I was getting really close to the end of Grandia yesterday. However, before I go to Zil Padon and gain access to the final area, I had one more optional dungeon to clear – the Tower of Temptation.Continue reading

I Went Through Luzet Mountains

To get to Baa’s base of operations, I had to go through Luzet Mountains. This was a huge and extremely dull area with a low rate of experience gain. Pretty much the only worthwhile thing there was in the area were the Stat Up items I’m getting more and more off. With mana eggs not necessary any more, Stat Up items are pretty much only worthwhile thing to look for anywhere.

I mostly fought these guys and Yetis in Luzet Mountains.

It took me well over an hour to get through the area, which consisted of two sections, so it really sucks that I have nothing to write about, but that’s how it is. Luckily, there’s one thing that did happen I can write about.

I Found a Bug

There’s a ledge under a mountain you can jump off. It’s basically one of those one-way paths Grandia has plenty of. The issue here was, if you jump off it at the wrong spot, you can get stuck and you’re pretty much forced to reload the game. Since this is quite deep into the area, you can easily face losing a couple of hours of game time.

Liete’s Magic Art spell is pure genius.

Lucky for me, a few minutes before this happened, I had to use the “Pause Game” feature of the PSP Go to do something, so at this point, I was able to just “Quit” the game from the PSP menu and then reload the “Pause” state from before. This made me lose just a minute or two, instead of an hour I would have lost if I hadn’t done this.

I Got to J Base

Finally, I got to J Base and started fighting enemies actually worth the time. As I left Luzet Mountains, I was able to visit Laine before entering the base, so I did just that, cleared all of the clutter from the inventory, bought some upgrades and bought an Axe for Justin, even though it was a slight downgrade.

I Worked on My Skills and Spells

This was well worth the investment, because I was getting half an Ax level per battle in J base, so the extra strength I got quickly made up for a slightly lower speed I got from the axe. Pretty soon, I learned a new Skill to, the Aura, though I didn’t get around to using it yet.

Before J Base, I stopped by at Dorlin’s to see his reaction.

Feena also learned a new skill – the End of the World. She actually learned it back in Rainbow Mountains, but I didn’t have enough Level 3 mana to use it back then. Now I can and I can say it’s a great spell. It does around 1000 damage to all enemies.

Liete is still mostly useless, but thanks to all the Agility and Speed Up items I’ve been using on her, she acts more and more often in combat, so she started leveling her skills and spells for a bit.

No more mana eggs needed!

I realized each spell has a level of its own. I’m not sure what it affects, but I’m sure the casting speed is part of it, so I focused on using the lower level spells on all of my characters, to speed up their casting.

I Fought Baal Again

Finally, I got to Baal’s chambers and I was able to fight him again. This time, it was in his mutant for, so he was a lot tougher, but I also had my entire party with me, so it wasn’t much harder. I used Allhealer once with Feena, just in case, but I didn’t really need to in order to win. The amount of experience I got from the fight was astounding.

Baal went full on monster in the second battle, but he still wasn’t much of a challenge.

My victory didn’t matter, though. Gaia managed to grow and sprout, so the entire world was in danger now. You know what this means, right? Endgame!

I Fought Nana, Saki, Mio and Baal

I started to play Grandia again as soon as I got home from the train ride, so it was all still fresh for a change. I entered the Grandeur and started fighting lots and lots of Garyle soldiers. I’m not sure if it was the enemy type or something else, but the experience gain suddenly drastically decreased.

I’m not exactly sure what Garyle is, but for a General, Baal sure has a lot of power.

The random fighting didn’t last long, though. Soon, I got to a room with three Garyle generals – Nana, Saki and Mio. I could finally fight and beat them. The fight was easy and Justin pretty much dominated. I got hurt a bit, but I didn’t have to heal once. Of course, they tried to make it look like they last on purpose, because that’s the character role they need to fill, but that’s what makes the game charming.

Since I had to fight all three of them, they actually managed to squeeze in a few hits.

After that, I had to walk through a couple more rooms to get to Baal and Feena, but before that happened, Justin got separated from Rapp and Guido. I got to Baal’s room. He went completely bananas this time and I had to fight him alone with Justin. It was an easy fight, though, and I don’t think he even hit me once.

Baal was easy to beat. No challenge at all.

After that, he went even more banana’s, revealed to be a mutant freak with appendages and threw Justin and Feena off the ship. What happened next was a bit illogical. Feena being what she is, grew wings, but instead of just flying Justin into safety, they get saved by Rapp, Guido and the flying manta,

I Went to Laine and then to Rainbow Mountains

Next stop was Laine village, where the three wise men revealed to be “the guardians of Alent” and sent us to the Rainbow Mountains, where the entrance to Alent was. Rainbow Mountains are a big area designed “vertically”. This basically means I had to walk back and forth a lot to finally get through it. That was just the first part of the area, though. The second part was more straight-forward, with basically a direct route (albeit with a bit of a maze) to the end of it.

The Rainbow Bridge is more like a rainbow elevator.

Eventually, I got to the Rainbow Bridge, Guido said his goodbyes, finally, and I was able to finally get to Alent. Soon, I’ll get my final party member – Liete of Alent.

I Got to Alent

Alent was a city in the sky, or it might even be in space, I’m not sure. There weren’t any enemies to fight in there, but there were three bosses I had to deal with, one after another. I could go back to the save point and heal, though, so they weren’t an issue. All three of them were bosses I fought before, except they got a bit beefed up here.

Fighting boss battles is fun in Grandia. More fun than random battles, which are kind off fun to.

I finally got to the building where Liete was. I had to talk to illusions of Liete to figure out the story and finally, I got to talk to her. She said Baal survived Grandeur’s explosion and thus, revealed our primary goal. We need to stop him before he completely revives Gaia. Justin suddenly got extremely good with words, so he convinced Liete to join the team.

Liete was actually easy to convince to joining.

Right now, I expect Liete to be completely useless. All of her stats are low, she can only use staves (or maces) and she has yet to learn her more powerful spells. Eventually, I’d like to have her catch up to the rest of the group and more importantly, I’d like everyone to catch up to Justin before I complete the game.

Of course, this actually happening all depends on me finding an area where I can level at a decent rate before the game ends. I hope an area like that exists.

It’s been a while since I wrote about Grandia, but I’m definitely still playing it and I intend to play it more often for the next several days, since I won’t have access to Gothic for about a week.

I Went to Zil Padon

Last time, I just cleared the Lower Laine Village and got Dorlin’s horn. He was now smart again, so he could tell me how to finally get to Alent. Apparently, I need to get the Medal of Wisdom, held by the Mogay and kept in the shrine under the city. Dorlin also made it pretty clear he has the hots for Liete, so there’s that.

“You must obtain {random symbol} or {randomness}.” It’s cliche, but it works.

I got to the shrine and, since Milda was out of the party, Guido decided to join in, at least for a while. I remember Guido as an extremely unmemorable character from my playthrough of Grandia as a kid, so I wasn’t thrilled, but I had a free spot so I didn’t really care.

No spells and just these moves. Luckily, Guido doesn’t stick around for long.

Guido can’t learn any spells, uses the sword, knife and bow and has a couple of mostly useless skills. That is, they might be useful, but he doesn’t stick around for long enough to prove it. I ended up mostly using his pickpocket skill because it raises his held weapon skill and can sometimes grant me a decent item.

I Focused on Wind and Water

As far as experience goes, Justin was still leveling up at a decent rate. I started focusing on his wind and water elements, since I still had a few spells in those elements to learn. His sword and mace skills area more than high enough to get his remaining moves, but I’ll have to get an axe somewhere, before I can finally learn those. The rest of the party doesn’t really get a chance to level, but this will probably be changing soon, since the monsters are definitely getting stronger.

The high level spells are looking pretty cool.

I Fought the Garyle Troops

As far as the story goes, there was a run in with the Garyle troops at the shrine, Baal turned out to be a major asshole and Mullen turned out to be a relatively nice guy. Also, there was a very predictable revelation about Feena (HINT: she’s Leen’s Twin sister).

It’s amazing how the world is unexplored, I’m supposed to be the pioneer and yet these guys are always there.

I Chased Baal

Baal abducted Feena and flew off on his Grandeur airship, but Guido had a pet flying manta he brought with him “just in case”, so we could give chase. Yeah, the story really doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is fine.

There was a nice animated sequence before it all went down. I like it.

In any case, this is as far as I got during the train ride. I could have probably gotten further, but it was a nice wrap up, so I decided to stop here. As I said, I won’t have access to Gothic for the next few days, so I’ll try to complete Grandia instead.

Last weekend, I only played Grandia for about 40 minutes, so there isn’t much to talk about. I only did one major thing – I got through the chaotic and twisted lower Laine village. It consisted of three or four areas, each a slightly different type of maze.

Gaia really did a number on Lower Laine

Lower Laine Village

I didn’t dodge any battles, sine my team started getting a nice amount of experience again, so Justin leveled by a lot in those 40 minutes, primarily because all of his skills now only cast half the SP, and his Dragon King Slice can kill most groups of enemies in the dungeon with one hit. As I said before, I’m not bothered with Justin getting ahead of the others in levels, because in the worst case scenario, the others will be able to catch up that much faster later on in the game.

The Boss

The boss of the dungeon was another Gaia creature of the same type I fought at the Tower of Doom, though I think this one was stronger. I spread my party around and mostly used spells and skills, so I didn’t even have to heal. Before I knew it, it was over.

Looking back at the screenshots, it looks like I did heal at least once. My memory sucks.

The Loot

As for the loot, I didn’t get much in the area of equipment, but I did get the last mana egg I’ll ever need. I got back to Laine and immediately used it to teach Rapp his final element – Earth. I gave the horn back to the wise man and he told me where I needed to go next – back to Zil Padon.

I got a mana stone, so gimme my magic!

The Story

Apparently, there’s a shrine in Zin Padon that’s connected to the Alent shrine, and the three races of Zil Padon somehow play a part in gaining access to the shrine. Before I could leave, though, it was time for another goodbye – Milda won’t follow me anymore.

The Medal of Knowledge? Original!

I was actually looking forward to this moment. Milda is strong and cool and all, but her four moves get really boring really fast and I was looking forward to transferring her skills to Justin. Well, that turned out to be a bust! Apparently, either her skills sucked, or I didn’t understand the transfer mechanics correctly, because I barely got a single level in all three skills combined. Suffice to say, that was underwhelming. I even gave one of Milda’s manuals to Rapp, hoping he would get more out of it, but no dice.

She left me almost nothing…

Oh well, see you in Zil Padon…

On a Side Note…

The people of Laine grow up in an extremely weird way. Before I went to the lower village dungeon, there was a group of kids in town, talking about how one of them will soon grow up, so they want to play together as much as they can before it was over.

A cute kid turns into that almost instantly…

I didn’t think anything off it, but when I got back, one of the kids was a full-fledged, all grown, talking cow. Apparently, the people of Laine just “sprout” instantaneously, instead of growing up gradually.

Grandia is a weird game. Weirdly awesome!