Grandia II

"Predictable and bland."

I thought the original Grandia wasn't that bad. I only played the Playstation port but it was good enough. I started Grandia 2 a number of years ago, maybe 3. I had rented it and got about 1/5 of the way through it. I recently bought it and replayed it and just couldn't stand the first 10 hours. They are just terrible. It gets a smidge better after that but in the end it wasn't worth my time.

Ryudo is a Geohound, a hired protector of sorts. He is hired to escort a singer of Granas (AKA god), to a temple where she must perform an exorcism. Things go wrong, she unleashes some evil and you're hired to take her to the pope. The story is simplistic to a fault. The characters are two dimensional and the development is lackluster enough that you question stupid motives near the end. I have never played a game were it was painfully predictable who was bad, good and what not. The characters also do things that make no sense. I know nuns (she might just be a singer but she's more of a nun character) aren't perfect. Heck, our nun at our church cusses, drinks ect. That isn't the point. Our songstress makes odd choices near the end and the ending left me feeling empty.

The graphics in the game are terrible. Game Arts uses a high poly count but it looks like a blurry blob of a mess in the end. The character models don't have noses or mouths... The little picture of the text does. The cut scenes are ugly as sin, nowhere even close to the Playstation 1 CGI scenes. These just look like crap. I never once went "Wow, that's just great to look at". A few of the churches in the game would be beautiful to look at if the graphics weren't so murky.

The sound in the game is such a mixed bag. Sound effects are generic all around. Nothing exciting at all. The voice acting is somewhat decent but some characters are nerve grinding, like Elena. Thankfully, the game rarely uses the voices... Wait, my bad. The endless walls of slow moving text would have gone by quicker if they used the voice acting more often. The most dramatic scenes have no voice acting and the mindless scenes randomly have voice acting. It has no rhyme or reason in the end. The music in the game is just magic to the ears. I'm almost tempted to pick up the soundtrack. The vocal tracks are just wonderful. I didn't care for the rockish sounding fight music but oh well.

The control in the game is easy enough. Hit X and you pick commands. Nothing complex, overly simple. No complaints, except going through the stupid start button menu is a pain, a sphere is a bad layout for that.

The game play is the second important part to any RPG. Story comes first in my opinion. Let me try to go about this in a way that makes sense. I'll try to separate each thing into a paragraph instead of my usual text blocks.

Let's start with the world map. There really isn't one. If you've played Final Fantasy X, you'll know exactly how the world map is at the end of that game. You basically have this location on your screen. as you advance in the game more towns or whatever appear. You don not travel the map, you just pick the place and you go there. Be it a city, forest, dungeon or whatever. This takes away a lot and Skies of Arcadia was the last RPG I played and it offered so much to do in the over world. This also takes away from any side quests, which the game offers zero of. There are probably 20 or so locations in this game. Not a whole lot...

Like most RPG's you go to shops to buy new equipment, items and whatnot. It's the same here but magic and skills work differently. Through the game you will get eggs. They each have a preset spell list. Only one character can equip an egg at a time. But everyone can have 1 equipped, just not the same one. You gain magic coins in battle, you use those to level up your spells. You also have set skills, some become available near the end but you use special coins, which you get from battle as well, to upgrade those. Everything has five levels. You also find books. These books are upgraded using the special coins and each one has different skills to equip. You don't equip the book, but the skill. The higher your level, the more skills. They are usually attack up or HP up or whatever.

The fighting system tries to be unique but it fails. It's all turn based but it runs in real time, except when a magic attack is being used or when you are picking a skill. It takes place on a field, everyone sort just runs around and you pick who they are to attack and using what. It's very simple and you can usually kill everything with one special attack. This cheapens the game but it is available and while there is a meter for HP, Skill and Magic; it can all be replenished at a save point and monsters don't reappear. I guess I forgot to mention that. there are no random battles. You can see all enemies on the screen, they will chase you if you get to close but you can just run past them most of the time. I like the idea but random battles seem to make the game move smoother, this makes it feel like a race and in the end you end up losing EXP that is needed later.

The sad thing is the game is insanely easy. I never had to use a single item until one of the final boss battles and that was becomes my characters had crap HP that got destroyed within one round. I didn't have to heal once during the final boss. That's just sad. The game took me under 20 hours to beat, there are no secrets or side quests. The ending left me just in the air but I really didn't care for these characters, they were like clones of other characters and it didn't matter if they lived or dyed. I'll admit the game picked up in the end but it wad too little too late. Skip this one unless you're a huge fan of the series but I'm sure you would have played this one by now. there are much better RPG's out there for the Playstation 2.

Story - 5/10
Graphics - 4/10
Sound - 8/10
Control - 9/10
Game play - 6/10
Replay value - 1/10

Final Score - 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/06/05