Grandia III (3) is a role-playing video game developed by Game Arts and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2 released in February 2006. The game is set in a fantasy world where humans fly in magic-powered aircraft. A boy named Yuki is determined to become a great pilot like his idol, the Sky Captain Schmidt. When he and his mother encounter a girl named Alfina who has the ability to communicate with the spiritual guardians of the world, they discover the secrets of the world's past and face an evil rogue guardian named Xorn. Battles are similar to those of the previous Grandia games. It uses the same basic combat system, where both time and distance play into the execution of actions.

Icons representing all characters and enemies on the field begin an encounter on a point on the dial depending on whether the enemy party or the player party was running away from the other prior to the encounter, and progress along the circle at their own rates. Once the icon reaches the Command point of the dial, the game pauses to allow the player (or computer, if the icon is an enemy's) to give that character a command. The icon then enters the red area of the gauge. Spells, skills and criticals progress more slowly during this period than combos. When the icon reaches the ACT point in the gauge, the command is carried out, and the icon is sent back to the start, where the cycle continues. Characters on the field have two standard attacks: combos and criticals. With combos, the character will swing/stab/shoot the enemy a number of times as per their weapon's use and any applicable skills. They do more damage overall than Criticals, whose purpose is to knock the position of an enemy on the Turn Dial backwards. If a character is hit by a Critical or other "cancel" attack while in the red area of the gauge, their attack is canceled entirely, which is one of the main strategies for boss battles in the game. If a combo is performed upon an airborne enemy, then a special Aerial attack is done. If an enemy is defeated with an Aerial Finish, the monster may drop more valuable items.