Grandia 2

by Ubisoft

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004UDVL
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: December 5, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,154 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Platform: Sega Dreamcast

Amazon.com Review

See if this sounds familiar: You're from an outcast mercenary class that upstanding folk don't want around until there's trouble. You're sent on a mission with an innocent, idealistic woman with whom you don't immediately get along. Forces of darkness, safely contained until recently, have escaped and are threatening a world-ending clash with the forces of light, unless you successfully intercede. This is one of the safest templates for console role-playing games, as well as the story in Grandia II.

Thankfully, however, everything else in the game is fresh and provides hours upon hours of fun. The backdrops and character designs are colorful without being flashy, the game has a great pace (for an RPG), and players never have to stand around too long for the next thing to do. Even the writing, within its cookie-cutter plot, is smart, well translated, and occasionally funny.

The game's strongest element, though, is its battle system. Taking the best of turn-based and real-time battle engines, Grandia II forces you to choose your moves carefully with respect to timing and position. The battles are very simple in the beginning, but grow increasingly complex as you fight larger numbers of monsters with a growing party of allies. How you meet your encounters--whether you initiate the fight, are ambushed, or meet head on--affects both the timing of the blows and the positions of the contestants. Battles emphasize counterattacks and combination blows, but you'll soon find that movement and defense keep you alive against the tougher enemies. Elemental magic, items, and skill books are just icing on the cake. Even if the battles do grow old, the random fights are fairly easy to avoid, and a versatile AI option lets you cruise-control through the rest.

Grandia II may just be the traditional role-playing game that Dreamcast owners have been waiting for. The question of whether or not it is too traditional doesn't matter, since it offers a better experience than most that have come before. --Porter B. Hall

Pros:

• Battle system creates interesting, complex fights
• Solid, traditional role-playing game for a system with few others in the genre

Cons:

• Predictable plot and characters

GameSpot Review

The Sega fans rejoiced! Finally, the Dreamcast would be blessed with not only a real RPG but the sequel to the Saturn's most beloved RPG. And then the Sega fans were disappointed. Grandia II is a great RPG, but GameArts has clearly reacted to the market and made Grandia's sequel a less-risky, more middle-of-the road RPG than its lauded predecessor.

It's not that the first Grandia's story was original or risky, but what GameArts has come up with for Grandia II is another heard-this-before scenario. Thousands of years ago, Granas and Valmer, the ever-dueling gods of light and dark, engaged in their final battle. The resulting cataclysm shattered the world and created many seemingly impassible cracks in the planet's surface. While the two gods were slumbering, a church to Granas was erected, and this sacred order kept Valmer's evil forces sealed away. One young girl, Elena, is the key to keeping the seal intact. Hired to escort Elena to the seal-maintenance ceremony, mercenary heroes Ryudo and Sky witness the ceremony's sabotage, where evil forces are released onto the world. Pursued by the mysterious and flirty demon-woman Millenia, Ryudo and Elena hurry onward to prevent Valmer's awakening. Grandia II definitely has some twists, but the overall story is largely uninspired and rehashed.

GameArts has opted not to carry on the first Grandia's story and instead has built a largely unrelated game with a similar feel. Boyish adventurer Justin and sweetheart Feena are nowhere to be found: This is an entirely new world, full of entirely new adventures. Returning are the now-famous battle system, art style, and interactive, rotatable dungeons of Grandia. To make the game more acceptable to modern-day RPG fans, GameArts has made this story more mature than Grandia's childish story; however, this is also one of the game's weaker points. The original Grandia's characters lent the game a sense of wonder that Grandia II's characters just can't duplicate, and the result is a game that feels far less "grand."

The original Grandia features one of the best RPG battle systems to date. Fortunately, Grandia II builds on an identical system that includes snazzy 3D graphics. Each character is given the standard RPG options, such as attack and magic, but the presentation is completely different from that of any other game. The action proceeds in pseudo real time and pauses only for commands and spells. The rest of the time the action is alive with the thrill of battle. Because your characters attack independently of one another, as do the enemies, the battles are quick and exciting. But there's also actual strategy here, which is missing from a lot of RPGs. Enemy and character placement actually counts for something in Grandia II. Enemies are visible in the game's many dungeons, and they pull you into battle on contact ues by means of skill books, mana eggs, and lots of points. Upon completing a battle, you are awarded a number of magic and attack skill points based on the number of enemies slain and the methods used to dispatch them. Dumped in two communal pools, these points can be distributed among the party to unlock new techniques or improve existing ones. And you can equip characters with mana eggs that contain spells that you can unlock via the magic skill points. Keeping the party's magic completely interchangeable has its advantages, but this added flexibility lessens the amount of skill required of you in battle. Skill books let you learn stat-modifying abilities, used with the attack skill points.

While Grandia II's visuals are garishly colorful and smoothly animated, the characters and monsters are all relatively low in polygons and stand out from the impressively detailed 3D environments. Spells, likewise, have taken an odd graphical route. Some spells use full-motion video, while others do not. The 3D characters are often superimposed over these FMV spells, but sometimes they'll appear in 2D cartoon form. The overall experience is inconsistent and unsettling, especially since there's nothing about FMV effects that the Dreamcast can't handle. Grandia II's sound is just like the original's, and it features twangy upbeat tunes and lots of voices for battle and story sequences.

With some of the original story's magic gone and a dumbed-down experience system in tow, Grandia II is a letdown. It could've been better had the developer opted to push the limits of the game's hardware and RPG design. GameArts has definitely put together a solid RPG with Grandia II, but fans of the original shouldn't expect the Second Coming.--Michael Vreeland--Copyright © 2000 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great game, October 7, 2000

By 

mike (Scottsdale, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grandia II (Video Game)

Ok I was a little mad when I saw the reviews of this game. How can you write a review when you don't even HAVE this game? Well I have this game and I am here to tell you how good it is. First of all this game is fantastic, the graphics are the best for Dreamcast yet and the battle system is completely amazing. The best way to describe the battle system is like lunar: SCCC's battle system in 3D. Also in the battles everyone can be moving at the same time. Another thing about this game is it is SO detailed. In some of the stores you can knock over bottles or knock a picture out of place. Another example of the great detail is in the battles. When a character hits a bad monster, the character blinks there eyes, and when you hit them, you might yell AAAHHHHH or another thing. These are just some of the great things about this game. I won't keep going on telling you how good this game is, you will just have to play it for yourself. This game took me about 30 hours to beat and I literally spent about 10 of my hours battling because it was so fun. Now after you read this I hope you buy this game, the story is excellent and it can be emotional at times. Do not pass up a great game like this, because I can not tell you how good it is and how it changed my life.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grandia 2, December 17, 2000

By 

Johnny Quest (Zionsville, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grandia II (Video Game)

At first when I played this game I wasn't that impressed. The story and characters tended to be your standard RPG fare: a young, arrogant, spikey haired hero who yields a big sword; a young beutiful innocent female sidekick who knows magic; typical good vs. evil storyline. However, several hours into the game I got hooked. The graphics don't start out that impressively, but by the time you get to the meat of the game and experience the battles for the first time, I was really impressed. The music is standard RPG fare with a mix of pop, rock, and classical. By far the big draw of Grandia 2 is it's amazing battle system. For the first time in an RPG, I actually look forward to battling monsters. In fact, I'm actually running into monsters on purpose in order to experience a fight. The battles load fairly quickly and are beatifully presented in 3-D. There's a great mix of real time 3-D and prerendered FMV in the hundereds of spells that you can cast. The FMV is refreshingly unique and makes it appear as if you're looking at an anime movie. This battle system should be the standard for all future RPGs. Its that good.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great game...too short, August 28, 2001

By 

"darkchylde22" (East Orange, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grandia II (Video Game)

After beating ... out of Skies of Arcadia twice, I told myself, "Self? You need another RPG." So I picked up Grandia II. Good points first. The battle engine is excellent. Characters just don't run up to the enemy, strike, then go back to their original position. They are moving around, which makes you think out a battle strategy. Everything from which magic our item to use, down to the basic question in this game, especially when fighting bosses, "Do I have enough time to cancel this guy's attack before he wipes me out?" The graphics are very good, too. It's a funky mix between polygons, CGI, and Japanese anime. pretty wicked. You'll understand what I mean when you use Ryudo's Dragon Zap, or Millenia's Fallen Wings. The storyine starts out great, but somewhere along the line it turns into a theological discussion on good, evil, and religious beliefs. But it was enough to keep me interested. To this date, other than Soul Reaver, I haven't heard better voice acting in a game. you will definitely be suprised. By far, my biggest problem with this game is that it was way too short. Ususally, when I play an RPG, I like to fight whatever I can, whenever I can. Being that in this game, you can see where you enemies are, I was in heaven. By doing that I put myself slightly ahead of the game. Beating bosses were not a problem. So, in the end, I ended up clearing Grandia II in 3 days (it didn't help that I purchased the game on a Friday. I played it all weekend). Also, don't be fooled. The jewel case says that there are 2 discs. This is true, but one disc is the game's soundtrack. But all in all, this game is great. But to this date, Skies of Arcadia is a better game. If you have neither game, buy Grandia II first, then buy Skies, so you won't be dissapointed.

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