Last time on Grandia, I got seriously stuck. The EBOOT I’m using on my PSP turned out bugged, so it kept freezing at the Twin Towers animated cut scene. I tried using the PSP Go Pause Game feature to go around it, but it wouldn’t work. Well, I managed to navigate around it anyway, albeit in a very unconventional way.

How to Transfer saves from PSP to ePSXe?

You see, I have a PC and I’m no stranger to emulation. I dusted off my copy of ePSXe, updated it and got an ISO of Grandia with the same ID as the one I have on my PSP – SCUS94457. I know, I know, technically, this is piracy, but I paid 50€ for the German version of Grandia about 15 years ago, and that amount of money is around 8% of my current income, so sue me.

I’m kidding. Please don’t sue me. It’s totally a legal backup.

The two VMP files are the actual memory cards.

Anyway , I got the ISO, err, backup and loaded it up on ePSXe. I made sure the two memory card files in the memcard subfolder of ePSXe were created and then I connected my PSP Go to the PC. I found the original saves in PSP/SAVEDATA/SCUS94457 on my PSP Go and copied them to my PC.

Copying from the PSP Go to the ePSXe memory card is as simple as copying a file.

Then I got an awesome piece of software – MemCardRex. This tools allows you to edit different PS1 save formats, copy save slots from one memory card to another and even create new memory card files. It can edit and save a large amount of formats and read a few more. I loaded up my PSP Go save files in one tab and my ePSXe memory card file in the other and copied the Grandia saves.  I was now able to continue my game on the ePSXe, so that’s what I did.

The Game

I got past the Twin Towers, since the dungeon ended as soon as the cut scene was over. What followed was the saddest part of the game and the second saddest moment in my gaming career, second only to the scene from Final Fantasy VII. The game was hinting that Sue was getting more and more exhausted since the End of The World, possibly even sooner, but it finally happened. She collapsed at the village of Dight.

I didn’t notice the hints on my first playthrough.

Justin needed a teleportation orb from the nearby Mysterious Vanishing Hill to get over the inner sea, though, so Sue did her usual grown up thing and sent him on his way. The Mysterious Vanishing Hill was a relatively short area, made even shorter with ePSXe’s ability to fast forward through battles by disabling the FPS limiter. I fought the two bosses there, got the orb and went back to Sue.

She decided to leave adventuring to Justin until she gets older. It’s hard to describe this, but it was a very touching scene and in the end, Justin decided to use the orb to help Sue get back to Parm. This means Sue wont be learning any more spells and I’m one awesome character short. On the game side, I got Sue’s skill books, so not all of it will be wasted, but story-wise, it was still a very sad moment.

Right in the feeler!

Since teleportation was out of the question, I needed a boat. Luckily, Gadwin had one, so he told me to meet him back at his house when we’re ready to leave. Getting there was a bit annoying, since the area was full of low-level enemies I couldn’t avoid.

I got to Gadwin and then it was revealed I’m gonna lose another awesome character. Gadwin challenged Justin to a duel and this time, I won. He taught me his secret Dragon Move and then said it’s time for him to go on his own Journey. Again, I got his skill books, but I still lost an awesome character.

Both battles are rigged, but it’s still a cool part of the game.

I went back to Dight and boarded Gadwin ship. Again, the game offered some touching moments during the voyage and Justin actually got serious for a bit, before a pretty girl ran into their boat, called Justin “her hero” and asked him to save her island from pirates. That’s where I stopped playing.

Justin really knows how to kill the magic.

Half way through, though, I transferred my save back to the PSP, because I prefer a bug and stutter free experience, which apparently, ePSXe is unable to offer, even after all these years.

How to transfer saves from PC to the PSP

Sadly, MemCardRex can’t save to the PSP memory card format, only read from it. In order to transfer my saves there, I had to go with a different route. I downloaded the CWCheats plugin for my PSP Go. There are different versions of the plugin out there, but not all of them work on the PSP Go, so I had to find the right one. This plugin basically allows for hex cheats in PSP and POPS games, but it can also replace entire memory cards on the fly and it also allows ePSXe save file imports.

In order to get to that point, I had to rename my ePSXe save file to the GAME_IDE-#.mcr format, which ended up being:

[code]SCUS_94457-0.mcr[/code]

I renamed it to that and then copied the file to the seplugins/cwcheat/mc folder on my PSP. Then I made sure the plugin was working and I loaded up Grandia. Once I was at the title menu, I pushed and held Select for a few seconds, which caused the cwcheat menu to appear. From there, I was able to import the ePSXe save from the Manage Memory Cards menu. If the file doesn’t appear for you, make sure you named it correctly. It needs to be named after the game ID, which you can also read from the cwcheat menu while the game is running.

Anyway, I got past the freezing bug at Twin Towers and now I’m able to keep playing my game on the PSP Go.

• MemCardRex 1.6 – PlayStation Memory Card Editor
• Blogging Games – CWCheat 2.3
• Blogging Games – CWCheat PSP Go 2.3
• MediaFire – CWCheat 2.3 – Import ePSXe Save Games into POPS Games.
• MediaFire CWCheat 2.3 PSP Go – This one worked for me
• CW Cheat Database – I don’t think this is needed, but I got it

Quite a lot has happened since the last time I wrote about my play through, but honestly, I’m getting kind of tired of just retelling the story of the game in these articles. I’ve done this with all three of the Final Fantasy games as well as the Witcher, but I’d like to write more about the mechanics and other gameplay elements instead. This is why I’ll try to only shortly focus on the story in Grandia from now on.

The Story from New Parm to the village of Luc

So since last time, Justin got on the ship to the new continent. On the ship, he found out Sue followed him and snuck on board, so they were forced to work as sailors for the duration of the trip. Soon, they met Feena, a third playable character, who was already an adventurer. The three of them went on board of a ghost ship and defeated the boss there before finally reaching New Parm.

The boss of the ghost ship was actually a giant squid.

In New Parm, Justin got extremely disappointed with the local Adventurer’s Guild, which turned out to be just a glorified tourist agency. The president of the guild also kidnapped Feena and tried to force her into marrying him, so there was that to. Sue and Justin rescued Feena and the three of them went to explore the nearby ruins where they talked to Liete again.

Before Dom Ruins, you need to get through Rangle Mountains. You can find two mana eggs here, so between area’s go back to New Parm.

Returning from the ruins, they found a wounded kid with ah horns and a tail. The Garyle military, including Mullen, Leen and the three teenage girl generals were after the kid, so they imprisoned everyone. Thanks to some help from Leen, the group and the kid, named Ren, managed to escape and went to Ren’s home at Luc Village.

Geez, Sue! Is it all about the looks for you?

The Garyle army followed and tried to steal a sacred statue, which turned out to be a huge spirit stone. It broke, but the army took half of it. Also, Leen turned out to be Feena’s sister! Right now, I’m heading for the End of the World, a huge wall which no one managed to climb yet. I guess I’ll be the first to do it.

The game actually was hinting Leen is Feena’s sister. I noticed it this time, on my second play through.

The Game

Initially, I tried to train my skills intelligently, so I could get new, useful moves as soon as possible. Eventually, I realized there isn’t much point to this, because the game modifies the various formulas for experience gain so you can’t get to far ahead in any one skill or spell, and it’s extremely easy to catch up with skills you neglected for a while.

Further down the path from here, there’s a line of stone head traps where you can boost your water magic easily.

This didn’t stop me from overtraining completely, though. At Don ruins, there is an area with traps that do damage to everyone in the party right next to a save point. Basically, I was able to use my healing spells in the field until I ran out of mana and then just go back to the save point to recover. I did this until everyone’s water magic was at level 5 or higher. By that point, the process became so slow I just didn’t feel like grinding anymore. Still, this gave me access to Slumber, All Heal and provided some very welcome stat boosts. The extra mana points will especially be useful.

Mana Eggs

Speaking of magic, I haven’t really said anything about how it works. Justin and Sue don’t start with any magic before they meet Feena, who starts with a the fire skill available. From then on, I can find items called mana eggs in various places of the world, as long as I explore everything thoroughly. Each mana egg can then be used at a shop to teach one skill to a character. There’s a limited amount of eggs, so I’m not sure if there’s enough for everyone to learn all four magic skills, so I decided to use the eggs on the characters who will stick with me until the end of the game first.

Liete moves the story forward in the early game.

I guess I forgot about that. Grandia is a game with a relatively large number of characters, but you never really assemble your party in any way. Instead, old characters leave and new join at various points in the story. As I said, I’m not sure if I can get enough eggs to teach all the skills to all of them, so for now, I’ll be teaching the two who will be staying with me until the end – Justin and Feena.  Right now, Justin has already learned all four and Feena only lacks the Earth skill. I think I managed to get all the eggs I could to this point. I got:

• One from the ghost ship boss
• One in the sewers beneath New Parm
• One on Merril Road
• Two in Rangle Mountains (one in each sub-area)
• One in Dom Ruins

I’m a bit worried I missed an egg in the Misty Forest, but I tried to explore everything, so I’m hoping I didn’t. In any case, that means I got a total of six eggs up to and including the village of Luc. Since the party can hold four characters, and I know Feena started with the Fire skill already available, this means I need at most fifteen total. I’m also 90% sure one of the final characters starts with plenty of skills learned, so the total number is probably even smaller.

When I played the game as a kid, I’ve definitely missed a bunch of eggs so I was also missing a lot of skills at the end, so I’ll do what I can to stop this from happening again.

The Skills and Spells

I like how the various moves you can do in battle don’t follow the usual mold as much as most other games do.  There’s no “Fire 1/2/3” in this one. There are stronger and weaker fire spells, but they differ in name, look, mechanics, basically everything other than the element. There are also combination such as fire + wind (thunder), water + wind (ice), etc.

Each character gets several weapon skills and four possible magical skills. Using any of the moves related to the skill provides some experience in that skill. Once 100 experience is collected, the character gains a skill level. To unlock moves you need a amount of levels in a certain combination of skills.

Tremor is the earliest earth spell that allows you to do damage while improving your skill.

In addition to this, each skill gain provides different stat bonuses, so you can actually specialize your characters to a degree. For instance, if I focus on axes and earth magic with Justin, he’ll do a lot more damage with the extra strength he gains. On the other hand, fire and sword skills will increase his wit. It’s quite a fun system, but for now, I’ve been using the “gotta catch ’em all” approach of using all the skills equally so I could get more moves sooner.

The Difficulty

Honestly, the game is really easy now. Part of it is probably due to abusing the trap mechanic at Dom ruins and part due to exploring everything, which made me get a lot of experience and money, which I then used to buy fresh equipment at every shop. Part of it also because I’m really still at the start of the game. The overall story isn’t really known yet and for now, the goals the game provides are very immediate – “go to the next area to learn more”.

The greatest moment of the three commanders.

Mostly, it’s because I have a better grasp of the mechanics now than what I had as a kid. Back then,  I was running away from monsters, getting ambushed, wasting mana eggs and focusing on the wrong skills. Now, I understand how to slow down enemies, cancel their attacks, move away from potential damage and just use all the skills at my disposal far more effectively. Thanks to this, several bosses I fought up to this point didn’t get a chance to hurt me even once.

After I got distracted by Crash Bandicoot (in a really good way), it was finally time to start up Grandia. This is one of my favorite PlayStation RPGs, after the Final Fantasy series. Actually, I’d probably put it above Final Fantasy VIII in many areas.

Every time I see this screen, I can hear the music in my head.

Grandia was originally released on the Sega Saturn, I believe, which I never owned or even saw in real life. It got re-released on the PlayStation two years later, and one year later, I bought it. Since I bought all of my PlayStation games in Germany, this one was in German to. However, the voice acting remained English throughout most of the game, with the exception of the animated sequences.

Voice acting?

Yup, this game had voice acting. It was one of the rare PlayStation JRPGs that had it. It wasn’t very good voice acting, but I didn’t know better back then so I loved every word of it. These days, I still love it, but mostly for nostalgia’s sake.

The Beginning

The game starts in Parm, a town on the shore of the old continent. The main protagonist Justin and his little friend Sue are playing with some kids. Well, they’re dueling, actually. The kid, called Gantz, issued a challenge to Justin – to find four legendary treasures. If Justin fails to do this before dusk, Sue will have to  marry Gantz, which she doesn’t like at all.

If he lived in the modern times of the real world, Justin would probably be a nerd.

I basically had to scour through the city to try to find the four items, but there was no real time limit.  Sue got the apron (Legendary Armor) and then the two of them got the iron pot and the pot lid (Warrior’s Helm and the Shield of Light). After a while, I also got the wooden sword (Spirit Sword).

Obviously, these are kids we’re talking about here, which is something I love about the game – it does not take itself seriously even for a moment. Another thing I love is the coffee joke. Apparently, in the world of Grandia, coffee is what alcohol is in the real world, and more. Kids hate the stuff and “only adults can appreciate the taste of it”. If you drink too much of it, you get drunk or something. There are people who constantly drink to much, people who drink in secret, etc. Coffee is bad, basically.

Marma Road

After the events in Parm, Justin went to visit the local museum, where the curator gave him back his spirit stone. The spirit stone is something Justin’s dad left him, so he gave it to the curator so he could test it. He didn’t discover anything other than that the stone is harder than diamond.

After a short talk, the curator gave Justin and Sue a pass to a local archaeological dig at the Sult Ruins. To get there, I had to walk the Marna road.  Before that, though,  it was time for dinner with mom.

Meal Time

This is another great thing about the game. At the end of each day, or when the party is supposed to take a break, determined by the story, everyone gathers around the table or the camp fire and talks about the day. It really adds charm to the game.

Whenever it’s time to take a break, everyone sits to have a meal together.

Anyway, I got to Marna road and explored the area entirely. I didn’t find much, other than some gold and herbs, but I gained a few levels, which means I finally did some battling. The great things just keep coming, so here’s another one.

No Random Battles

Yup. There are no random battles in Grandia. Monsters do randomly appear on the map, but you see them at all times, so you decide when to attack and when to avoid them. Of course, if you keep avoiding them, you’ll probably end up ambushed, but it’s still your choice. If you’re good, you can even ambush them.

The Rah-Rah Cheer has voice acting to, same as almost every other move. Also, the Rah-Rah Cheer is awesome.

There’s also movement and placement in battle, which sort of reminds me of Chrono Trigger from the SNES era. Depending on your placement and the placement of enemies, it absolutely matters which actions you pick. You can hit multiple enemies at once, avoid getting hit yourself, or even counter or cancel an enemies attack.

Marna Road Explored

Eventually, I explored the entire area and gained a level or two. Mostly I’ve been fighting bugs, spiders and some sort of centipede enemy. While doing this, I refreshed my memory about the various moves and mechanics available. I got to the Sult Ruins and saved my game.