#24
Grandia (PS1)
YoY: -1
Grandia was originally released in Europe in 2000, but I didn't actually play it until 2011 when I bought the game from the PS Store largely on a whim. I was just looking for some new JRPGs to play, and I happened to come across this one. I bought it, played it, and ended up absolutely loving it. The stars of the game are the characters and battle system, the latter being something that other games should definitely copy and make use of. The story and music are very good too, although I wasn't quite as fond of the music initially, it eventually grew on me as well.
Grandia isn't a perfect game by any means. The 3D graphics have naturally aged quite poorly, though the backgrounds and character sprites still look great and their animation is often gorgeous. Also, the voice acting could charitably be called average, though more often than not I'd use the terms questionable and amateurish to describe the acting. To be fair, that was just something you had to accept with games of this period, so it never really bothered me.
