Grandia 3 (PS2)

Yuuki here with my Review of Grandia 3. This is another series that I'm a big fan of and I was excited to play this game. I'd heard alot of talk on wether it was good or bad and I'm here to tell you. So let's begin.

Gameplay: As to previous Grandia games 3 employes similar play in most respects. Battles are still done in the same open medium allowing you to catch all your enemies in a single wide range spell/skill or miss and only get one. When wandering the dungeons and fields you have a nifty radar system for finding chests and points of interest. This is nothing new but still a nice feature. You move about the world map via plane which is kind of fun, doing loops and such. 4/5

Story: The Basic story is your typical would be hero and girl who must save the world. The Main characters Yuki and Alfina are your average hero types, she is determined to save the world and make everything puppies and rainbows and he just wants to fly around in a plane. You'll quickly find both really annoying and become more interested in the other characters. The side characters are much more entertaining, like Yuki's mom (?) Miranda who you'll be wondering is that really his mom...as she looks his age. Ulf the wolf boy who rides a dragon and few others. Basically its a point A to point B system of saving the world, nothing great there and really kind of slow to develop. 2/5

Graphics: Beautiful to say the least, areas are colorful and somewhat interactive. Characters all have great costumes and just look great in and out of battle. Add the fact that the game is full of enough cutscenes to make it more feel like your watching a movie than playing a game, but that can be really tedious at times as you can't skip thru them. Magic is all basically the same as previous games only much prettier, I'd cast certain spells just to watch them. Again though skills and magic take forever due to all the graphicy shiney goodness. 5/5

Audio: Great voice acting and cinema. BGM is nice, but easily goes unnoticed as it isn't great. Lots of nice little add ins like the sound of enemies screaming in pain as you belt them with lighting or burn them alive. Well done but nothing special. 3/5

Replay: The game is long and the story isn't really note worthy. I'd only replay it if I had nothing better to do. and the first time through I found it to easy to just put away and play something else. 1/5

Overall: Here is the low down. Its nothing great, the game if freaking pretty but thats about it. Battles get tedious and you want to start skipping them which you shouldn't as most bosses are way over balanced. Cutscenes happen about every 15 minutes and last about 20. You'll quickly feel like its an interactive DVD and would rather go watch March of the Penguins. For the most part is not a bad game but not a great one either. I'd only recommend it to people are fans of the series or like that love will save the world stuff. 3/5