Grandia 3 announced for PS2.

[Frogacuda]

I don't get how there were people out there that complained about Grandia II's plot but liked Skies of Arcadia, with its paper thin plot ripped from Final Fantasy 1 verbatim.

Anyone who writes a collectemup plot for a story-driven RPG should have his balls punctutred. Simple as that.

[Bojack]

This is the best news in a long time for RPGs. This and Dragon Quest VIII, and the two new Wild Arms might even restore the faith Squaresoft has shattered as of late concerning console RPGs.

[Finch]

Skies of Arcadia was just enjoyable, until the last 10 hours or so. The whole collecting four whatevers thing was old before FFI, so it's not like anyone thought that was the good part. It had nice environments and the whole exploration thing was great until the random battles finally snapped my last nerve. (i seriously broke the disk and had to buy a new copy... which was $10 at that time)
It wasn't the best game. Unlike every hardcore whatever, i thought FF IX was a million times better. Still, it was over before it could get too horrible, which i can't say for the original Grandia. I guess this means i'll need to dig up a copy of Grandia 2 one of these days.

And geez, Skies of Arcadia ripped more from Grandia than anything. "Strongly influenced" or whatever.

[RedCoKid]

As had announced it Square Enix, next RPG is finally revealed and It acts neither more nor less Grandia III of which here some scans drawn from last the Japanese magazine Famitsu. Grandia III will be different from the other episodes by its atmosphere and if for the moment do not know we too much about it, we know already the name of 3 characters: Yûki, Alfina and Emerius. Yô Yoshinari (Valkyrie Profiles) will take care of the design of the characters and the director will be Hidenobu Takahashi (Grandia II). A video of the play should be presented at the end of April, at the beginning of May (surely in E3). On the other hand a date is already fixed for this summer at Japan and exclusively on Playstation 2.

(Source: Famitsu)

http://jeux-france.com/news9246_gran...et-scanne.html

[Finch]

Those chara designs are swell. The environments are beautiful. Count me interested.

[RedCoKid]

More from IGN (in English, not French or Babelfish )
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/600/600043p1.html

[Frogacuda]

The Yoshinaris are fantastic artists. Their style is a change of pace for this series, but I still really like his designs. Looks like they're going for a darker style this time around, which I'm not wild about, but it looks well done. Is You working with his brother Kou like usual or is this a solo effort this time?

[George]

The action bar is a circle in this game, just like in Xtreme. I don't really mind, it was more of a cosmetic thing anyway.

The screens look sharp, very awesome. The only thing is that with those three character designs, I'm seeing Ryudo, Elena, and Melfice all over again.

[EightBit]

I don't get how there were people out there that complained about Grandia II's plot but liked Skies of Arcadia, with its paper thin plot ripped from Final Fantasy 1 verbatim.

Anyone who writes a collectemup plot for a story-driven RPG should have his balls punctutred. Simple as that.

Im one of those crazies to the T. It wasn't the plot, it was the games charm that wowed me. G2 lacked any charm what-so-ever. There is other things, too much to go into because it would need alot of explaining, unless you're terribly interested in my diatribe. The point Im getting at is that it isnt as cut and dry as your making it out to be, G2's wonderful gameplay made me trudge through the horrid story. Skies' wonderful characters made me trudge through the bland gameplay.

[AaronChance]

I don't get how there were people out there that complained about Grandia II's plot but liked Skies of Arcadia, with its paper thin plot ripped from Final Fantasy 1 verbatim.

The main character of Skies wasn't an ass I wanted to punch in the face from the very beginning of the game, and he was probably the most likable character in G2. Skies actually had a decent feel of a worldscape going, while G2 was just lame linear dungeon and some of the poorest excuses for towns I'd ever been forced to wander through. Inventory managment in G2 was like stabbing knives in my eyes.

The only way you could compare them is they both had battle systems that were easy and boring, and could be won with 1 or 2 certain skills. In G2, almost everything was a chump for sleep, and bosses just needed to be bashed with your best attacks.