Grandia: Parallel Trippers

Grandia: Parallel Trippers is a traditional Japanese role-playing game with a two-dimensional environment, which depicts object sprites . Under the control of the player is the hero Yuuhi, traveling through various locations, interacting with non-player characters, fighting monsters, overcoming traps and puzzles in order to further advance the plot. Obstacles in the form of protrusions and pits are overcome by a jump, openings in the walls and locked doors are opened by means of switches located somewhere in the location. The character is constantly accompanied by a small flying creature Pinky, it is used to interact with objects at a distance. Treasure chests are scattered everywhere, where all sorts of useful items are stored, for example, healing herbs and equipment. Sometimes objects are not hidden in chests, but in some furniture, cabinets, barrels, interior objects. As in the original Grandia , all enemies are visible on the screen, and battles begin only in those cases when the character comes close to the enemy ^[1] .

The Parallel Trippers combat system has undergone several changes, although the sequence of moves is still determined by a single scale of activity, the so-called Initiative Point Gauge. Neither characters nor monsters can move on the battlefield, occupying static positions on it, and the player watches what is happening in the future from the first person perspective. The icon of each participant in the battle progressively moves from the beginning of the scale to the end, and the speed of its movement directly depends on the speed indicator of this character. As soon as it reaches the end, the flow of time stops in order for the player to give his subordinate any command. Commands include a normal physical attack, a magic spell, and the use of “synthesis cards,” which are stored in inventory and can be used to create various effects. For the victory over opponents, the squad receives experience points , as they accumulate, the level of the characters constantly increases, leading to an increase in personal characteristics. During the passage, information about monsters and characters encountered, as well as about all the teams seen, is entered into a single database, where it can be read at any time at the discretion of the player ^[2] .

The game was announced in July 2000, representatives of the publishing company Hudson Soft announced that they are going to release a new "Grand" for Game Boy Color together with Game Arts, and this will be the first portable part of the series ^[3] . The then president of the company, Hirokazu Miyazaki, spoke about the desire to develop a game that would be suitable for absolutely everyone, it was created with the idea to satisfy the needs of both novice players and role-playing veterans, while the emphasis was primarily on the overall quality of the product. Hudson Soft was chosen as a publisher because of its wide experience in the field of games for portable systems and great marketing enthusiasm ^[4] . The presentation of the first developments took place in August at the Nintendo Space World ^[5] , in September at the Tokyo Game Show the exact release date ^{[6] [7]} became known. Along with the release, the publisher launched the so-called “Grand Diary”, an online portal that published fan drawings, interesting interviews and various downloads to attract interest in the project ^[8] . The musical series was created by significantly simplifying the existing soundtracks, originally written by the composer Noriyuki Ivadare .

In Japan, the popularity of the game was restrained, and the weekly magazine Famitsu assigned it only 24 points out of 40 ^[9] . The IGN website gave the Parallel Trippers an ambiguous assessment, noting that it goes quite easily, not being frankly bad, but you can’t call it good either, since the graphics introduced here leave much to be desired. The reviewer connected the low ratings of the game with the fact that many expected from it the continuation of the original Grandia , but only a few characters remained from it - as a result, a completely different game turned out ^[10] .

• Grandia: Parallel Trippers (Japanese) - page on the official website of Hudson Soft