Grandia II

"Those DAMN save cones ! ! !"

Most of the other reviews are only about how a game is good or bad, not many people really put in bad things about good games or the good things about bad games. NOW DON'T GET ME WRONG!!! Read the other reviews too!!! Because there is a lot of glory that really does apply to this game. Its just that there is always something wrong with even the best games.

Anyway,

When youfre playing a game and you keep thinking, ''If they did this or that it would a lot better...h I guess that is because you might be comparing it to another game, for example the Final Fantasy series. Now donft get me wrong, ''I am not a Final Fantasy fan at all!!!'' In fact I think itfs quite long and boring. Final Fantasy has a good series, awesome ideas, and fun techniques and spells but it is too slow and boring for me. But this game is a little too easy to compare to RPGs like Final Fantasy.

Graphics / 9: There is not much that I can complain about here. Everything is beautiful from the characters to the backgrounds (except for the characters not having mouths). The fast-pace battle scenes are nearly flawless! Even when you have all of your characters attacking a monster at the same time, there is no lagging in the game. The only problem with the battle scenes is the camera angle getting stuck on one character while other characters are off the screen either fighting or getting hurt. This doesnft happen too often, but there are situations when you feel that you need to see everything that is going on. This is definitely nothing major though.

The FMVs are absolutely beautiful... but a little too short in many cases. For example: when something dies and starts to fall to the ground, the FMV stops right before it hits the ground. I felt that it left me with this, ''Hey wait a minute!?! I wanted to see the rest of that!!!'' Okay, so that is no real biggy, BUT you can tell that they cut them short to save CD space. It is a little too obvious, especially when you have FMVs shorter than the loading time. In my opinion, they should have at least made it a two-CD game. Another complaint about the FMVs is the lack of smoothness during the start up and finishing (i.e. you get a nice black screen before and after). I have seen other games run FMVs a lot smoother even though the graphics were half the quality.


Sound / 10+: Absolutely beautiful!!! I love the wide variety of music that it presents. Everything from your classic video game music to a set of nice and heavy electric guitar rifts to a wide variety of beautiful symphony music. Also the vocals during the singing parts were well done. It gave me shivers from the clarity of the voices!!! The character voices were especially well done. Even though they donft use voices for all of the major scenes there is NO COMPLAINT!!!


Game play / 7: The very first thing that you notice is the incredible idea of the seemingly completely chaotic fights. This, in my opinion, beats many any other RPGs' battle system which makes the game an absolute success by itself and an perfect 10 for the ggame playh section. However, there are other things in the game that take away from this success.

Limited number of spells and techniques: It has some wonderful spells and techniques, but I would like to have seen a much wider variety of those mouth watering, almost peed my pants, ''I want to see that again and again and again'' spells or techniques that Grandia II provides. Final Fantasy did a wonderful job of keeping the gamer looking forward to the next spell or technique. Grandia II has the ability to... But it just doesn't take full advantage of it. Thus, only giving you a few really cool things to play with... and that's it.

Those damn save cones: This is my biggest complaint about the entire game!!! The idea of the save cones is kind of nice idea. They not only allow you to save your game, you can also use them to restore your entire party's life, restore skill points, and cure any characters that maybe poisoned/cursed. But when you have one at the beginning and one right before the boss of a level, plus unlimited access to them. Itfs almost like cheating! To top it all off, you are able to find any number of cure items along the way that are absolutely unnecessary do to the existence of those ''save cones''.

Uh... well... you want a challenge? Try youfre hardest to not use them. Use only the save/cure places at the Inns (or after those really long, yet relatively interesting, cinemas). This would not only be a test of your party's ability, but the temptation of you not using them when your party is hanging by a pixel of life, you donft have anymore cure items, and it would take you forever to go back to the previous town.

NOW THAT WILL MAKE IT A TRUELY CHALLENGING AND INTERACTIVE RPG!!!

Sorry, I just canft express enough on how much I donft like those save cones!!!


Replay value (?): As for the replay value, I canft really testify. I have only played it through once. However, my friend who has played it through at least twice told me that one major reason to replay the game is to make it more challenging. For example; donft use save cones, donft go back to previous areas for level-ups, and try to beat it in record time. Now, there is no indication that this will change the game in anyway but it is definitely worth the challenge! Maybe even try the first time through (for those experienced RPG gamers).


Overall 8: The only true mistake that Game Arts made was putting it on to one disk. It is amazing to have all of that information on one disk and they should be credited for skillfully compressing the programming. But gamers donft really care about that sort of technological stuff. They want to see the technology on the screen!

Anyway, aside from the small imperfections (no one is perfect though), this game is a classic and a pioneer for the future of RPGs. You should buy it, donft waste your time renting it (you will buy it after renting it anyway!)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/12/00, Updated 09/12/00