Grandia is one of the GOATs!!! Never had the pleasure of playing the Saturn version but most of what makes the game special remains regardless.
I’m not a game designer by any means, but do on occasion dabble in at least thinking about the idea of designing games and that usually means RPGs. I always come back to thinking about Grandia’s IP Bar and the way it so elegantly introduces things like timing, positioning, interruption of actions, and co-ordinating all out assaults more characterized by real time systems, with the careful and considered strategy of turn based systems. I honestly can’t think of a better midway point between an action RPG and a turn based system than Grandia.
I mean, shit, if you really compare the two with how they attempt to preserve the best of both worlds, the FFVII Remake battle system is trying to bite that flavor literally two decades later and it still doesn’t feel quite as good as Grandia does.