Wild Arms and Grandia Series.

[wyldesyde]

Both of these franchises passed me by during their original releases on The PlayStation. It wasn’t until the third game for both that I first discovered them (Wild Arms 3, back in 2002 I think? And Grandia 3 years later, in 2006, possibly?)
Both looked interesting but I never picked them up. How are they?
Any opinions on them is appreciated, thanks in advance.

[Serah]

Only really familiar with the first Grandia but it has a fun, lighthearted shonen style story and a real fun combat system. It's sort of like the ATB system from Final Fantasy but it's a fair bit faster with some focus on positioning and turns can happen simultaneously so it lets you interrupt enemy attacks. IIRC it does pause for you to choose your move though, so it's not rushing you but it does force you to think about when your attack is going to come out as well as where your opponent is and what they're thinking of doing. 

There are all kinds of strategic possibilities but the main thing that makes it so fun is that it absolutely nails the way it all feels. Interrupts just feel good to pull off, the sound design is super punchy and the animation has a lot of momentum behind it despite the primitive graphics.

It's actually one of my favourite RPGs from the era. The story and characters don't have a lot of depth but they're charming as heck and pretty much every single battle feels fun.

[kaoru]

First two Grandias are pretty fun, mostly thanks to their battle Systems. I never much gotten into Wild Arms, both the first and third game played so slow that I gave up on them.

[GamerL]

I like Wild Arms 3 a lot, however I haven't beaten it.

[ResidentTsundere]

I like the first Grandia but love the second. The PS2 port of the second game isn't supposed to be so hot compared to the Dream cast version, sadly.

I have Wild Arms 1 and 2. I tried to play 1 when I was really young. I got stuck, gave up, and eventually deleted my save. ;-;

The first game has a really cool anime intro that's worth a look.

I barely played the second. If I were to really seriously try the series again, I'd best start off with the first all over again, methinks.

[Ace Whatever]

Wild Arms 1 is like Suikoden in that they're basically large SNES-level games with 3D graphics in the battle system (More so for WA). I only played the PS2 remake that uses the WA3 engine (I think?) but there are people who swear the original PS1 version is better than the remake.

Wild Arms 2 (The first WA game I played) is more of the same but they made the transition to "2D sprites on 3D backgrounds" ala Xenogears (anyone care to correct me if an earlier PS1 game did that?).

Wild Arms 4 & 5 ditched the character specific tools and made the exploring more platform-ish. They also went with a full anime aesthetic after briefly flirting with it in the previous games and introduced a new hex-based combat system.

Most of the series emphasis heavy puzzle solving in the dungeons and encourage you to play the battles a bit strategically instead of just mashing regular attacks to win. Although this ends up making non-gimmick boss battles boil down to "set all damage buffs on your strongest character and spam his best special attack to win in a few rounds".


Grandia 1 came out on the PS1 at a time where most reviewers (or at least Gamefan) were getting a bit tired of how grimdark JRPGs were becoming so this was treated as breath of fresh air. It had a skill leveling system where you can level up proficiency in weapon types and elemental magic to get new moves/spells and stat bonuses (kind of like Secret of Mana?). The problem is that the limited inventory, low MP pool and lengthy 3D spell animation makes leveling magic a bit of a drag to do normally, but if you ignore it like I did and don't level out the elements evenly you'll end up with very powerful spells that cost more to cast than your max MP. They kind of wanted to recapture the appeal of this game with Grandia 3 but it didn't quite work out.

Grandia 2 ditched the wide-eyed optimism of the first game and jumped on the grimdark bandwagon. Some people hated on it years down the line but I still like it. It ditched the leveling style of the first game and made skill leveling use special coins you can grind for like money.

The cast of the Grandia games generally aren't that memorable outside of 2. All the games revolve around a battle system that encourages you to strike enemies at specific times to delay their turn or outright cancel their attacks. Unfortunately the games are designed with the expectancy that you'll constantly utilize this gimmick and build your party for speed instead of strength as late game enemies will get their turns superfast before you otherwise. This puts me in the minority that prefer the Wild Arms battle system to the Grandia one (plus I think Atelier Iris 2 implemented the canceling mechanic better in terms of execution and reward).

[kaoru]

Dec 21, 2017 4:08:29 GMT -5 Ace Whatever said:

"2D sprites on 3D backgrounds" ala Xenogears (anyone care to correct me if an earlier PS1 game did that?).

Not sure if first, but Breath of Fire III did it a year earlier. Saturn Grandia the same year fwiw.

[toei]

Most people like(d) Grandia chiefly for its battle system, which is admittedly pretty great. The story & characters were just ok in the first game and got worse with every episode, however it's pretty good at giving a sense of adventure.

Wild Arms's gimmicks are that it has the kind of puzzles you usually find in action RPGs (or Zelda) but is actually turn-based (like Lufia 2, actually) and a theoretically Western setting that is actually more generic anime-style fantasy than anything. It also has fantastic spaghetti western-inspired soundtracks. Wild ARMs XF, the PSP tactical spin-off, is really great gameplay-wise, but the story is awful.

[Ace Whatever]

Dec 21, 2017 4:43:27 GMT -5 kaoru said:

Not sure if first, but Breath of Fire III did it a year earlier. Saturn Grandia the same year fwiw.

Oops! Can't believe I forgot about those...

[dsparil]

Grandia II has a nice battle system where it's more like you're issuing orders to be executed rather than directly choosing an action at that particular instant. Battles are in real time with movement so if an enemy is moving all erratically or far from the character, they might spend their entire turn running around. I haven't played III, but it looks like a tweaked version that takes out the chaos. Seems like a response to people that hated II's battles, but I like them just fine.

[ZenithianHero]

I never got to play Wild Arms 5, I didn't care for 4 and its Hex battle system and platforming bits but would give the later entries another try if Sony ever releases them on PSN. The others have puzzles in dungeons which is always never enough of among JRPGs. Wild Arms 3 is my fav, I think it does the best job of imagining the "spaghetti western JRPG" vibe.

[Snake]

I've only played the first Grandia and the first Wild Arms.

Besides the opening intro sequence, I didn't really care for Wild Arms.  The only reason I played it was because it was one of the few RPGs available during Playstation 1's infancy, along with Beyond the Beyond, Alundra, and Vandal Hearts.  The music is decent, but I found myself getting tired of playing.  I Gamesharked it a few years later, just to get to the underwhelming ending sequence.

Grandia is a solid RPG.  Lighthearted, but fun.  Battle system is fun, and greatly paced.  I really enjoyed the music, especially the battle music tracks.  Many RPG's have a "save the world" theme, but this was really more about being a naive kid setting off on an adventure.  I would say it's worth playing at least once.  It does share a similarity in layout to Breath of Fire 3, where you have 2-D animated pixel sprites over 3-D polygon backgrounds.  

[toei]

Dec 21, 2017 4:08:29 GMT -5 Ace Whatever said:

Wild Arms 2 (The first WA game I played) is more of the same but they made the transition to "2D sprites on 3D backgrounds" ala Xenogears (anyone care to correct me if an earlier PS1 game did that?)

Most tactical rpgs did that, too. It was really quite common during that whole generation. Right now the earliest example I can think of is Lucienne's Quest for the 3DO (1995 for the Japanese release).

[spanky]

Loved Grandia II's battle system but hated the story and characters. Were it not for playing Skies of Arcadia soon after, it would have turned me off from jRPGs for years.

[Deleted]

Penny Arcade seemed to love the Grandia series, and for that I just have to hate it on principal.