"All you've got to do is break through, to make your wishes all come true! AMAZING"
Grandia III is so far the last game in the Grandia series. Another world saving and globe trotting adventure, but this game introduces a bit more Magitek, especially old fashioned planes.
Yuuki, an amateur mechanic and pilot, idolises the famous Sky Captain Schmidt and dreams of replicating his achievement of crossing the ocean on a plane of his own design. When his latest attempt begins to fail mid-flight (due to the unwitting sabotage of his mother Miranda), Yuuki happens to notice a young girl named Alfina being chased by Bad Guys. Being the JRPG protagonist that he is, Yuuki immediately goes to save her.
Alfina is one of the last surviving members of an ancient tribe capable of communing with the god-like Sacred Beasts which protect the planet. With very little prompting, Yuuki decides to join Alfina on her search for her missing big brother Emelious, who was last seen with some incredibly suspicious characters.
Released on the PlayStation 2, and also published by Square Enix, but still developed by Game Arts. It should be noted that this game was rushed through its development, and it shows.
Provides Examples Of:
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: Japanese cover
depicts a normal group shot of all playable characters, with an airplane in the skies above. American cover instead shows portraits of four main characters, reflected in Emelious's sword. It also uses 3D models instead of hand-drawn art. - Apocalypse How: Xorn and, by extension, his followers, are out to bring forth class 6, total extinction of all forms of life, by turning them into glass.
- Apocalypse Wow: The Verse Realm is on the verge of total extinction, with most people, animals, and even plants being turned into glass. And yet, it's noted that the sight of life, so perfectly turned into glass, is indeed beautiful.
- Babies Ever After: The brief Distant Finale shows Yuki and Alfina with their child.
- Betting Minigame: Arrange Dice, which can be played in Sabatar Harbor. You make a row of seven cards, numbered 2-11 (two card are left out) and roll two dice five times. If rolled dice score matches a card in the row, it's moved forward. If by the end of a round at least three adjacent cards are moved forward, you win. In the story, Alonso lost his ship in the game because it was rigged, and "borrows" Alfina's brooch to expose the rigging.
- Big Damn Heroes: Yuuki and Miranda protecting Alfina from Raven.
- Boss in Mook Clothing:
- The Desert Lord south of the watering hole in the Baccularn Desert, a boss-level enemy which has well over 10,000 HP and attacks that will almost always one-shot your characters when you first venture into the area. It also has Quake, which can target the entire party. You can talk to the man right by the gate to the desert in the Baccula Settlement, who will thankfully warn you about it. You can only really fight it with any certainty when you have some of the game's strongest spells under your belt and an average party level of 25 or above, but when you can, it is a reliable source of XP and money, dropping 4,000 each per kill. It also drops Life Seeds, which fully restores a character and raises their maximum HP when used, making the Desert Lord a lucrative enemy to kill.
- The Excise verse realm-type enemies are essentially an entire genus of these, with the first kind (Excise Sigma) being an actual full-fledged boss itself. The real honor goes to the Excise Omegas in the antepenultimate room of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon however, having no shortage of HP, being able to CONSTANTLY cancel any of your attacks, and being extremely fast on top of it all. They usually come with enemies that have an ability to nullify magic as well, which just makes it all the worse.
- Excise Omegas are also very lucrative to hunt: they not only drop Magic Seeds, which fully restores a character and increases max MP by 10, but they also drop the extremely powerful Spirit Sword which is Yuki's most powerful weapon.
- Cain and Abel: Alfina and Emelious.
- Call of the Wild Blue Yonder: Yuki is not the only one who was inspired by Sky Captain Schmidt's achievements and wants to fly. Several NPCs are pilots, who often talk how they love their job. Raflid Town in particular is full of pilots, who can no longer fly because of Xorn's power shutting down flight units. Some are angry, some are depressed, but all of them help Yuki when he tries to repair Schmidt's old plane that can work without flight unit.
- Captain Crash: Rookie Pilot Yuki has crashed eighteen planes before the start of the game. 'No. 19' crashes into the ground after his mom hides inside the plane. 'No. 20' is given to him by Schmidt. He crash it into a dragon on the way to Arcriff while trying to get a closer look at its rider, Emelious.. It's later revealed by Schmidt that none of Yuki's original 19 planes were ever going to fly anyway, due to his unsophisticated designs. Yuki also crashes a hastily made glider when the Flight Units are rendered inoperable.
- Cast of Expies: The entire major cast is recycled from earlier Grandia games. Yuki is halfway between Justin and Ryudo, Alfina is Elena if she traded her singing voice for pointed ears, Ulf is basically Rapp 2.0, Emelious is WAY too similar to Melfice, Hect is basically Liete with a violin, etc etc...
- Disc-One Nuke: The spell Crackle, which you can purchase in the first town before leaving on your journey, does 400 to 500 damage when the rest of your attacks will barely break 100. It will one shot any regular enemy for the next several areas and helps significantly against bosses. With the right timing it can also set up aerial combos
- Distress Call: While flying around the world, the on-board radio allows you to intercept distress calls from other pilots in trouble. You can't help them, though.
- Fantasy Pantheon: Religion in this word is centered around worship of Guardians - Physical Gods who long ago defeated a rogue Guardian Xorn, and now watch over various lands. Communicators like Alfina are the only ones who can talk with Guardians, and thus are highly revered by the church.
- Heroic BSoD: Alfina gets one pretty much whenever a Guardian dies. Yuki gets one when the red roots cause all the Flight Units to stop working, meaning that he'll never fly a plane again.
- Heal It with Water: All healing spells in the game belong to the Water element.
- Kudzu Plot: Yuki's lifelong dreams are twofold: build a plane that can cross the ocean to the mainland, and meet his hero Schmidt, a living legend in aviation. He does both of those half way through the first disc. After acquiring the plane, the speed in which the plot drops Yuki's obsession makes it seem like an Aborted Arc. (It's possible that he's just so satisfied with his plane that he doesn't bring it up ever again).
- Magitek: Bi-planes are powered by magic engines.
- Metal Slime: the Lucky Mink enemies, who only appear in the Melc Ruins and the Final Dungeon, and typically run away if not cancelled, give 15,000 exp upon defeat. They only have 18 HP, but will only take 0 or 1 HP of damage from any given attack, no matter how strong or weak. The key to defeating them is spamming multi-hit spells and techniques, but its still nearly impossible without also hitting them with unama's orb, to freeze time.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: With her burning desire to reason with her brother Emelious, Alfina works as her own MacGuffin Delivery Service, as she's necessary for the completion of Emelious' incomplete Communicator Mark, which would allow him to summon Xorn.
- Our Humans Are Different: Alfina and Emelious have pointy ears, tribesmen of the Dragon Valley are Little Bit Beastly, inhabitants of Raflid also have animal-like ears, and people of the Verse Realm have wings and are implied to be Long-Lived. And yet, all of the are considered humans, and referred to as such in dialogue.
- Phlebotinum Breakdown: The Flight Unit, a large orange spherical gem essential to the working of any modern aircraft, does not work when red roots obscure the sky.
- Pimped-Out Dress: Alfina's communicator dress looks like a wedding dress with its frills and decoration.
- Plot Armor: Over the course of the story, Yuki survives two plane crashes. 18 of them were pre-story. He could have broken bones and recovered by the time the story starts.
- Plot-Driven Breakdown: Alfina is kidnapped by Emelious and taken aboard his dragon. Yuki quickly boards his own plane and give chase, until... his plane loses power due to Phlebotinum Breakdown.
- Reduced Mana Cost: "[Element] Mastery" skills reduce MP consumption of spells of corresponding element by half (rounding up).
- Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Certain spells involve supernovas and meteor strikes, which naturally do not affect the world in any way. In fact, one wonders how they're only able to hit one enemy at a time.
- This Cannot Be!: Alfina says this after Emelious kills the first Guardian, the second Guardian, the third Guardian, the fourth Guardian, and finally when Xorn kills Emelious.
- Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Surmania, a floating fortress wrapped in Xorn's red roots.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: With all of the Guardians accounted for, Yuki heads to Surmania to face Big Bad Emelious once and for all. When beaten, he kidnaps Alfina and gets away on a dragon.
