Grandia 3
Grandia 2 is a hell of a video game. It has a brisk battle system. It has clean loud anime characters that tonka truck into each other. I watched the ending with my save from 25 years ago this year. As a polycule decides to give humanity a chance I exclaimed, “I love this.”
So it is a wonder why I never played Grandia 3. Its because of Penny Arcade mostly. They said it was monotonous and the story was bad. Well I decided to find out for myself. I then found the founder of Fukubukuro Video Game Essays also tried to review Grandia 3 and abandoned it within a few paragraphs. Well spoilers there folks.
I got 5 hours into Grandia 3 and had to abandon it. It is filled with lethal anime poisoning. It attacks every vector of your being. Even having a character that can’t stand anime-bullshit couldn’t save me. To quote Tycho of Penny Arcade:
The stories in most of the JRPGs we get are fucking garbage. Is this a controversial statement? Only the most dominated nihongophile recoils, straining on his Eastern leash. These “stories” are challenges in an of themselves: like a hulking boss creature, they are trials against which the human mind must strive. Exhausting existential retreads that course through the meat of the brain like poison.
There is a defense, however. Like the protagonist in Pi, I’ve long since drilled out some portion of that organ – the part that stays up all night in coffee shops talking about whether or not God wears white.
A great change in my video game consumption of 2025 was abandoning video games then watching the ending on youtube with friends. Grandia 3 delivered it in spades. I’ll think about it to the end of my days, despite the ending itself.
Grandia 3‘s Party arrives at the big evil trying to something the world and proceeds to cast 300 spells to reduce its HP. The faery elf girl gets to make amends with her evil brother. He turns into stardust and floats up. We see a golden owl fly by. The main character declares
ITS GRYPH
and it cuts to credits. We laughed for an hour straight. Video games only get away with this. Who is Gryph? What does it mean she is here? What happens to the world or the party? Who cares! ITS GRYPH.
We discovered Gryph is a owl-god present in exactly one cutscene where Gryph appears and then is killed by the evil brother. 20 hours later, Gryph reappears. ITS GRYPH.
I’ve thought a lot trying to explain to someone unpoisoned by video games why this is funny. It is nonsense. A normal person would just be baffled. Which we are baffled. But video games are so inept at story telling they think having a character you met 20 hours ago AND DIED reappearing for 3 seconds counts as an ending.
ITS GRYPH
Hinge Problems 
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