GROWLANSER : Generations (combo of 2 and 3) was a game I saw sitting on the shelf of my old Game Crazy many times. I have held it, looked at it, and had to turn down many impulses. I wished I had listened to my gut, because this series is fuckin awesome.
PLOT:
GROWLANSER takes place on the continent of Noievarl, which is divided into four countries: Dulkheim, the first and only democratic nation in the west. They are seen as a militarized nation. Iglesias Kingdom to the north, which has invaded Dulkheim for its fertile land, something the country lacks. Valkania to east, which is famed for its vibrant culture and The Royal Guard, a trio of warriors strong enough to take down 1000 soldiers and finally, Marquelay Kingdom to the south known as a tourist country. Its relationship with Valkania keeps it protected. You play as the silent protagonist Crevanile (or whatever you name him), who along with his mercenary group begins the game stationed in Lamplask Island to defend the country from foreign invaders. During a routine battle, Crevanile and Dixon, leader of the mercenary group and father figure to Crevanile, witness a 6 winged figure descend and begin to decimate both sides of skirmish. Dixon was informed of this some time ago; 2000 years ago lived an advanced civilization that was brought down by winged figures, now being called angels. It was so bad that things like language had to be rediscovered. Also, we learn that Crevanile is a “Ruin Child”. These children are people that have been found in ruins dating back to that time. Why they were put to sleep and what their purpose in the modern world is is unknown. Lastly we learn that Crevanile was adopted because he is the key to stopping another civilization collapse.
If you have a played FIRE EMBLEM or FINAL FANTASY TACTICS game then you know what to expect from the story. Political, political, political. There are so many players in story. What GROWLANSER does well is that it keeps everything grey and that is commendable. Eventually you will see all sides of war, whether it is through meeting them in person or though Crevaniles ability to see events which could harm him or his friends, and people you thought were trustworthy and admirable turn out to be dick heads and people you thought were dick heads are pretty great people. You have friends that become enemies and enemies that become friends. Later on you join a neutral group and even you guys are grey! The game does an excellent job of making you care for all characters on every side unbiasdly. Speaking of those characters, they’re all wonderfully written. No annoying character in sight. Breathe of fresh air. With all that being said there is one issue with the story and that is the pacing in the beginning of the game. The game has a long intro phase where only a handful of characters, magic/skills/abilities, and locations are available. It last for a good 10 hours or so. While not bad, it is not exciting so I could see some putting it down because they could get bored. I almost did. By the way this is a long game, just puttin that out there. I am over 80 hours.
PRESENTATION:
This is actually the 4th installment to the series which was released on PS2 in Japan in 2003. This comes after STAR OCEAN 2, VALKRYIE PROFILE, both SUIKODENS, GRANDIA, TALES, LEGEND OF MANA, THOUSAND RMS, both WILD ARMS and many other 2D JRPG’s and it manages to look worse than all of them. Here is the kicker:
GROWLANSER 2
GROWLANSER 3
GROWLANSER 4
I watched videos and look at acreens of the previous games and they have better looking and animated sprites! GROWLANSWER 4 has Small, decently detailed, limited animated sprites. The environments are just ok; towns are small with no inside areas outside of inns and shops. Even the magic animations are kind bland. The game is like Chrono Trigger in the sense that battles happen with no battle transition screen, but the camera is so far zoomed out during battles and in the game in general that it looks like you’re watching the game from a helicopter, which wasnt the case in the previous GROWLANSERs's. It is just passable, nothing special. Only saving grace is the art portraits done by popular anime hentai guy even though some guys are very girlish:
SOUND:
Not gonna spend very long here. Nothing memorable. Feels like a handful of tracks reused over and over throughout the game. I can grind for hours and the battle theme still not come to mind on command. To make matters worse the voice acting/battle clips were removed from the NA version. Blah.
GAMEPLAY:
Missions:
There are 57 missions in total but it is not mission to mission structure like FE or FFT. There are still explorable towns, dungeons and world map. Consider the missions the boss battles of the game. What separates them from typical random encounters is the emphasis of strategy. Each of the missions has a unique condition that must be met to clear it. Things like don’t let this guy die, kill this guy before timer runs out, create a path for NPCs to escape ext. Add to that a bonus counter that starts at +50 and counts down to -50; the higher the number the higher the chance for better items, more experience and gill. There are also two different clear ranks for players that really want to challenge themselves and some even alter story events.
The only negative I have to point out is the seemingly impossible and stupid conditions for the gold rank. As I hinted at in the previous paragraph, are 2 clear ranks: MISSON CLEAR, which is you won but didn’t complete all conditions and MISSION COMPLETE which is you won while completing all conditions and keeping the bonus timer in the positives. An example is in mission 33 when you have a commander and his 2 soldiers that have been ambushed. They are fighting a powerful enemy. The gold condition is you must keep the soldiers, not the commander, alive as they attempt to pound on an enemy that will kill them in one hit on a counter… *sigh*. The game usually makes sense in why something is important but why is protecting two soldiers who don’t even have names a thing?
Battle system:
GROWLANSER has a RTS like battle system but to sum up the battle system, it’s like a FF12. I know GROWLANSER came first but for people unfamiliar with the series, there ya go. You see all your enemies on the field and once you enter the field of vision of an enemy or group of enemies the battle starts. Command window will pop up allowing you to give commands. You can send a character to attack and they will attack until the enemy is dead; same with defend. Characters will defend until action is changed. There are knacks which are special skills that can be used in and out of battle but they’re like Pokémon in a sense that they have a use limit that can only be restored at an inn. Next there is magic and unlike any other RPG where you can choose what level of a certain spell you want to use, you have to charge in GROWLANSER. Most spells have 5 levels and a charge time. When you choose Wind blade level 1 it will have a 25/100 charge. If you want a level 5 Wind blade charge it will charge a quarter of your AWT bar 4 times. If you decide you only need a level 3 Wind blade, you can press triangle and have the character cast at that level and vice versa, you picked a level 2 charge but decided you want a 4 instead just continue to let it charge. Each and every command you make has a cool down period in the form of a yellow bar and until that depletes no action can be taken. The last important command is the move command which lets you create 3 path points in which your character will travel. This is mainly used to get characters to certain areas of the map or specific environment objects, characters will only attack enemies that block that path. There is an auto option as well for each character not Crevanile, or you can just push start to send all characters in offense mode.
The battle system has its share of problems too. Number one is the slow pace of the battle system. Not so much in random battles but missions battles, where the enemy greatly outnumbers you, the pace can just drag. This has to do with the fact that though the battle system is like an RTS, any action taken on the field stops time (the AWT gauge, bonus timer, movement) to show it off then starts time. All actions should be happening in real time. This is why I hate maps that have you on one side and the enemy on another. The enemy has 10+ units against your 4 and is usually crammed packed with mages and archers. So you have to watch as your team slowly makes it way to opposition as time freezes for tons turns the enemy gets because of their numbers vs. yours. It just takes too long to get into the battle. Another is the occasional A.I. getting stuck on environment or getting trapped between soldiers. You can fix one by using the move command to manually put them on a better path, but your character getting trapped in a pile of friendly units is “guess he/she won’t be participating”. Finally when putting characters in auto they just use the attack command...that’s it. Would be cool if you could customize what you what them to do when put into auto and it also sucks you can’t put Crevanile in auto as well. Would make grinding better.
Learning system:
The growth system is like a cross between FINAL FANTASY 7&9. Spellstones are the key to powering up your you team. They come in 3 colors: Green which teaches magic, red which teaches knacks and yellow which teaches passive abilities (HP up, ATK up, Poison guard). Also just by equipping spellstones you also get perks as well, for example:
Equipping the green spellstone Healing Arts increase power of healing magic while teaching remedy, cure, and heal.
Spellstones must be equipped to rings which always have 3 slots. These slots also come in 3 colors: green red and yellow, but they don’t just come in all 3 colors; they can be yellow/yellow/red, green/red/red, red/red/red/ ext. equipping a ring also gives various buffs to stats. Each slot also has number ranging from 0-9; this is also the case for spellstones, so I’m sure you already guessed that a level 5 spellstone cannot be put into any slot lower than 5. Good thing that rings do level up so you can have any ring you ring you like eventually have all 3 slots at 9. Last thing to address is you can equip a spellstone to a different color slot but if you are still learning anything in that spellstone, the AP gotten from battle will be halved, but the perk the spellstone gives will not be lessened in anyway. On the flip side equipping 2/3 spellstones that teach the same abilities doubles/triples the AP.
Now the bad and its bad. Only the character that kills the enemy gets the AP. Imagine playing FF7/9 and only the character that landed the final blow got the AP. It is foretold in prophesies that you will need to skill grind period…several sessions. There is no way to keep your team up to date on magic, knacks and abilities by just playing through the game. Getting new characters in this sucks because they’re mostly bare and getting them up to date after you just finished getting your current team up to date is a pain. Luckily later on in the game spellstones will teach more than ability. I suggest focusing on one character at a time, let them learn everything they can learn in current stone collection (not every character can learn everything) then move on to next.
Fate altering
There are about 15 characters in the game that can die and the game will continue regardless. You will only get hints about the ones close the Crevanile and the others? You got lucky and did the side quest needed to save them without knowing it, or you used a guild. I wish this game did a better job at alerting the player to who is going to die. A few people died on my play through and I looked at what I was suppose do to save them and I was like, “how am I suppose to know to do that?” sometimes you have to do multiple side quest and window for them can be very small.
Vacation:
GROWLANSER is notable for its dating sim elements and vacations are where these are used. There are 9 of these throughout the game. You get to take time off at 2 locations and during this time you just talk to your team to learn more about them. These can eventually turn into subplots that carry over to next vaca ext which in the long run will go to getting that characters special ending.. You only get 2 days and can only talk to 3 people a day, so plan ahead as you wont get everybodies ending in one go.. I hate these, mainly because most are mandatory and come at important parts in the game. If I could choose to do these when I wanted I wouldn’t mind them
This game really surprised me. I bought it for 5 bucks off PSN and expected to play it and just let it go after a few hours so. I’m glad that was not the case. I haven’t been hooked on a JRPG in a long time. Been on a hiatus from the genre, but what a way to get the juices flowing again and I would not have it any other way then to have it be this game that does it. I still want more so I will definitely be getting Generations very soon.
