Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

The Devil in Disguise

Similar to how the original Grandia initially saw its release on the Sega Saturn, its sequel, Grandia II, would see its first release on its successor system, the Dreamcast. Like its predecessor, the second game would see a few ports, although these were largely inferior due to technical shortcomings, which I can attest to from personal experience with the PlayStation 2 version. The first two games would eventually see remasters on the Nintendo Switch, the second as the Grandia II HD Remaster, and later to other systems of the time. Does it still have the same issues as prior ports?

The first sequel stars a snarky, sarcastic Geohound, a special name for a mercenary in the game's world, named Ryudo, and his talking avian companion Skye, tasked with escorting a Songstress of the Church of Granas, Elena, to the St. Heim Papal State. Elena recently became possessed by the Wings of Valmar after a botched ceremony at a tower and wishes to be cleansed of this curse. As a result, she constantly shapeshifts into the female devil Millenia, forming a bit of a love triangle with Ryudo, with a whiny blonde brat named Roan and the smell-sensitive beastman Mareg eventually joining the group as well.

May Her Fussiness' reign last a thousand, eight thousand years until pebbles grow into boulders lined by moss

The narrative of Grandia II has some good beats and is overall probably the best of the franchise, given good backstory for the game world and its characters and some relatable themes, but that isn't really saying much. It borrows heavily from another Game Arts title, Lunar 2: Eternal Blue, not to mention many of its religious overtones and plot beats from Breath of Fire II. The story also feels forced down the player's throat constantly given the unskippable cutscene text, and the total absence of music during most of the scenes themselves increases their soporific disposition, which may make one fall asleep at times and just want to get the game over with.

The translation is definitely an improvement over the first Grandia, but still has its issues. The text is legible, and there is plenty of humor stemming from Ryudo's constant snarkiness, stemming from some Star Wars references, calling Elena "princess" and "Her Fussiness," and so forth. However, some of the problems from the first game's localization recur such as the needless CAPITALIZATION of words for emphasis when they would have sounded a million times better without it, not to mention the translators' unfamiliarity with the concept of contractions, which makes the dialogue sound horribly stiff and unnatural.

Yes, I HEARD her, and she was WONDERFUL.

The battle dialogue suffers from the typical JRPG trope of characters shouting the names of their attacks in combat, although things such as Elena saying, "Here goes my Impact Bomb!" and Roan’s "Golden Hammer, crash!" make it sound a little better. However, akin to the first game, there are a ton of asinine ability names such as "WOW!", "Shhh!" and "Magna Boring", alongside battle messages such as "You have initiative!" and SWAY whenever characters dodge enemy attacks. Overall, the remaster team could have made some effort to improve the original's lackluster localization.

The original Grandia received plenty of critical head for its battle system, which did indeed contain many positive elements in spite of its flaws, with its sequel’s mechanics building upon its predecessor's, to the point where RPGamer would piously proclaim it, through a user poll competition series, to have the "best battle system" of all roleplaying games, but is this really the case? That the encounter system bequeaths many of the same issues as the first game seems to begin to say otherwise, given that enemies charge at the player's party regardless of their strength, and there are some new issues such as it being a real pain trying to encounter aerial enemies without being ambushed by them.

Ryudo definitely does "have initiative."

As in the first game, characters have a choice between SP-consuming Special Moves and MP-consuming magic, which equippable Mana Eggs allow them to perform. Finishing battles nets all combatants still alive experience for occasional level-ups, money, and both Skill and Magic Coins, the former investible into each character's Special Moves to increase their speed and effectiveness (and hint, hint, focusing on those that can cancel enemy commands will really save you later on), and the latter into magic spells in Mana Eggs to do the same, in addition to unlocking more powerful spells.

The battles of Grandia II follow much the same rules as in the first game, with all characters and enemies on a turn order gauge dictating who goes when. The player's characters have a variety of means with which to smack down the enemy, including two kinds of physical attacks: combo, where they strike an enemy twice, and critical, where they can cancel an enemy's command if timed correctly. However, foes can do the same to the player's characters with their abilities, and as the rate at which everyone moves across the IP gauge isn't always clear, a lot of foresight is naturally necessary to triumph.

The only anime cutscene in the game, lasting for a few seconds when Millenia uses one of her skills. Enjoy it while you can.

Players ultimately get access to Skill Books that have special innate abilities that grant passive bonuses like increasing the casting speed of certain elemental types and heightened strength. Each character can equip a certain number of these skills, with Skill and Magic Coins increasing their effectiveness as well. The battle system works well much of the time, but things like the needlessly-lengthy and unskippable ability animations constantly grind the action to a halt and add countless hours of superfluous playtime to the sequel, alongside the frequent need for foresight. In the end, Grandia II's game mechanics aren't as great as RPGamer's followers made it out to be, though they also voted Final Fantasy Tactics as second, which goes to show their moronic standards.

Control in Grandia II treads a few steps forward and many backwards. It retains the positive elements from its predecessor such as save/recovery points and has some improvements like the compass actually indicating whether a direction is forwards or backwards through a dungeon, and in towns, it points to various facilities. However, there is a great deal of user-unfriendliness such as an incredibly-awkward spherical menu system, the continued lack of maps (which hurts especially in the badly-designed final dungeon), the inability skip through cutscene text (though other text is oddly skippable), long stretches without saving, and very infuriatingly, save points after a few bosses. Ultimately, the sequel doesn't interact with players very well.

The genius who put this save point after the boss should never, ever be allowed to work on games again.

Noriyuki Iwadare has always, for me, been a hit-or-miss composer, given his somewhat-inconsistent style, but Grandia II's soundtrack definitely has its high points. There are a lot of good melodies like the title screen theme, a few open-aired dungeon tracks, Elena’s singing, most town themes, and the battle tracks, among others. However, some genius at Game Arts thought it would be cute to have no music whatsoever during most cutscenes, even those without voice acting, and two of the dungeon themes that sound largely alike are incredibly weird, with one, for instance, having an unusual clocklike ticktocking effect which sounds really out-of-place.

The voicework, while imperfect, is a leap forward from the original Grandia. The English voices for characters like Ryudo, Elena, and especially Millenia are generally good, but Roan sounds like a cross between Hank Hill and Butters from South Park, with most other performances being hit-or-miss. Those who don't like the English voice acting can mercifully switch to the Japanese voices, although their quality is inconsistent as well, with Ryudo, for instance, sounding vastly different at times, alongside the typical seiyū butchery of English words. Overall, the sound is only a little above average.

The term "polished turd" best describes the "remastered" visuals, since the original game's graphics weren’t exactly a sight for sore eyes to begin with. The colors are good, if a little dull, the illumination effects are decent, and there are some good quirks like Skye perching on Ryudo’s shoulder. However, the FMVs are really grainy, the character models are blocky and mouthless, showing little emotion, with the environmental textures being incredibly ugly and pixilated, with an inconsistent framerate and slowdown galore. There's maybe one brief anime cutscene when Millenia performs one of her abilities, but in the end, Grandia II could easily pass for a late PlayStation 1 RPG.

Finally, given the needlessly padding via the unskippable cutscene text and overly-lengthy ability animations, the sequel can range between thirty to forty-eight hours of playtime, which is still significantly shorter than the first game. There is hypothetical lasting appeal in the different difficulty settings, but the Normal difficulty can already be exhausting, alongside the lack of achievements, the game being too long, the unskippable text, and the lack of plot variations.

On the whole, Grandia II walked many steps forward and many back compared to its predecessor. While the battle system has its strong elements, the action is constantly bogged down by the needlessly-lengthy and unskippable ability animations. The narrative has its moments as well, in spite of being derivative, and while the translation somewhat helps, the effort was otherwise lackluster. The same goes for the soundtrack, which has many good tracks, but also some terrible ones, alongside the radio silence during most cutscenes that make them feel incredibly boring. The ugly-as-sin visuals and the minimal lasting appeal round out an overall disappointing sequel, at best a mediocre addition to the not-so-grand Grandia series.

This review is based on a playthrough of the version included with the Grandia HD Collection on Normal difficulty.