A tale of two discs: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
As coincidence would have it, the main character is a 16-year-old boy living in a quiet little village with big dreams of fulfilling his goals. It turns out that Yuki's main drive in life is to build an airplane capable of flying across the sea, though his earlier attempts all resulted in spectacular wrecks. He lives with his mother Miranda, though she'll probably initially be confused for a sister or girlfriend thanks to her youthful appearances. Miranda had a rough life after having Yuki as a single teen, and thus is very independent and headstrong. Very early on, they save the sheltered Alfina from a band of thugs chasing her. Alfina is the last in a long line of Communicators, whom can talk with the giant animal-like Guardians the protect the world. She must get to Arcriff, and Yuki and Miranda agree to help her out.
While it's very clear the story will eventually turn into your standard "save the world" fare, it's the time before this happens when Grandia III shines, thanks to the interactions of its characters. Yuki and Miranda act more like siblings than a parent and child, and are just so much more interesting than your standard RPG family. Miranda herself is one of the most interesting characters in a recent RPG, an uncommon character that actually breaks the mold that Japanese RPG's so often follow. Yuki is getting near an age when he'll gain more independence and try things out for himself, which Miranda is painfully aware of. She also gives him a nudge towards Alfina, whom herself led a rather lonely life and warms up to the company of the two. The three meet Alonso, a down on his luck sailor that Miranda instantly distrusts, but there's more to him than meets the eye and she fears she may have misjudged him. In all, the first ten or so hours is no less than RPG bliss.
Unfortunately, at this point, GameArts figured they were finished screwing around and proceeded to the melodramatic and utterly predictable story. After a somewhat touching farewell to his mother, Yuki and Alfina move on to more serious matters while Miranda and Alonso sadly leave the story for good. Two bland characters replace them - Ulf's whole purpose is to say how hungry he is, and Dahna is there just so her boobs will jiggle. Dahna also has a relationship with a mysterious and enigmatic character, but he's a little too mysterious and enigmatic and as a result no connection is ever made with him, thus wasting how that aspect of the story resolves. Soon every place they visit seems to be destroyed by some sinister forces, there's lots of suffering, lots of crying, and the characters make almost no effort to converse with each other. Instead, it's just a string of moving from one area to the next to move the story along. Even the whole relationship between Yuki and Alfina just spontaneously stops to develop after being advanced so much early on. After all, why would characters interact if they were too busy saving the world from the next great evil?
And that's just the middle of the story; the end just degrades into a very generic fare with some gaping plot holes. Alfina becomes an annoying hysterical mess as she realizes that her brother is up to no good - a little detail that is painfully obvious to the player shortly after the first battle in the entire game is fought. Meanwhile, Yuki just sulks and feels sorry for her, and all the fondness that the player had for the lead characters quickly is washed away by disinterest. Also, even why they're moving on to new areas is never explained. How did they know that the being they were looking for would be in the floating castle ruins that were visible but mysteriously never accessible for the entire game? Why is the castle floating in the first place, other than the fact that there's some unwritten rule that every RPG needs a floating castle?
The player keeps asking "why?" more and more often, not due to the story intending for him or her to ask that, but because the story leaves out such key information. Even the villains behind the scene that the player was waiting so long to have their motives explained simply aren't explained at all. Each aspect of the story just gets worse and worse right up to the very end. The most annoying part in all of this is that the game was going so perfectly for the first third, and then became strikingly mediocre in the middle and just a mess at the end. The beginning is so great that it just raises your expectations so high... then the story shifts gear and severely under performs. It's almost as if GameArts is taunting their fans, showing flashes of brilliance to prove that they still have their touch, then just pulls the rug out from under their feet. There's a fine line between paying homage to previous games and blatantly recycling ideas, and Grandia III goes well beyond that line before the story ends.
Grandia III does have one big thing going for it, as with the other games in the series - the battle system. In other RPG's, you just pick your targets to cause damage. Here, battles are far more strategic. In addition to your standard attacks, there is another attack that does less damage but can cancel the action of an opponent if timed right and cause him to wait a bit before attempting a move again. Characters and enemies can move around the battlefield, which makes time bombs an interesting mechanic to deal against. Not only that, but the shape of the area of effect for spells and special moves cause them to be more practical at certain times, depending on where the enemies are in relation to you, and where they will be when that spell or move executes. At the right moment, a character can knock a vulnerable enemy high into the air, opening up the opportunity for another ready character to perform a damaging aerial combo. Quite simply, the battle system alone is what will keep many players plodding along through the game to the end - unlike many battles in RPG's, the fights in Grandia are often such a joy to fight.
The ability system has changed yet again from Grandia games. This time, mana eggs and skill books are equipable, and they enhance the power of certain types of spells and skills respectively. Spells and skills are essentially items that are equipped on a character, with their capacity increasing as they gain experience. While the basic spells and skills are bought at stores, the best ones are extracted from mana eggs and skill books, essentially destroying them for the spells and skills. The best mana eggs can only be obtained by fusing two other mana eggs together, then potentially fusing that new egg with another egg, and so forth. There's a decent bit of customization available here, and will take a bit of experimenting to gain the best abilities possible.
Thankfully, the difficulty of Grandia III is noticeably higher than in the relatively easy games earlier in the series. In an odd departure from Grandia games, some random encounters actually have the potential to knock out your entire party. This mostly happens towards the end, as enemies become progressively more powerful later in the game. This may result in having to allot a little bit of time later in the game to work on your party's experience. While they could have toned down the enemies a little bit late in the game to prevent having to level up at some points, but it's probably better off than having it too easy. That plus the extra fights add a little bit of playing time to the game, which is relatively short for an RPG at 35 hours long. A lot of the bosses can be difficult as well on their own. Some of the earlier boss fights involve a lot of strategy and are simply a joy to fight, but many bosses get increasingly one-dimensional later on in the story.
Despite having such a great battle system, there are a few little flaws in the gameplay elements. First, while the on-screen dungeon maps may seem great at first, it basically kills the exploration factor. If you see a dead end on the map, you can be assured there is a treasure chest there. While you can fly around in your plane on the world map, it really only gives the illusion of a big world with a lot to do. Instead, you're basically limited to pointing yourself towards your next destination and waiting to get there - old areas are rather static, and you cannot visit areas that the story hasn't given you permission to visit yet. Also, the game has a version of summoned attacks that can be used when a gauge is full, which takes a dozen or so battles to fill. These attacks are likely a bit too powerful, especially the one that freezes time for your enemies. The time freeze lasts so long that you can either kill or almost kill just about every boss before the effect wears off. The only boss this isn't a sure win against is the final boss, simply due to the sheer amount of hit points he has, but even then it's enough to shave off half of them.
The linear story provides almost no sidequests or optional content whatsoever. Unlike previous Grandia games, there isn't even a single optional dungeon to crawl through, leaving your only choice of what to do next simply heading to the next area. The only side game is a dice game at a casino that you can play to purchase a few unique items, but the odds are most certainly in your favor. You can literally set the game up and just tap the X button while you focus your attention on something else for several minutes. There are also rather little configuration settings available. There is no way to turn on subtitles, and since a voiced line here and there is mumbled it can lead to some slight confusion. Also, the cutscenes are not pausable, and some can go on for several minutes. You also cannot change the text speed, which is annoying as you cannot move to the next character's line until the current character's line is done filling in. This is made even worse by the fact that at times words are spelled out very slowly. It's almost as if those words are written so slowly for emphasis, but the choice of words that this happens makes little sense at all.
Overall, the world is absolutely striking. A lot of the areas, particularly the earlier outdoor ones, are among the most beautiful and scenic that you'll find in a game today. Grandia III paints such a believable illusion of you standing on a cliff with a misty valley underneath, or a pristine ocean hitting the beach. The colors are bright and vivid, and the locations are just a marvel to look at, especially with the background work. The world made out of glass is particularly noteworthy in how the light reflects along the surfaces as you rotate the camera. Though the spell animations are often direct repeats from Grandia II, they are nonetheless impressively rendered. Some of the newer high-leveled spells are a true marvel, especially the chilly Absolute Zero and the summon spells themselves. There are a few little details that stand out, though. For one, the character models are a bit lower quality than the environments are, with the exception of the impressive giant Guardians. While this is part of the intentional artistic design of the characters themselves, it does create a minor amount of clashing when they're up against the environments. On the other hand, the characters animate extremely fluidly and convey their emotions very well. Also, some of the indoor locations are simply bland due to their repetitiveness and lack of the grand backgrounds the outdoor locations have. As luck would have it, most of these locations occur late in the game, including what might be the drabbest final dungeon in a modern RPG.
The audio is a mixed bag. Noriyuki Iwadare returns to write the soundtrack yet again, just like in the previous games. However, this time the music seems rather uninspired, and doesn't set itself apart from the music in the previous games. Toss in the fact that a few standard tracks are repeated a bit too often in dungeons, and the hideous theme in the desert settlement, and it's a pretty ho-hum experience. The one noteworthy exception is how one melancholy tune meshes so well with Hect's sorrowful violin solos in a few cutscenes. The voice actors put in a pretty decent effort. However, the script itself holds them back in a few areas, but they worked with what they had admirably enough. After all, there's only so many different ways that Alfina's voice actress can cry before things get annoying.
In the end, Grandia III is a rather mixed bag. Its combat system is still spectacular, even if the summons create some balance issues in major fights. The system itself can turn a mediocre RPG into a decent one, which is the case here. While you can sense what you're going to get out of the story of most RPG's very early on, Grandia III encompasses the full range of the spectrum from spectacular at the start gradually down to poor. With this in mind, the game isn't for everyone. For very casual RPG fans, it's probably a good idea to skip Grandia III for some more overall solid titles. However, fans of the genre that have already played all of the major titles will probably find things to like about Grandia III, especially those with selective memories. After all, the first third of the game might be among greatest roleplaying experiences this generation, which alone is worth considering if just to see what happens when everything clicks. However, it's important to brace yourself for the inevitable disappointment as well, as the story becomes increasingly poorly written and the main plot itself is nothing you haven't seen before (especially if you've played some of the previous titles from GameArts).