by marurun Wed Jun 17, 2020 12:55 pm
I have decided to have 2 Summer Games Challenge games.
Grandia (Switch)
Katamari Damacy REROLL (Switch)
Both of these titles are slightly enhanced ports of some very important and classic titles. I've already started in on Grandia and I LOVE it. I played my Saturn copy some when I was in Japan and made an effort to translate my way along, but I derailed about where I am in the game now, which is the Forest of Mist. I love the anime characters. They have such interesting personalities and aren't little emo bitches. The whole game has such an adventurous, optimistic tone. Yeah, it's a bit young in places, but it feels like one of those great coming of age stories, only the characters coming of age are loaded up with positivity and self-confidence. Sort of an all-ages RPG rather than an RPG for kids. I hope the game doesn't decide to break these characters later on. What I've read suggests the game does not. I'm playing in English but with Japanese voices. The old Playstation US translation actually isn't that bad aside from some odd censorship choices (all references to alcohol are now coffee?). I've heard the English voice work is just awful, but fortunately the Japanese voices are fantastic.
Mechanically, this game feels like an expansion of Chrono Trigger's 2D planar combat combined with a skill-based system. Like CT, some attacks have different ranges and "shapes" for hitting multiple enemies. Unlike Chrono Trigger, however, you can change your own placement on the field, and characters have different movement and action stats to govern how quickly they move up the always-visible initiative bar and move around the battlefield. And when you choose defend, you can either block (Endure) or move to a new location (Evade). Every hit stalls advancement on the initiative bar a little, and a well-timed critical hit can actually cancel an action and reset the character or monster on the initiative bar. Each weapon type you can use or elemental spell category (the classic 4 elements) can gain experience and be leveled up through use. Gaining levels in an element or a weapon type grants you new spells and special weapon attacks (only usable if you have the appropriate weapon type equipped). And elements can combine with each other and weapon types to grant elemental special attacks and hybrid elemental spells (eg. level up fire and earth to unlock magma/lava spells). You can also level up individual spells though use to make them more effective. This allows you to customize your characters through use, but characters are different enough they never end up same-y. If you like grinding you can make combat pretty easy (press A a bunch to win), but if you're not wasting time grinding some battles do have the potential to quickly take a bad turn. Bosses can be a real challenge, though through careful play you can also stun lock some bosses for extended periods of time.
Just loving digging back into this game. It's a classic the West never really got to fully appreciate.