Why do we play Grandia?

Hi there.

For a long time I've been meaning to write about things we like in games but do not realize. These things may be ideas, emotions conveyed to the player, exciting pieces of gameplay - anything at all, as long as the player feels like playing the game more and more. 'Enjoying a game and not knowing why' happens more often than not, as not everybody tries analyzing the game's approach as to how it keeps the player entertained - they simply play the game. From here on, in this series of articles, I will be attempting to analyze games separately and discuss their most original/entertaining points. 

Introduction
Playing Grandia for the 3rd-4th time has made me realize what I like the most about this game.

Grandia is a role-playing game with a very particular battle engine, charming characters, a light-hearted story and a huge sense of adventure. The combination of all these things works quite well and keeps the player going, though I have found a couple of interesting individual ideas which definitely add to the mix (and somehow stand out). What I found particularly interesting about this game is how magic and moves work, how the game motivates you to play and battle in order to learn new moves and combinations - to train as you play, to grind a little bit- and to explore, to discover new weapons and armor, and artifacts which enable you to learn magic.

How it works

In Grandia, each character can manage a number of different weapons (maces, swords, axes, whips and knives) and may be taught different elements (fire, earth, water, wind). Not all characters can handle every weapon nor learn every element or spell; in fact, every character's move list is radically different. Besides, you can only teach a character an element whenever you find a rare Mana Egg. Apart from the basic elements, combinations exist. Should you teach a character water and wind, then blizzard attacks become available. Fire and Wind mean Thunder, Water and Earth form Forest and Fire and Earth are explosion. It's fun to discover the game's magic system on the fly, and change your strategies as you keep playing.

Exploring and Item-finding

The world of Grandia is huge, and mainly unexplored at the time the story takes place. The party is constantly traveling to new places and completing what may seem as impossible feats. The setting and plot really inspire a sense of adventure, unique amongst other games, and being the characters so small and the world so huge really gets you into the game. The fact that there're scattered Mana Eggs, Secret Weapons, Armor and Stat-Increasing seeds everywhere motivates the player to explore every nook and cranny from every dungeon - and being huge as they are, this just fits in too well. The developers have successfully tied the story's main theme to its gameplay, and it shows.

Learning Moves & Magic

Apart from exploration, there's a huge emphasis in moves and magic learning. Everything has levels - each weapon has a level, each magic element has one. In a way, it's very rewarding for the player to watch his/her characters grow in every direction, and being able to direct their growth. Also, every move in the game has learning conditions. For instance, in order to learn a move called 'Zap Whip', the character Feena has to level up her whip up to Lvl 24, and Fire and Wind up to Lvl 15. These enables you to actually see (almost) all the moves you can learn, and train while you battle. After all, what's more rewarding for a player than having his character learn new moves? 

AI Patterns

Complimenting this, there's a big array of possible AI patterns you can set the characters to use. Amongst them are 'Safety' (heal often, using mainly water), 'Meanie' (inflict poison, sleep and stat-reducing spells), 'Power Up'(increase stats), 'Each own', 'Wild', between others. Depending on each character's move set, setting the pattern 'Power Up' may mean "train earth and wind till you drop", so it's quite fun to play with the patterns and train your characters. 

What's the game missing then?

What I find this game is missing are some training options based on elements and weapons. Most of the time, I found myself training 'in order to level up my mace so as to learn a new super-move', or 'leveling up wind in order to learn a devastating thunder attack', so I believe element-based patterns would only be natural. 

Another weakness I've found is the game's difficulty. I've fought every enemy I've found so far, without heavy grinding, yet I seem to be too powerful for the enemies on my zone. The game does lose its touch a bit when you find yourself every battle is a breeze.

Summary

To sum up, we've discussed 3 things of importance here: having the player train through battles in order to learn new moves and magic, making use of the different patters of attack available, and having him explore the whole world, enthralled by a sense of adventure and hidden relics everywhere. Not to mention, Grandia's battle system is surely quite different from any other game you've played, and does keep things interesting.

This has been all for today, I hope I put these ideas into good use someday.