GameShark | PlayStation 2 | Previews | Grandia III

Presentation

Finally there's the presentation of Grandia III which is, no pun intended, grand! Grandia III is the kind of game that tells 90 percent of its story through beautiful and brilliant cinematics. While I'm not a big fan of games that have way too many cinematics, Grandia III's truly are worth taking the time to watch. Although there's a feature in our preview disc that allows you to skip them I would warn against doing this (assuming the final version has this feature) because you'll be missing a great deal of wonderful content. The rest of the story is told through in-game text. The only complaint about the game I could lodge is that sometimes the text speed is paced deliberately slow. This is to express hesitation on the part of the character but it is very irritating at times. I doubt this will change before the final version of the game ships, so we'll take that up when the time comes to review the final version of the game. 'Nuff said on that front..

While the characters in Grandia III seem like the usual clichéd and contrived suspects you'd find in a Japanese role-playing game at first glance, as the story progresses and things get darker you'll realize that this is a different cast of characters and a different kind of story worth following. Many of the characters are fleshed out by their shortcomings and the fact that they don't always succeed in what they set out to do on their first outings. Add to that Miranda (Yuuki's mom) tagging along and you'll note that this is not your usual RPG storyline.

Final Thoughts

Grandia III looks like it'll be a great game when it is released next month. It has a great combat system, plenty of skills and magic to choose from, a storyline that's compelling and a presentation that can stand toe to toe with the best RPG's out there. We're looking forward to this game's release on February 14th. Look for our review next month!