Grandia II

"Glitches, Glitches, Oh my god more freakin glitches!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Grandia 2 is one of the first RPGs for the PS2 and for most people the fact that it even existed was completely covered by the hype and anticipation of Final Fantasy X. For those of us who did see the game, it burned our eyes and made our faced cringe up in horrible pain, but the gameplay we got was flawless and probably some of the best on the system. Well, on to the review...

Story 8
Its the same Good vs. Evil thing you,ve seen many times in RPGs, but cliche as it may be, it does draw you in. Granas(the god of light)came to this world to do good and bring the people into righteousness, but there were some who resisted this god and turned to the dark god Valmar. Granas and Valmar fought long until the sword of Granas delivered the final wound on Valmar's darkness. The blast from the sword smashed Valmar to pieces and also left scars upon the land. These gapping scars on the earth became known as the Granas cliffs.

Several years later a geohound named Ryudo gets an assignment to bodyguard a songstress named Elena and they set out on their journey. Obviously the story grows from that into the traditional save the world tone.

Characters 6
Slightly above average. They pale in comparison to the meticulously crafted cast of Chrono Trigger. Ryudo has a very traditional attitude and is pessimistic about mostly everything. Elena I found annoying and redundant with her preaching. Roan is one of my favorites and his attacks are great, just wait until you see his Snowball Fight attack. Mareg is a beast man bent on revenge against Melfice. Tio is a robot thing that seems like she was put there just to fill up a little space. Her relationship with Mareg is sort of touching though.

Music 7
Easy flowing tunes and fine dark themes make the score go up, but the battle music is just plain bad. If the composer only listened to some of Sakuraba's, or Mitsuda's work I believe he would have gotten it done right.

Voices 2
See, I usually put this section in with the music, but its so bad here that I didn't want to drag down my music score! The actors here just suck, I mean the emotion is non-existent and actors are not supposed to sound like they're reading off a ripped up napkin. It's like they woke up a long since dead William Shatner, beat the crap out of him and pumped him up with sedatives with its jerky dialogue and slow responding conversations. Uhhggg this just makes me sick.

Gameplay 10
Wow they can't make it sound good at all, but the gameplay is gorgeous! I've never seen a battle system this good before in any game ever. Its just awesome. Okay, everything moves on an IP gauge and when your face gets to the end you can do a combo, or critical attack, moves/magic, evade, defend, use an item, set to computer control or escape. Also you move about on the battle field and select which enemy to attack judging on the distance. If you target an enemy who is to far away you may run out of stamina and just stop cold on the battlefield. These battles are turn based also so you can pick and choose your attacks, but it moves much quicker than a regular turn based with-out the confusion of active time.

Graphics 4
I'll just say it right now, the developers just didn't care visually. Grandia 2 came out initially on the ill-fated Dreamcast and on Sega's system it looked extremely good, right up there with Skies of Arcadia, but PS2 is a completely different hardware and it shows, badly. The graphics were just not redone for PS2 with much care. Its almost like every time you move there is a glitch in the scenery, or in a character. The same is said for the battles, they don't escape the graphical mediocrity either. While they are bad most of the time, there are rare occasions when you can enjoy the games look and when it isn't glitching up, Grandia 2 is a colorful masterpiece and I only wish it could look as good as it does on Dreamcast.

Difficulty Fairly Easy to Moderately Difficult
I never found the difficulty to be a problem, except in some of the later Valmar pieces which even then could be beaten with the right training.

Overall 7
Grandia 2 could be a gem in many ways if it wasn't for the weak graphics and poor voice acting. The story, gameplay, and characters(albeit in a small way)make up for this enough to give an RPG fan an enjoyable, but not strongly impacting game experience. Grandia 2 can be picked up new for $20 right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the next year it has disappeared. I would still recommend this game if you could look over the faults.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/13/03