The Granstream Saga (1997)

This is somewhere between 1 and 2 stars, but I'll be generous and round up.

To be honest, I didn't really enjoy this. It's ugly and clunky and misses the mark on almost everything, but at least it tried something, I guess? Some of the characters can't help but come across likeable. Here's my quick thoughts.

Music & Sound - Serviceable, but a bit bland. Some of the best music comes right at the end. There are some sound effects in this game that are just so shrill and awful, they'll haunt me for weeks. Voice acting is surprisingly decent, minus a few scenes where they're forced to perform awful dialogue.

Graphics - This is... well, a very ugly game. It's all 3D rendered and it really suffers because of it. It just looks so primitive and terrible. WHY DON'T THEY HAVE FACES? Character portraits in dialogue come and go with no rhyme or reason, but all look a little off. There are a number of anime cut scenes, and those look nice enough.

Storyline - Starts off simple and derivative, then takes a real sharp turn near the end into anime bullshit. I don't really understand the endings. I mean, I'm cognizant of what's happening, I just don't understand why. Do the endings also not resolve the plot of the whole dang game? I'm assuming in the Arcia ending, it takes place before the world was destroyed. But was the world "fixed" as intended w/ Airlim in the Laramee ending?? Just to add, Arcia's ending reminded me a bit of Soul Blazer.

The game works very hard to be emotional, but mainly it involves every character hastily making the horrible decision to sacrifice themselves without considering any alternative. Seriously, if you are a named character in this game, you die. Or abandon your child and run away.

Gameplay - Exploring the dull, lifeless environments is boring. Towns are boring. Every town has a number of locked houses that don't do anything other than be locked the whole game. Every town has a Curio Shop which makes you think they may have stuff for you to get, but (except maybe the very first one had one item, I don't remember) none of them ever have anything, which makes me wonder why they're in the game. Dungeons are lame and have few redeeming features or interesting puzzles. Battles are AWFUL. Every enemy has the ability to block every possible thing you can do, and also perfect timing to get attacks in on you between blocking. Every battle takes forever as they just become games of cat and mouse where you sneak a hit in every once in a while until, some time later, you win. An optional part of the game that can net some rare items requires you to win multiple fights in a row, within thirteen seconds, using abilities, without healing, saving, or using any magic in between. I don't think I ever won two or more fights in a row without taking damage. I basically lost half or more of my life after every single fight. Almost every fight involved me blocking attacks with a shield, normal attacking, and healing. I almost never used weapon abilities because 99% of the time they were blocked or missed or cut off by the enemy attack. I never really used magic, certainly not attack spells. MP works very weird in this game and it's more hassle than it's worth to go out of your way to build it up.

Sidequests - There are a few, but they yield very little. You can revisit a few towns near the end to get a spell, force a kid's mother to abandon him, and watch a wedding get called off. There's a "hidden" "bartering" dude in the game who gives you some decent spells and gear and the best "axe" (it's a mace). But all the stuff with conversion of gold pieces and bartering is so weird, you just bring an undisclosed (unless you use a guide), increasing amount of gold pieces to the dude and he gives you stuff in return for it. There's also a guy you can bring cards to. If you give him all the cards, he'll fill your MP to 999 every time you visit him. This comes too late in the game to be useful, and also I didn't even attempt to do this because it involves the no damage quick wins I mentioned above.

Translation - Not very good. There are many, many typos and name mix ups throughout. To list a few: one town consistently has a "barrior" instead of a barrier. There's a character named Ziruas who has a secret lab. The first time you visit, it's a "Secrete Lab" and subsequent visits take you to "Jilluous Lab". In some of the game, one town is referred to as Pixim, but when you're in the town, it's Pikshim. There's a "stalagamite" cave, which is actually a castle. The translation isn't so awful, but there are a few errors that make things a bit confusing a couple times, and the script is just bare bones with poor grammar. The game would have benefited from some proofreading, and a thorough edit by a native English speaker.

At the end of the day, I'd tell people to stay away from this, but if you really have nothing better to do and want to try a mediocre action RPG, this does have just a hint of charm you may find enjoyable.

The Granstream Saga feels like a rough and early go at an action JRPG on the PSX and while it definitely could've used some more work on its systems and some more meat on its bones it has a little bit worth playing.

Our main character Eon starts off on a chunk of a world seemingly split and distanced from each other. After a quest runs Eon in with a Wise Man, he sets out on a journey to raise the rest of the land and restore the world. It's fairly standard JRPG journey fare, with a LOT of in-game cutscenes to stuff in amidst the small amount of action and some animated cutscenes of...questionable quality. Still, there are some twists that make it somewhat interesting near the end as the story of this land has some depth.

As for gameplay, most of the game is set into top-down exploration segments followed by a 1-on-1 match at a tilted angle whenever the player fights. The player can strafe around an enemy, slightly dash in a direction, block, use different weapons, magic, etc - it sounds like the player has a lot at their disposal with some upgrades along the way but the timing can be fairly limiting, resulting in frustratingly getting caught in enemy attacks and very large health pools - often both the player and the enemy will need to be knocked out several times to be "killed". Still, it's a pretty well realized action system for a 1997/1998 game and a lot of these fully polygonal enemies/characters are surprisingly well animated. There was even a segment during a boss where I was blown away by the kinds of vertex animation that the game was employing.

The game's music and visuals are pretty standard, if not bland. I couldn't recall or catch any of the tunes and the style of the game focuses more on the full 3D design moreso than a distinct aesthetic. Still, the 3D designs of some enemies are pretty technically impressive for the time.

The Granstream Saga is a game that might need a little patience to appreciate but has some interesting design and a worthy story behind some frustrating bits and JPRG cliche.