Welcome one and all to a new, possibly-recurring feature where we take a deeper dive into an RPG’s combat mechanics than usual. And what better place to start than with Game Arts’ Grandia, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this week? It’s hard to believe Grandia is 20 years old since the game’s battle system has barely aged and still serves as the groundwork for many modern JRPGs. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely one of the more engaging and influential systems we saw in the ’90s so let’s examine it in detail…

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But before that, we should probably travel twenty years into the past to put Grandia and its systems in context. At the time, Japanese takes on the RPG genre tended to use purely turn-based systems derived from Wizardry (although often simplified by way of Dragon Quest), or used typical RPG stats as a means of spicing up action games like Ys and the Mana titles. There are some instances where we see the use of action elements in a turn-based system, such as the timed hits in Super Mario RPG, but the combat in Grandia was a huge paradigm shift. There may have been earlier examples with similar systems, but none had quite the same impact in shifting turn-based combat from a passive experience where players waited patiently for their turn to one where they were constantly engaged in the flow of battle (minus during the attack animations, but we’ll get to that).

In an interview, director Hidenobu Takahashi said that the title “Grandia” came from a Formula One race car. Like the process behind designing a high-end racer, the game’s development involved ‘a variety of specialists coming together to challenge themselves with a new design.’ Grandia’s combat is largely derived from the classical turn-based systems, especially Game Arts’ previous work on the Lunar games, but you can see the team challenging themselves in how many fresh ideas it incorporates. In particular, the system in Grandia feels original because of how it switches the static turn order that defined the Japanese style of RPGs into something more fluid and engaging. Each participant in the fight is represented on a bar at the bottom of the screen referred to as the “Initiative Point Gauge”. Once their icon reaches a certain point on the gauge, players can select an action for them to carry out: attacking, defending, casting spells… all that usual RPG stuff. However, the action itself isn’t performed until they reach the very end of the gauge, with varying charge times depending on the action and the character’s “WIT” stat. For example, each character’s combo attack comes out instantly, but stronger spells take much longer to charge up.

What makes this more than a fancy version of the Active Time Battle system introduced in Final Fantasy IV is that players can check how close their opponents are to acting from a quick glance at the gauge. The way that the game doesn’t hide any information takes a lot of the chance out of battles; it’s simpler, but more strategic in a way. In addition, actions can be delayed or cancelled. Hitting an opponent will usually stun them for a moment and delay their progress along the IP Gauge. By prioritizing the right targets, it’s possible to keep the whole enemy side stunned and finish off the fight before they can get an attack in, which feels incredibly satisfying. Although the enemy AI isn’t smart enough to really take advantage of these systems, the same can just as easily happen to careless players, which means they should be constantly monitoring that lower part of the screen.

Each character can use their weapon to either charge up a slow critical strike or unleash a quick pair of combo attacks. Combos are typically stronger and faster, but if an opponent is charging up an attack, a well-timed critical hit will cancel their action and push them back further in the turn-order. Even when not spending MP, players need to choose their actions carefully.

There’s also a combo counter that shows how many hits the party has landed within a short window of time, so there’s some strategy in getting everyone to strike simultaneously. Though we’ve gotten used to ridiculous chains of attacks in Disgaea or Compile Heart titles, the presence of a combo counter wasn’t really seen in RPGs when Grandia was released. It’s the sort of thing that was far more common in fighting games , which were the hot new genre at the time (especially on the Sega Saturn, which Grandia was originally developed for). Takahashi claimed that aspects of the battle system such as the combos were influenced by the popularity of fighting games at the time. Though it’s not as obvious about it as contemporaries like Xenogears and Tales of Phantasia, the developers of Grandia captured the same sense of satisfaction that comes with, say, landing a well-timed counter-hit on an opponent that’s about to attack.

Also interesting is Grandia’s use of space in battle. This is an area where it builds off ideas from Lunar. In Game Arts’ earlier title, the character sprites move around the battlefield when they attack, sometimes pausing if they can’t get close enough to strike. The same principle applies in Grandia, but the characters now move in real time. Since the party will need to march over to monsters that are further away, it’s important to prioritize closer enemies and watch where they’re moving to. As well as their selection of special moves, the characters’ weapons affect their range, adding another tactical consideration, but still not enough to ever overwhelm players. When defending, the characters can endure to reduce damage or evade by running to a different point on the field. However, since it uses up a valuable turn, it’s only really useful in certain encounters with attacks that hit a particular area or instances where a character is surrounded. There are occasionally problems with the characters actually figuring out where to move, but overall, Grandia’s battle system makes effective use of space to keep players engaged and considering different strategies to your average turn-based RPG. The real-time nature makes the combat more detailed, but not necessarily more realistic. With the exaggerated sound effects, goofy voice acting and the way enemies explode in a burst of polygons, these fights aren’t exactly portrayed as a life-or-death situation. Rather than add realism, the additions to the combat are simply to make it more “fun”, something that it largely succeeds at.

Generally, the ideas in Grandia’s combat system are great. It pushes players to constantly pay attention to what the enemy side is doing and incorporates the language of a fighting game to capture the action of a heated battle and the satisfaction of victory. However, like the ATB system, it has that fundamental problem of there being too much waiting around in combat. In particular, it falls victim to that critical flaw that dogged so many 32-bit RPGs – self-indulgence. Grandia has plenty of long cutscenes and these extend to battles as well. Spells and enemy special abilities are lengthy laser light shows of gimmicky 3D effects. They might have looked impressive in the ‘90s, but now it’s aggravating whenever the game puts the battle on pause to show off.

Despite this, Grandia makes you want to use magic at every opportunity. The characters’ abilities power up from repeat usage: spells grow stronger and lead to more powerful combinations of elements, while each level of mastery boosts the characters stats even further. Tying into the theme of adventure running through the game, Grandia encourages players to experiment with spells and try to use everything at their disposal even when your basic combo attack is good enough to tear through most enemies. While physical skills use Special Points that refill from attacking enemies, magic draws from three separate pools of Magic Points, depending on the strength of the spell. It’s simpler than it sounds, but it prevents players from wiping out every encounter with a massive, screen-filling explosion – at least early on. Sure, you can refill MP with items, but the limited inventory space makes this difficult and the free heals from save points are often hard to come by. Still, stronger spells give out more magic experience, so the systems encourage using these flashy moves at every opportunity, even if they throw off the flow of battle.

The magic system can be tedious, but Grandia does introduce some interesting spells, such as ones that affect a certain area of the battlefield. Since everyone on the field is constantly moving around, making effective use of these requires players to predict where monsters are moving so they can be taken down in one blow. It’s an interesting idea, although limited since players can’t actually view the area of effect and it isn’t long before magic can hit everything onscreen anyway. They’re used most effectively by the game’s bosses. As well as using many attacks that hit a wide radius, bosses in Grandia typically have more than one part that acts independently. With more than one target, players need to figure out what actions they do and which one to delay. With the focusing on stunning foes, the battle system wouldn’t work unless Justin was always outnumbered. Although he’s joined by several companions, there’s rarely more than two or three people in the party, meaning that enemies can gang up on careless players. To me, these rare moments of peril were when the game really pushed me to make use of its mechanics. In addition, the different battle music when ambushed makes these encounters feel more frantic and dangerous (I expect that the continued popularity of Grandia’s battle system also owes a lot to Noriyuki Iwadare’s fantastic combat themes).

But these ambushes are the few instances where Grandia puts up much of a fight. Provided you aren’t going out of your way to evade every encounter, most battles are a breeze. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s clearly aimed at a wide audience across a large age range so it aims to make the many gameplay mechanics as approachable as possible. This includes the ability to set the party members to act independently, limiting the number of strategic decisions players need to make. Being accessible is good, but this low difficulty level means that players won’t need to really engage with Grandia’s mechanics; there are buffs and status effects that may as well not be there. However, the fact that there’s a different victory fanfare if you clear out the enemy side without taking a single hit encouraged me to try and do things as efficiently as possible. The battles manage to feel rewarding even when they’re incredibly one-sided.

The combat in Grandia was a solid foundation that was built upon by other titles. Naturally, its sequels used a similar battle system. With the move to more powerful hardware, both Grandia II and III gave the action a 3D facelift while cleaning up a few issues: you can now see exactly where spells will hit and who enemies will target, for example. One of the least popular Grandia entries actually has my favorite interpretation of its combat. Though not unfairly derided for its insufferable protagonist and weak storytelling, Grandia Xtreme is a fantastic dungeon crawler that forces players to endure many challenging encounters that really bring out the potential of this battle system. It’s also worth giving a special mention to Grandia: Parallel Trippers for the Game Boy Color, which is a fascinating little adaptation that shows how the systems really wouldn’t have worked properly on earlier consoles.

The idea of displaying the turn order of all participants and allowing players to manipulate it was borrowed by countless RPGs. In 2017 alone, we had both Blue Reflection and Dark Rose Valkyrie, two games that featured a familiar (and faster) flow to the combat while mixing in their own unique elements like support attacks and “overdrive” modes. Ideas from Grandia were also used in many turn-based titles. With its focus on using abilities to tweak the turn order, Trails in the Sky has basically a turn-based version of Grandia’s combat, with recent Trails of Cold Steel games still using a similar system. Grandia also proved popular with western developers, with RPGs like Zeboyd Games’ Penny Arcade Adventures titles seemingly inspired by its combat. Despite my misgivings about the overall experience, Ubisoft’s Child of Light featured one of the more meaningful evolutions of Grandia’s combat, allowing players or their partner to hover over enemies to slow them down without actually picking an action. Strangely enough, Ubisoft also published Grandia in Europe, so in a sense we’ve come full circle.

All up, Grandia’s real-time movement, flexible turn-order and way the experience system encourages players to try new abilities makes for a battle system that’s still incredibly satisfying. Even when being thrown into battle comes with a long load time, it’s still something I look forward to every time I play the game. There are fundamental issues, like a low difficulty level that means battles rarely require taking advantage of the game’s many systems and the elaborate spell effects that slow battles to a crawl. But the way Grandia turned fights from a passive experience to a more active one is something that’s still worthy of praise. Other games would build on its mechanics, but they come together remarkably well in this earliest entry. Of course there are plenty of other reasons to play Grandia, but even twenty years after its original release, the well-designed combat system is perhaps its biggest draw.