"Gracious Gift of Gods (Almost)"

Grandia 2 released in just a few short years ago was meant to try to help save the Sega Dreamcast for RPG fans and others alike. It was the perfect game. It had a beautiful battle system, epic soundtrack, great plot line, and everything else you could ever want from such a game. At least, that’s what was expected from the game. Skies of Arcadia was released on nearly the same day as Grandia 2 and began one of the major battles of the Dreamcast console. A terrible dilemma arrived for all RPG lovers and Dreamcast fan alike. “Which is the better RPG?” many asked themselves. “Should I get both or just one of them?” “I can’t afford to get both of the game, but which one is better?” These burning questions continued to plague gamers’ minds near and far.

Sadly, Grandia 2 fell just barely short of the bar Skies of Arcadia had set upon its release.

The game introduces you to the world of Ryudo the Geohound with a great opening movie at the start of the game. Immediately, right from this movie, the game looks promising. You soon learn after this movie that a Geohound is, more or less, a bounty hunter doing odd jobs here and there to get all the money he can using whatever means necessary to complete the task at hand. Ryudo is talking with his only friend Skye, who happens to be a bird much older than Ryudo, when he discovers another job request for him in his tree. The game never does share with the gamer why on earth Ryudo’s jobs are posted on this tree, so I guess the gamer accepts this as Ryudo’s “home”, an open field with a tree.

The letter reveals a request by the local town named Carboro Town to be an escort. Ryudo decides to take on the challenge of this apparently “cake” task and sets off for Carboro. After talking with a few people there, Ryudo gets the mission from the local priest to escort the singer for the church named Elena to a ceremony at a nearby tower. There is a group of individuals going to the tower, and, for some odd reason, Elena is the only one with an escort. The only explanation offered is “Elena you’re the one with the most important task.” This makes next to no sense and immediately shows the game’s lack of explanation for certain things that are done by the characters.

You soon arrive at the tower and after a few unfolding events learn of your next mission which is to get Elena to the Pope at the cathedral which is a decent stone throw away. However, pretty quickly you discover your “true” mission of the game, which is to stop the revival of Valmar. The main focus of this story is to stop the “evil god” Valmar from being resurrected for the purpose of destroying the world. There is also a “good god” named Granas who fought Valmar many years ago and they nearly destroyed the world in the process. This battle was dubbed “The Battle of Good and Evil.” Ryudo read my thoughts exactly when he says at one point in the game “You’d have thought they could have come up with a more creative name than that.” To stop this revival, you find out that each body part of Valmar must be stopped as it tries to be resurrected. You go from town to town, each with its own problems due to a piece of Valmar and stop the body part before it’s too late.

This story is confusing. I never understood during the entire course of playing how these parts are coming back to life. It just seems to be accepted that the god’s parts randomly wake up just a couple days before you come into town. Not only that, but you have a typical love triangle which actually plays a significant part in the plot. I won’t spoil who the other person is because she isn’t discovered until later in the game, but the entire relationship is, to be frank, boring. I never got interested at all in the characters desire for each other and thought it could have been better just to leave it out or at least develop it further. The plot past these elements is actually rather enjoyable. I really liked seeing some of the character development during the game and some of Ryudo’s comments during the game were particularly hilarious. However, the story really takes a turn for the worse at the end of the game with dialogue that almost appears like it was copied and pasted from text box to text box because the story gets so repetitive it’s unbelievable. Not to mention, the entire plot in the last few minutes of gameplay leaves the gamer wondering, “How the heck did that happen?” The plot is done very well outside some confusing areas plus a bit of boredom, but I played the game hours into the night just to see the next unfolding event.

Grandia 2 is fun. The battle system is phenomenal, being praised everywhere and for good reason. The game has been called a mix of turn based and real time. Turn based is when you choose the moves for the character and watch as they carry out your commands. Real time is when everything happens as you push the commands. I think the game is more turn based than real time, but either way, it’s enjoyable.

You start off on an adventure field proceeding to various levels and you come across enemies in your path. The enemies are visible on the field and encountering them could result in two different battle beginnings. If you run into an enemy from behind, you will get the “initiative” in the battle and be able to attack once or twice at the beginning of the fight. However, if an enemy hits you from behind, you will be “surprised” and all the enemies get to attack you at first. The enemy will turn red if it sees you and actually chase after you to try to “pick a fight” apparently. Getting the initiative in fights will usually make them easier and a little bit shorter. Although, in all the hundreds of battles I had in Grandia 2, the enemy must have surprised me about ten to fifteen times. It is a little too easy to get the initiative in this game, but it is still fun to hide behind rocks or behind walls and charge out right at the moment the enemy turns to walk to walk the other way.

Whichever way you encounter an enemy, you are ultimately thrown into the battle system. The battle system is, without a doubt, the best part of Grandia 2. What is called an IP bar, appears at the lower left corner of your screen. This IP bar is what makes this game so unique. The IP bar has a small picture of each party member’s head and each enemy’s head placed on it. A party, for newcomers to RPGs, is the group of people that travel and fight with you during the course of the game. You can have up to four members with you at any given time. Each head travels across the bar at a various rate. At about 2/3 of the way, the head will land on a three-letter phrase that says “COM.” This term indicates it is time to input a “command” for your character. You can choose between a combo attack, a critical attack, or a special/magic move.

The combo attack is your general attack. It has the character you selected chase toward the enemy and slash them with their weapon, be it a sword, ax, or knife, twice in a row. A critical attack is a bit more complicated and requires some precision timing. The enemy’s head will also hit the COM command and after it crosses the command it will move toward the end of the IP bar to the term that says ACT. Your characters perform the exact same way and when the head reaches act the character carries out the move. If you use a critical attack while the head is between the COM and act command, then the enemy will be cancelled and be sent back to the beginning of the IP bar guaranteeing you safety for a little while. The downside to using a critical attack is that the attack does about half as much damage as a combo attack and if you hit the enemy before it reaches COM, then a smaller amount of damage will be done and the head will be pushed a very short distance toward the beginning. Performing the either attack was always a fun experience because of the amount of thought and strategy they each require. You need to use precision timing for the critical attacks and timing it was always an exciting moment when you’ll see if your attack reaches ACT in time or not. However, you could just avoid using a critical and perform a combo instead because you may do enough damage before the enemy reaches ACT, anyway. The majority of the strategy occurs at the times that involve decisions between doing criticals or not, but the majority of the time, the enemies’ heads will be at the beginning of the IP bar and you’ll just end up doing a lot of combos to them.

Of course, you could just skip all of this combo/critical nonsense and use a magic or special move instead. Each character has a number of special moves at their disposal to obliterate nearly any opposition that rears its ugly head. The magic spells are actually gained by earning or finding things called Mana Eggs, which each have about 25 spells or so on them and you can discover eight eggs in the entire game. The special moves are all great looking accompanied with awesome sounds and lighting effects and this is also the case with the music. With each move, an amazing light show is thrown your way complete with variety in each different move and magic spell. The special moves and magic spells are different from the other moves, though. When you input a spell or move at the COM command, the character will have to “charge up” basically and the head will move much more slowly toward the ACT. This is also were a bit more strategy comes into play. You could use a combo for some quick damage, or you could use a combo/spell for more damage but you risked getting attacked yourself while charging up. Plus, you are only granted a certain amount of magic points and special points, which are sacrificed to perform a move each time you do one. Although, you are able to power up your moves throughout the game to make them more powerful and cross that zone from COM to ACT much quicker. Earning Special Coins and Magic Coins does this.

At the end of every fight you encounter, you will be rewarded with experience points, Special Coins, and Magic Coins. The experience go toward making the character more powerful by providing more health points, special points, magic points, and raising defensive and other stats. Gathering experience is key to being able to compete with bosses that will be encountered in dungeons. To gather all of this experience, you’ll need to fight nearly every enemy you come across. This may sound like a tedious task, but it’s typical never a problem with such a fun and amazing battle system. I will admit, though, that there did seem to be quite a lot of enemies in certain areas and I was happy to avoid a fight or two on occasion due to the sheer number of them. The special coins and magic coins you earn are used to purchase or power up new and existing moves. Each move you have can be powered up or acquired with a certain number of these coins. With each purchase, though, the price of the next step up requires a higher number of coins. This requires careful consideration in determining whether you want Ryudo’s new move for 500 coins or whether to power up his old move for 600 coins. It’s the same case for magic. You can power up or gain new moves. I do have one complaint about the Mana Eggs, though. There are over a hundred spells you can get with all eight Mana Eggs in the game. However, a lot of the spells are repeated up to five or six times on other Mana Eggs. This was very depressing to me because all of the spells were great looking and fun to watch, but there is such a limited number of spells that you can acquire despite the fact that there are eight of these Mana Eggs. Ubi Soft, the game developers, definitely needed to focus on adding a larger variety of spells to the game because I eventually found myself bored watching and gaining the same spells over and over and over again.

The gaming fields themselves are a joy to roam around in. While a bit linear, some exploration is required to discover all of the treasures that are hidden in each area. What impressed me about the gaming fields was the interactivity that some of the things occupying the areas provided. In a lush, meadow like plain grow large mushroom shaped plants that you are able to slash to ribbons just by pressing A. The plants can reveal some kind of rare item or can actually release another enemy into the environment. I really liked discovering what each mushroom housed and collecting or fighting whatever might have been there. Sometimes, though, there are things vital to advancing like pushing rocks across a hole to provide a path or cutting tree vines to reveal a path. Just slashing these almost lifeless objects was actually very entertaining providing some minor entertainment between battles to make sure that the fun never ends.

It looks great. Grandia 2 has great looking, well, everything. Well, almost everything. The characters are smooth looking without any blockiness. The characters are all unique looking with different outfits, hairstyles, and everything else. However, some of the clothing is flat looking upon closer inspection. You can’t tell outside of battle, but when the camera zooms in on the characters after a fight, you can see that the clothing Mareg looks almost painted on with just a little 3-D to it. The textures are all superb throughout the game. I especially liked the textures on a boat you take a very short trip in during a level because it looked so real it blew my mind. The bridges also deserve special recognition with realistic looking wood and the separations between the boards.

There are some FMVs that are shown in the game and they, too, are very attractive. There is a bit of blurriness here and there but nothing that causes the movies to be unwanted or unappreciated. However, the movies are so sparse in the game, that I never fully came to enjoy them since I rarely ever saw them and even when I did, they never lasted that long. Although, when they were there, I really liked them. One thing that particularly comes to mind is a pair of wings an enemy has toward the end of the game. They are beautiful providing a transparent view but still managing to keep a bit of blurriness type of effect indicating that they’re not clear and they shouldn’t be. I just wish there could have been more of these spectacular displays.

The levels themselves are gorgeous with colorful displays nearly everywhere that you come across. The houses in different cities are all unique to that village with huts in a jungle type setting to large two story brick type houses in large kingdoms. The levels correspond to the areas that you’re in with large trees, flowers, and vines in the jungle and little islands, rocks, and other sea like things on a beach side setting. The graphics are great in nearly every aspect in the game and will not leave you disappointed.

The audio had its share of good and bad. There was voice acting for all of the major characters in the game and for the most part they were well done. The entire game wasn’t in speech, though, it was about one fourth of the game or so. The voice acting while well done, did get to be a bit much at times. Toward the end of the game, the people doing the voices just got a bit too enthusiastic with the characters. It got so much like that the majority of the plot appeared to become a bit cheesy because of the over dramatizations from the characters. The sound was great during the entire course of my adventure. I can hardly express how delightful hearing the sound of the slash of Ryudo’s sword or just crossing a bridge. The sound is equally impressive with plenty of crashes, booms, and shocks to keep any gamer coming back for more. Each character also had something they said at the beginning of almost every move, which were sometimes surprisingly amusing. I really liked when you hear “You’re scared aren’t ya?” right before a really powerful move by one of your characters. The music did seem out of place here and there. The music was while great was nothing epic with upbeat and cheerful music to some depressing music scattered at appropriate times to create the perfect mood. Well, they were almost all at appropriate times. Toward the end of the game (I know I keep discussing the end, but that seems to be where most of the trouble was), something bad happens to one of the more major characters in the story. Right after this event happens, instead of playing a “hurry” type of music that would normally be played, a rather uplifting song is played. I didn’t think the characters were bad to the point where music needed to be played that almost celebrated their bad coming of events, but that’s apparently what Ubi Soft had in mind.

I really enjoyed my experience with Grandia 2. The game is a little bit of a challenge on some bosses but nothing most players won’t be able to handle. The game will take most people about 30-35 to get through on their first try, which is a bit short for an RPG. The game was usually very fun during the entire duration and I was glad for making the purchase. However, I will say that I thought Skies of Arcadia was JUST a bit better than Grandia 2, so people trying to make a decision between the two games would be better off going with the former. I would recommend giving both a try if you get the opportunity.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/18/02, Updated 02/27/03