A dungeon crawler spinoff of Grandia

Gameplay
Billed as more of a spin off than a true sequel in the Grandia series, Grandia Xtreme takes an odd decision. For the first time in a Grandia game, a great plot, a large world, and a lot of attention paid to the characters take a second seat. Instead, this is more of a dungeon crawler.
I'll focus on that to start with, because in most people will probably view that as heretic. I'm not saying that there is no plot - there is still as much as most other games. However, what there is isn't anywhere near as Epic as previous instalments, and mostly seems to consist of the main character having shouting matches with the main villain of the game.
The lack of effort put into the world is also a little surprising. Listening to the conversations and references given throughout the game, it's obvious that the developers had the ideas in place for a large world, it's just that you spend the whole game stuck in the middle of nowhere. There are two towns, one of which is basically your base camp, and another town which exists as a place to further the plot.
The characters are similar. They actually have some effort put into them, however none of that is put forward from the start. You literally get a big load of them placed in your party so you can have 4 people for battles, and it's not until near the end of the game that they have had much of a chance to speak and emerge as proper characters. In fact, most of the dialog that they get takes place after you have completed the game whilst you are fighting through the bonus dungeon, so most people will have put the controller down for good before they even know them.

Thankfully, fans of the Grandia combat system have much less to worry about. Possibly the only major change is the encounter system. Gone are the back attacks. Instead, first strikes are determined by whoever is ready. By "bracing" your character, you ready yourself for a strike. This gives you a good chance of having a sneak attack, and at the least it prevents back attacks. Only problem is that bracing slows your movement down on the field if you do it all the time - hence getting the timing right is important.
Also, the camera angle has changed from an above view to a lower down view, much like Skies of Arcadia. Many people have complained about the camera, however personally I didn't have any problem with it, leading me to think that most reviews are just looking for a reason to whine. It's true that it rotates a little too slowly, however there is also the option to reset it straight behind you just like in PSO. The first few times, this will probably disorientate you, because it changes instantly, however after playing for a little while it does become manageable. I'll admit the camera system takes a little while to get used to, but after the first dungeon you will defiantly have it nailed, and it's not the big problem that others proclaim it to be.

The actual combat itself is much improved. By that, I don't mean anything like the big leap from Grandia 1 to Grandia 2. I mean that Game Arts have spent a very long time tweaking it to near perfection.
The first improvement is that your party is no longer fixed by the plot. Apart from the main character, you are free to choose any combination of characters and tactics that you like, rather than have them forced upon you.
Secondly, the Magic and Special Points system has had a big improvement. You start out with full MP but no SP. SP is slowly gained as you fight and do actions, however there is no way to restore MP without sleeping the night. Hence you can no longer spam magic in the knowledge that you can quickly have it refilled because you are right next to a save point. You have to make it last through at least half the dungeon and probably the boss as well. And you can't spam special moves as much either, because the only way to get SP back is to slowly earn it by fighting.
Skills and mana eggs have also seen a big change. Skills books have to be equipped to each character, and basically give you different slots to put skills in. Mana eggs are now much more common, and you can equip more than one per character, however they only have a few spells in. Mana eggs can also be combined and evolved in a complex evolution pattern. Getting the most powerful eggs for your party is probably a task in itself.
That's not to say that you'll want to have all high level spells. There is an interesting trade off, in that the more powerful a spell, often the more stringent it's hit area is, and of course it will burn off more MP, leading to some kind of balance.
Only one problem that I have with the system is that characters who are natural spell-casters don't have many skill-slot slots. This means that you can power them up as much as you can the melee fighters. This slightly defeats the purpose of the many skills that increase the power of magic.
Apart from that, combat in progress is pretty much unchanged from Grandia 2. Only really new thing is the combination moves. (Well, I say new, a few enemies could use them in Grandia 1 and 2, but now you can use them? ^_^) Take two or more characters with enough SP and who know a combo move, and both their turns will be used on pulling off a powerful special move. The downside is that you have to wait for all characters concerned to be ready, making them easy to cancel, also they are hard to learn and the first ones you learn are quite weak.

Dungeons themselves are pretty much the same. Basically they follow the Grandia trend of "walk from A to B, with a couple of easy puzzles thrown in as well as a few other miscellaneous things to do." There are a some open areas in places, and the puzzles have improved slightly, but it's still mostly the same. Ironically, the change of camera angles possibly makes the graphics seem less impressive. In truth they are the same or better than before, but you are viewing them from closer up.
Also, this is the first Grandia game to feature a radar map. Thank you Game Arts! We've been crying out for this since number 1.
Probably the most interesting thing is the changes to the save points. Or rather, their removal. It is only possible to save your game at base camp. Rather than save points, dungeons have portals which you can return to base and save. You lose all SP doing this, but at least you get to restore MP. There is one of these at the start, and usually one halfway through each dungeon. Why not just have a save point? Things get a little tricky when it comes to the bosses. There are no save points near the bosses. Instead, you have one way portals, which can be used to escape from a dungeon but not return. If you're nearly dead it's better than a game over at the hands of a boss, however you will have to replay half of the dungeon again.
Sound harsh? Well, to counter the increased difficulty, your HP is a lot higher than in previous Grandia games. It's quite hard to die by screwing up, although of course if you do it repeatedly you'll be in trouble. Bare in mind though, that the number of times you can heal is also a limited by the inability to restore your MP. This makes trying to get perfect victories (for which you get a nice EXP bonus ^_^) all the more important.
Lastly, I should probably tell you why this game is called "Xtreme". The name comes from a danger bar at the bottom of the screen, warning you how tough the monsters in the area are. Pretty pointless really, because you can tell this just by looking at their appearance and you can see when they're nearby on the radar.

Sound
Sound effects are pretty standard. The music is mixed, but most of it is quite good, especially the battle music and a some of the dungeon tracks - the only crime here is that not every track is on the soundtrack CD.
Voice acting varies, however it is mostly pretty bad. The big name cast do not prove their worth. It's not that it's awful as such... it's just that I'd have been just as happy with the voices still in Japanese or left out completely.

Replay Value
This is the first Grandia game where you can replay the dungeons pretty much at will. In fact, the whole game is designed around it to some extent - as you go onwards, old dungeons get harder, and have better rewards placed at the end of them.
It also means that you can replay the levels while still building up your orginal party, and without listening to the plot again, which is good.

Reviewer's Bias
Strongly for

Summery
And finally a score. I would give it 8.5/10, however with a couple of reservations. I am of the opinion that a stellar plot isn't that important to an RPG, and that I can cope with it getting repetitive. (It does get quite repetitive, although no worse than Grandia 2 and I actually found it better than Grandia 1 in that respect.) Knock off a point or two if either of those things matter to you.