Grandia II

"My first RPG-- I'm hooked!"

Around 1993, my then 12 year old brother in law supplied me with a couple of games for my then-new SNES. One of them was an RPG (I believe it was Final Fantasy 2). I quickly removed it after about 10 minutes of very confused play. What is this? You control these people then watch them fight? HUH??? Mind you, I was about 28 at the time, so it wasn't like I was a kid...
I'm going somewhere with this, trust me....
Another friend of mine, these days, is nuts about RPGs... depite feeling the flashback of that earlier incident, I thought I would need a nice epic quest for my Dreamcast. One day, my wife told me to treat myself to a game... a rare thing for her to do, so I figure I would pick up a title I heard a lot of good things about... Grandia 2.
Whoa....

Gameplay:
My aforementioned friend has come over to my house to check out this game. According to him, the battle system is beautiful. I like the fact that you can plan your attack, rather than in a Zelda type game which forces you to think and hack at the same time. Everything is very easy and it is a great intoduction to the genre. There are also save cones scattered throughout the levels, which I love! The cones allow you to save your progress, as well as restore your HP, MP and SP.

Story:
Classic good vs evil. Since this is my first RPG, I'm not sure how the specific story or character types measure up against other games of the genre. Basically, you are Ryudo, a geohound, who is summoned to protect Elena, a worshipper of Lord Granas (the good). Elena, through a botched ceremony to rid the world of the evil Valmar, inherits the wings of Valmar, which turns Elena in times of stress into Millenia. Along the way you pick up Roan, a little boy and Mareg, a beast-man, to add to your party. As you head toward your goal of getting Elena to her destination (the main plot is Ryudo escorting Elena to her world's equivilent of the Vatican), you fight different pieces of Valmar that have been released by well-meaning people (like the eye of Valmar, mouth, etc). These bosses are tough at times! It's not a slash 3 times and the boss is destroyed thing. They require a lot of planning and strategy.

Audio/Video:
Graphics are outstanding... 3D anime! Sound effects are awesome but whenever the battles are over, the characters usually saay the same thing. Malreg usually says ''Nothing can get past my blade!''. This grows old fast. Music is awesome, but again more of a selection would have been better. Battle music reminds me of the old ABC Monday Night Football theme.

Replayability:
I will come back to it... not right away, as I have since bought other RPGs for the DC to play, but I will come back to it in a years time. I have about 30 DC games, 60 SNES games and several other systems, so I'll have to get through those, but Grandia 2 is worth replaying!

Buy or Rent:
To quote N'Sync: BUY BUY BUY!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/30/01, Updated 07/30/01