst town music in an RPG I have ever heard. Since you are in this town quite a bit, it really lowers the music score. The voice acting is superb, though. I believe the guy who voiced Yuki is the same one who voiced Vash in Trigun. It's just too bad the excellent voice actors didn't have better material to work with...

Characters (1/10): While I didn't find anything wrong with Yuki, the rest of the characters range from dull and pointless to excruciatingly irritating. Ulf and Dahna don't really seem to serve much purpose, and Alfina is very annoying. She cries in almost every scene, whether it's warranted to not (mostly not). I kept hoping she'd die, but alas, no such luck. I remember coming to a certain place in the game and admiring how pretty it was, when Alfina melodramatically falls to her knees and starts crying all of a sudden about how "dead-looking" the place is. None of the other characters have much personality. I found Miranda annoying, but at least she had some sort of personality. Alonso was my favorite character, but he and Miranda up and left the party never to be seen again (more on this later). Overall, none of the characters had any development and either had no personality or extremely irritating ones.

Story (0/10): The story is almost as though several people each wrote their own version and then they all got together and swapped random pages to make one whole story. It's just that incoherent. There are so many plot holes and random occurences that have no real explanation. For example, Yuki's best friend says he will meet him at a certain city. I arrive, he's nowhere to be found. Then, near the end of the game he shows up in a certain town in the middle of nowhere, with no explanation as to where he's been the rest of the game and why he's here now. Okay, you may think this is just one little incident, but the list goes on. There's a certain vilian whom I have no idea who he is or why he's even there. Remember how Miranda and Alonso leave the party? No mention is ever made of where they went for the rest of the entire game. Where did they go? Why was Yuki's mother so young? They mention her youngness all the time but don't mention why, and no mention is ever made of Yuki's father. Why is Raven so sinister looking? There's a certain pilot I assume died near the end of the game, but why does no one ever mention it? I could go on and on.

Aside from all these plot-holes, the main story itself is not impressive at all. It basically degenerates into a giant fetch-quest; having you travel from one place to another to get "orbs" from giant spirit creatures which seem to have no real purpose in defeating the final enemy. I tell you after slogging through a dungeon, having a very short bit of "here's the orb, you need to hurry" dialogue is not very rewarding at all. Plus, the "love will conquer all" theme made me want to gag. There's really nothing good about Grandia 3's story.

Battle System (5/10): The combat system is just like it's predecessors, Grandia 1 and 2. There is a little bar at the bottom of the screen which lets you know when your characters and the enemies will take their turn. If you hit one of the enemies while it's icon is in a certain part of the bar, you can cancel the attack. Also, you can perform special attacks if you can get one of your characters to knock an enemy into the air and a second character to hit the enemy at roughly the same time. I found this move almost impossible to pull off though. It is very hard to time it just right. Speaking of difficulty, the game's enemies ramp up in difficulty almost impossibly near Dragon Valley. The only good place to level raise is near the end of the game, which resulted in ridiculous amounts of level raising just so I could finish this monstrosity.

Gameplay (6/10): This is my catch-all category. Firstly, I must say that the only thing I enjoyed about this game is the NPCs. Never have there been such well-developed and interesting NPCs in an RPG I've played. I actually spent the last part of the game revisiting towns just to see what had happened to various NPCs. However, NPCs should NEVER be more interesting that the main characters. The fact that this occurs in this game bodes for more ill than good. Another complaint I have in this area is the flying around in your airplane. It is very slow, almost excruciatingly slow. I only did it to get to new areas-after that I used the instant teleport feature. It doesn't matter anyway, there's really nothing to explore, and the game had very few sidequests or minigames.

Overall (3/10): NOTE this score is not an average, it's my subjective overall score. Overall, the only fun to be had in this game is the colorful NPCs. This, however, does not save this game from horridness in any way. The characters and story are terrible, and this is really the meat of an RPG. While some may enjoy the challenge of the high difficulty level, I did not. Perhaps if the "challenge" part had been rewarded by an awesome story and lovable characters, this game would've gotten a better score. As it is though, there is really nothing about this game that made me want to slog through the difficult battles. Overall, I really can't recommend this game to anyone except those who will enjoy the challenge but don't care about the story.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - How did they manage to screw it up?

This adventure flies to a strong start, when a boy called Yuki who aspires to become a pilot, leaves his home village with his suspiciously young-looking mother. They run into a mystical girl and save a gambling addict from a floating barrel. Facing the saved man's tormentor and sailing on his ship make an interesting tale with the inclusion of the protagonist's mother giving an unique viewpoint. But suddenly both the mother and the gambler leave the game to give way for the boy and his young naive friends as they travel the world searching for the meaning of love. Their journey leads them to strange guardian spirits - whose presence or words of "wisdom" have no meaning in the game - and completely underdeveloped bad guys. The very linear story turns into a save-the-world adventure and is laden with horrifyingly naive dialogue and trite characters. The music in the desert makes deafness seem like a boon, and the rigged card games requires you to hit the X-button for hours and hours to win the prizes.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - A good piece of RPG if you like Grandia 2
The game plot seems rather straight on from the beginning after taking off in the plane but the story has it's quirks here and there but it's nothing breaking or anything. It should give the player anywhere from 40 to 45 hours spanning over both discs.

The combat system is nearly identical to Grandia 2's but the addition of aerial attacks which can deal a great deal of damage to enemies and the attacks can be chained (one after another), which is rather helpful against strong enemies or bosses.

Graphics are an upgrade from G2 just about everywhere, some of the cutscenes, both CG and in-game really show some emotion on the characters such as tears falling down their faces to emotionless laughter.

Voice acting is very good among all the characters as well, just as good as Grandia 2 did.

Grandia 3 in my opinion, is worth buying if you enjoyed Grandia 2.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Standard Fare RPG, Better Than Average RPG Story
Reviewed for Big Boss Games by: T.R.C.

The Cast:
Yuki - A wet behind the ears pilot.
Miranda - Yuki's much too young mother.
Alfina - A communicator.
Alonso - A captain and gambler.
Ulf - A dragon rider.
Dahna - A village chief.
Hect - A lonely girl with great violin talent.

Story (Score: 6/10): Guardians protect the world from great evil. Communicators are the chosen that can speak with the Guardians and pass down the wisdom imparted to them. When one of the Communicators starts to hunt down the Guardians it is up to Yuki and friends to save the Guardians and the world.

Music (Score: 8/10): Popish with some haunting violin tunes and orchestra music plays a big roll in the soundtrack of this game.

Battle System (Score: 6/10): Typical turn based attack system. No random battles! You can fight or stun an enemy and run away from them. Magic system is unique and fun to play with.

Although, after about the 30th time you see the same spell, you will wish for a shortened form of that spell. Mana Eggs can be found in dungeons, you can fuse the eggs together to make stronger Mana Eggs. Which can be converted into stronger spells.

Item of note: You can do combo attacks with your team members. Start by having one of your team members do a strong attack, this will knock the monster into the air. Then have another one of your team attack the monster before it hits the ground and watch the show.
You can have more them 2 people do a combo attack on the same monster if you can time it right.

Game-Play (Score: 6/10): Grandia III was a good game. It took me 41+ hours to complete. This is an average length for a PS2 RPG game.

Overall Score - 6/10: Grandia III was a fun game to play. I enjoyed the battle and magic systems. The story is what kept me playing, even at the times when I was about to walk away from the game forever, when another wonderful plot twist would unfold in the story. That would keep me glued to the TV to find out what would happen to Yuki and his friends. All in all, Grandia III is a good not great gaming experience. I recommend that you maybe rent this one or buy it used.

PS: Don't forget to get the strat guide for this game. Grandia III Official Strategy Guide (Bradygames)


Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - Good Battle system, very bland game
Having picked up this title on, essentially, the understanding that it has the same, highly entertaining battle system as Grandia II, it's safe to say I wasn't disappointed on that count. It even embellishes and adds a couple of nice touches.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much where the fun stops. Mediocre voice acting, bland characters, a small world and a story that's difficult to care about all combine to form a thoroughly lackluster title.

But still a better buy than FFX.

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