Grandia II

"An unforgettable milestone RPG not even the glitches of the PS2 version can harm"

Looking back at the fist "Grandia" for the Sega Saturn, it seems unfortunate that this title, developed by the creators of the legendary Lunar series, never got the attention it really deserved, due to the unfortunate fact that it was released near the end of the Saturn´s life cycle, and that it was overshadowed by "Final Fantasy VII" in terms of popularity, which is a little unfair, since "Grandia" was definitely on par with the Squaresoft masterpiece. Fortunately, European and American gamers were able to get their hands at this masterpiece, too, as a PlayStation port, and the same thing now happened to the Sega Dreamcast successor "Grandia II", an equally great RPG for an ill-fated console that now sees a re-release on Sony´s PlayStation 2.

Ages before the events in the game, there has been an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, namely between the Gods Granas and Valmar, representing good and evil. In the end, Granas was able to defeat Valmar, tearing his body apart and sending the parts of his body all across the world. This battle also left a considerable mark on the world´s surface, a gigantic valley named the Granas Cliff, and the blood-red moon of Valmar in the skies as a reminder of this epic battle. Centuries later, the known world is being governed by the church of Granas, and the times are quite grim due to the Day of Darkness supposedly being close, the day of Valmar´s return. In these times, the young Geohound Ryudo, some sort of a mercenary for hire, gets a job from the priest of the town of Carbo, where he is being instructed to accompany the girl Elena, a songstress of Granas, to a nearby tower for an exorcism ritual. However, things go terribly wrong during the ritual, and Ryudo is only barely able to save Elena, who is now being possessed by the Wings of Valmar that have been lurking inside the tower. This brings forth quite a curious problem: from now on, Elena has to share her body with Millenia, the human incarnation of the Wings of Valmar, and at night, Millenia takes over Elena´s body. Not only does this premise serve for an intriguing love triangle between Ryudo and the two females, it also represents the beginning of an intriguing tale full of adventure, friendship and romance. The story per se is honestly a little cliched, reusing quite some familiar themes like the legacy of two opposing Gods, a dubious church ruling the world or artifacts that have to be found by the characters. What makes this story great are not the themes that are being used, though. It´s the characters that help the story to stand out among the dozens of stereotypical stories. Ryudo, for example, neither is your angsty teenage pretty boy or your overly naive and good hearted guy. He´s a cynical and bitter teenager who´s sometimes acting like a complete jerk, and his personality only slowly changes throughout the game with the help of Elena. In fact, the interaction between our two leading characters here is amazingly well done, especially during the early parts of the game, when Ryudo is still treating her with little respect. This concept of character interaction is only made better by the introduction of Millenia. Quite frankly, there has never been a character like her in an RPG before, and describing her is quite difficult. At first, she astounds with her bad temper, her impatience, her arrogance as well as her flirtatious nature toward Ryudo, but you gotta love her sometimes sarcastic and hilarious remarks and comments, and even though she will change during the course of the game, she remains a character to bring a smile to your face thanks to her sheer energy and vivacious nature. The other characters like Mareg, Roan and Tio are also convincing and likable additions to the main cast. Like in "Grandia", you will again find small anime character portraits during the conversations, displaying the current mood for the characters and bringing them closer to you with their feelings and sorrows. As another returning feature from "Grandia", the conversations between characters during their stays in an inn are here as well, and they manage to both entertain you with some hilarious lines and to make you feel something for the characters. As far as the villains go, this game is a little disappointing, however. Melfice had at least potential as a villain, much like Sephiroth or Ghaleon, but the real villain that is being revealed near the end of the game is an utter disappointment, and you will see why. Other than that, the great character development and interaction as well as the perfectly translated, witty and funny dialogues make the story worthwhile and memorable.

In terms of gameplay, one can say that "Grandia II" follows the legacy of its predecessor closely both when it comes to the battle system and the normal in-game sequences, and that´s already a big plus, representing a mix of well known RPG elements as well as some fresh and intriguing elements that serve for a great combination. Let´s start with the town visits. As essential as in each RPG, they remain the way they always were, with you having to buy some new equipment and items, rest in the local inn and of course to help the villagers with their problems, most of the times being story-related problems. The thing that makes the town visits more interesting than in other RPGs are the witty conversations with some of the NPCs and the characters´ comments, replacing the pointless and uninteresting nonsense NPCs in other titles tend to spout at times. As for the worldmap, "Grandia II" follows the concept of part 1 by not having a real world map per se. Instead, you have a static and flat map where you choose your next destination, and the game will automatically send you there. Whether that´s good or not depends on whether you really need long and extended walks over the world map with tons of random encounters or not, or whether you need a good deal of world map exploration in an RPG. I for my part thought it was a good decision by Game Arts, since that way, the player can concentrate on the long dungeons and the field areas, which are some sort of a replacement for the world map: if you leave a town and are heading for your next destination, you have to go through such an area first before you can go to the next town, and these areas can be mountains, plain fields or caves, and they are similar to the puzzle-filled dungeons. Fortunately, it´s actually quite some fun to make your way through both of them, not only because they are creative in their design, but also because of the combat system, the highlight of "Grandia II". First of all, there are no random encounters in this game. Each and every enemy is visible on the screen, and even though they will try to touch you and get you into a battle, you can always avoid fighting by cleverly going around your opponents. But trust me, in most cases, you actually WANT to fight, because the battle system might very well be the best in any RPG. Like in the first Grandia, the game makes use of the so called IP-gauge that determines in what order the characters and enemies alike will be able to execute an action depending on their speed. In this gauge, enemies and characters are shown with some small, pictured markers, and once one of your character markers hits the COM sign on the gauge, you may choose an action for this certain character. And depending on what action you choose, your character marker will reach the final ACT (Action) point on the gauge - which allows him or her to finally execute an action - slower or faster. Normal attacks or item commands, for example, don´t take too long to execute, only a few seconds in the worst case. As for magic and special attacks, it´s a little different, since the speed with which a magic spell can reach the ACT point and can be cast upon the enemies depends on the character´s mastery of the skill or magic. If the skill you choose is on level 1, for example, then it will take a little longer until you can use that skill. With your level at max., however, you´ll be able to use this skill almost instantaneously. As a nice side effect, you are also able to exploit the IP-gauge for the sake of weakening enemies: for example, if an enemy is currently in the phase between COM and ACT, you can cancel his action by using a critical hit on him, which will throw the monster back considerably on the IP-gauge and makes him unable to use his attack. This IP-gauge concept serves for a fast paced and highly tactical combat system, making each battle more than the mere button mashing affair. The experience and level up system is similar to other RPGs, but the magic and skill system is slightly different. Skills, for example, are not learned by simply reaching a certain level, but by equipping a so called Skill Book to a character, and the skills can be powered up by using Special Coins you receive after a battle next to the normal experience points, and by providing a character with these Special Coins, not only will his mastery of existing skills increase, he´ll also be able to learn new skills that way, and the magic system is pretty similar to the skills, too, using the Magic Points you receive after the battle instead. As for the last gameplay aspect in "Grandia II", the controls are simply excellent, allowing you to move your character through the locations smoothly, thanks to the rotatable camera as well. So, judging from a sheer gameplay aspect, "Grandia II" is a masterpiece in the RPG genre.

Now we´re coming to what can be considered to be the biggest mystery of this Dreamcast port: the visuals. On Sega´s ill-fated next-gen console, "Grandia II" was a title that wowed gamers everywhere with its stunningly beautiful graphics, amazingly creative designs and aesthetics as well as grandiose special effects during the battle sequences, and it was easy to see why this title was being recognized as the best looking RPG ever at the time of its release. Now one might think that Game Arts was able to recreate this visual splendor on the PlayStation 2 just as good or even better, seeing that Sony´s console is at heart the more powerful machine, right? I actually thought so too, and the more I was shocked to see that in the end, "Grandia II" looked considerably worse on Sony´s PlayStation 2 than it did on the Dreamcast, with abounding graphical glitches. The most notable negative change from the Dreamcast original might be the fact that the game is far less colorful than it used to be. On Sega´s Dreamcast, it was able to amaze gamers with some vibrant and pretty colors for the locations and characters, which was the perfect way of underlining the amazing atmosphere of the game, drawing you even deeper into this fascinating and intriguing world, while in the PS2 port, they have paled considerably. That´s not the only visual flaw, however. Textures, for example, have become somewhat muddy and pixilated, worsened by the aforementioned color issue, which is especially visible in the background areas of the locations. And to make matters even worse, the biggest eyesore in this port is the constant flickering of the textures and polygon models, as well as the lack of proper anti-aliasing, making it difficult to look at the game the same way as the gorgeous DC version. The combat graphics fare a little better in that regard. The character models are nicely done with a slight chibi-comic approach, making them appear rather cute and likable in the process, even though they lack a few details in their facial areas. The spell and special attack effects, while not as impressive as on the Dreamcast, still look very good, and for some attacks, Game Arts even uses short Full Motion Video clips in order to present them, which might seem like a stylistic contradiction, but fits pretty nicely in the end. The battle sequences are not flawless, though, since you will notice that at certain points, during some spell scenes, black triangles will appear suddenly on the ground, as if the ground textures were suddenly missing, and there´s also a good deal of slowdowns to be found there. That, however, refers to the normal in-game sequences as well: even when you´re simply walking around, the frame rate remains pretty inconsistent. Compared to the Dreamcast original, Game Arts also added some new Full Motion video cutscenes, replacing some of the in-game sequences of the original, and while they look quite good, it was not exactly a necessary addition, honestly. All in all, "Grandia II" is still a game that remains pleasant to look at, and it´s far from horrible, but the nasty glitches that have made their way into this port are nearly unforgivable, seeing that the PlayStation 2 is a much more powerful hardware than the Dreamcast.

Fortunately, the music in "Grandia II" is just as good as it used to be, which means that it´s nearly perfect. Of course, not everyone likes composer Noriyuki Iwadare´s work, depending on whether you can dig fast paced rock-inspired themes, but you can´t deny that for "Grandia II", his musical score fits perfectly. For one, the battle themes, no matter whether it´s the cool main battle theme, the rather odd rear attack battle theme, the dramatic boss battle theme or the epic last battle score, Iwadare manages to serve us fast paced and intriguing tunes that will be able to give you the drive during the battles to fight on, which makes the awesome battle sequences even better than they already are. The same goes for nearly every other track in the game: the story sequences are being underlined with dramatic and heroic themes, the town scores are calm, sometimes odd and always intriguing, and the dungeon and field music features an adventurous approach reminiscent of the first "Grandia", which is always a good thing. Thankfully, the audio quality also is very high, ranking roughly on the same high level as the Dreamcast original. Other than the fantabulous score, "Grandia II" also features some high quality voice acting rarely seen in video games. Granted, this might be because of the involvement of some of the voice actors famous for their work in the "Metal Gear Solid" games, and it definitely shows that these were experts doing their job. The intonation and emphasis on certain words during the dialogue sequences, while sometimes a little overly melodramatic, is always spot on and simply perfect, and the voice actors have also been wonderfully chosen for their respective roles. Cam Clarke, for example, famous for his memorable role as Liquid Snake, is the perfect choice for the cynical and at first bitter and indifferent Ryudo, helping to make him a truly memorable and outstanding main character. Jennifer Hale is pretty solid as the main female lead (or one of the two female leads...), being the typical healer of the group with a pure heart, even though her voice can be a little too soft at times. John Cygan as the voice of Melfice gives a powerhouse performance almost on par with John Truitt´s performance as Ghaleon, and Paul Eiding makes for a very good, wise sidekick of Ryudo as Skye. The best performance, however, definitely is being delivered by Jodi Benson as the mysterious and vivacious Millenia. She already is one of the most unique and intriguing female characters in RPG history, but it´s Jodi Benson´s voice work that makes her truly memorable; the impatience and arrogance, her bad temper as well as her essentially good heart, everything is being portrayed and combined perfectly within Benson´s voice, and she definitely deserves praise for the awesome job she did. Thanks to the magnificent performance of them all, they manage to breathe life into the fantastically designed characters and to make the already witty and funny dialogues even more pleasant to listen to. So, overall, the outstanding musical score (while not as brilliant as in the first "Grandia") as well as some of the best English voice acting ever truly deserve a perfect 10/10 score.

Compared to the Dreamcast version, "Grandia II" on the PlayStation 2 unfortunately is a disappointment due to shoddy graphical port of the Dreamcast original. Apart from the visuals, "Grandia II" is still an incredible RPG thanks to its amazing atmosphere, created by the great cast of characters, as well as the superb gameplay and battle system. If you can still get the Dreamcast version, I´d definitely recommend that one, but otherwise, you can enjoy this brilliant RPG on the PlayStation 2 as well, if you can look over the graphical glitches. Not even they can harm the essence of this Game Arts masterpiece.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/26/06