Grandia III -- Even Deeper.

A case could be made for calling the battle system in the Grandia 2 the best turn based RPG battle system in existence. The Japanese can never leave anything alone and must do something to the system with each outing.  Did Game Arts screw it up? Did they make it better? The final verdict is still out, but I can say they've made it deeper. The basic Grandia II battle system returns intact. You still have the IP Gauge which is a wheel on the screen showing icons for each of the characters and the enemies. This gauge will tell you the order of who will act and when. There are different colored zones on the gauge. You can see when an enemy has come up with his course of action, and when he'll go to do whatever it may be. You still have the ability to cancel an enemy attack by attacking them while they're in the red zone of the IP Gauge. Doing this successfully resets the enemy's position on the gauge. You could theoretically stop every last enemy from ever getting an attack off. Below the IP Gauge is the Command Wheel. This is where you enter your actions for each character when their icon comes around to that section of the IP Gauge. Pressing up or down cycles through the commands. Pressing right accesses the special moves. Pressing left accesses magic attacks. You can cycle through commands for combo, critical, defend, item, and flee. You have two forms of attack now because of the newest addition to the battle system, the aerial combo. When an enemy is in the red zone that signifies it is going to execute its course of action as soon as it clears the zone, you can attack them with a critical attack which will launch the enemy into the air. You need to combine attacks with another character to pull off the aerial combo. After one player has launched an enemy into the air with a critical attack, the other player needs to attack them with a combo attack.  The resulting combination move racks up serious damage and if it manages to kill the enemy it earns an aerial finish bonus. The aerial finish bonus adds more experience and gold value to that creature. It adds an another layer of strategy to the combat system. You need to plan ahead and time it so you can pull off the aerial combos. It's harder said than done as most of the battles are versus four or five enemies at once and the simulated action is retained from the previous Grandia battle systems. Everything has the illusion of real time action. All the enemies and your characters are running around the battle area. The run over to attack, they run around enemies to get where they need to be, they run away from attacks, all at once. The game pauses to allow you to enter your commands. It's entirely turn based, but the illusion is very well done. And the movement does come into play. If your character has to run all the way across the field to attack a creature who happens to make its move at the same time and gets too far away from your character then your character won't have the energy to pull off their move. Or if your character goes to attack and the creature's turn also comes up and it runs to attack someone else your character is likely to miss. Another element to factor in is what's good for the goose is good for the gander. In other words, your attacks can be canceled by enemy attacks. Your moves can be blocked. Your position on the IP Gauge reset. The game still employs skill books and mana eggs for its special moves and magic respectively. You can find or buy books and eggs. You equip them to your skill and magic slots on your inventory screen. As you level you'll earn more slots to be used under the specific sections. The stronger skills and magic take more slots to equip. Just like the last game. But they felt the need to expand the skills and magic as well. Like the last game, the more you used them, the more powerful they became. You need to use your special skills in battle a number of times to start learning what they call secret methods. What this actually does is threefold. First off you can gain increased effectiveness, which makes the skill stronger. You can earn this three times per skill. You can also reduce the time it takes for you to execute the move. And you can reduce the time you need to wait before using the move again. Now that wasn't enough. They created a system where you can now fuse skill books and mana eggs. Fusing allows you to extract a new and more powerful skill or spell from a book or egg. But it comes at a cost. The skill book or the mana egg will be destroyed. With magic for example, you can fuse a Leaf Egg with a Leaf Egg to create a Forest Egg. If you fuse a Forest Egg with a Stone Egg you'll get a Holy Egg. So now, not only are you leveling your skills and magic, you're sacrificing the books and eggs to create new and more powerful types. To all this the alignment system is intact. Fire damages ice and all that.  So you have spells and skills that do damage with elemental alignments further complicating things. There are no random battles. You still see all the creatures on the dungeon and area screens. You still can sneak by them. Attack them with your attack animation to stun them and get the surprise advantage in battle. You can also be surprised the same way and be at the disadvantage at the start of the battle. The few boss battles I've fought have a definite step up feel to them. They're considerably tougher than the standard battles. Could be interesting to see where that aspect goes. There is an awful lot to do within this battle system and it somehow remains frenetic and fun. I'm impressed. It's too early to tell if it's for the better yet though.  Next time should cover the story and characterization of Grandia III.