While Grandia III's story ultimately disappoints, its battle system is as hot as ever. At first it looks like complete chaos, with characters running all over the screen as the camera pans madly and sparks fly from a multitude of rapid-fire attacks. However, there are very precise, extremely well-conceived rules behind these riots, most of which revolve, literally, around a little circular track in the corner called the IP gauge. Every battle participant's icon travels around this gauge, and friend and foe alike take commands when they reach a certain point. Upon traveling a little further, they can execute them.
The twist is that you can mess with your enemies to delay their arrival at that all-important execution point. Better yet, you can attack them while they're in the gauge's home stretch to completely nullify their action for that round, and even initiate a damaging aerial combo. This all takes coordination between multiple characters and a canny sense of timing, including the time it takes characters to run across the field to perform their disruptive actions. Grandia III's battles utilize the strategic elements of positioning and timing far better than most other RPGs, and even offers incentive to fight skillfully, with bonuses for both aerial combos and damage-free victories.
As good as these battles are, repetition does make them get tiresome at times, particularly early in the game. Luckily, an artificial intelligence feature is on hand for those times when you'd like to be less involved in the moment-to-moment action. While it works as well as you'd expect, it only works as well as you'd expect. It would have been nice to have much finer control over the AI behavior, as the three presets lack the nuance required to avoid, say, spamming the same MP-wasting spell at the beginning of each battle. Sometimes that doesn't matter, but when it does it's annoying to be forced back to using manual control.
Like its battle system, Grandia III's character customization scheme is familiar yet pleasing. In addition to four normal pieces of armor, characters can equip mana eggs and skill books. The eggs can increase the impact of any of four schools of magic, or be synthesized into rare spells. Skill books work similarly, instead impacting three types of equippable skills. Skills bestow a wide variety of effects, from increased HP to counterattack-upon-dodge to decreased MP consumption. Last come special moves, which are character-specific techniques, learned over many battles, which consume "SP" and grow more powerful with use. Combined with frequent post-battle skill increases, this combination of magic, skills, and special moves does a good job of satisfying those RPG fan cravings for customization and constant progression while still letting the characters retain unique traits.
Unsorted Sacks, Heterogeneous Pouches
It's too bad that "mixed bag" is a writing cliché punishable by death, because it's a tempting way to describe Grandia III. The characters are sweet but the story is bland. The battles are sexy but sometimes overstay their welcome. The graphics are great but the music is forgettable. It comes down to this: if you want another Grandia that makes modest improvements on the gameplay of the others, you'll be well-served by Grandia III. If you're more of a story-obsessed player, then you might want to try it before you commit to a purchase. Odds are you'll find that the good outweighs the negative, but that's very much a function of personal preference. In short, try it. You might like it.
