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| Grandia 2; Nearly perfect... But not quite | |
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| Topic Started: Apr 6 2007, 09:01 PM (2,914 Views) | |
| Dino Dan the Dinosaur Man | Apr 6 2007, 09:01 PM Post #1 |
What is a man?
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Game Title: Grandia 2 Genre: RPG Number of Players: 1 Price: Around £10 on ebay Release: 2002 Console: PS2 Grandia 2 is a role-playing game from the creators of the legendary Grandia. Although the story is completely unrelated to that of the original Grandia, many elements from the legendary PS1 title can still be seen. Grandia 2 revolves around Ryudo, a 17 year old Geohound (don’t ask, because I don’t know). Beginning with the simple assignment of taking the Songstress Elena to a tower in a forest to conduct a holy ritual, Ryudo soon ends up on a quest to save existence from an evil monster. So, it’s the usual RPG then. Well, you could say that – many RPGs, past and present, have followed a similar formula. But what is important in an RPG is the story, and Grandia 2 has a great one. The story here is rather religious. It may sound clichéd, but long ago there was a battle between the god of light, Granas, and the devil of darkness, Valmar. This battle was originally named ‘The Battle of Good and Evil”. Granas was victorious over Valmar and his sick little followers (surprise, surprise) and Valmar ended up cut into pieces and sealed in spheres around the world. When these pieces get out, they possess people: Posted Image Grandia 2 has everything you’d expect from religion in a game: people in robes who think they’re better than everyone else, a woman who thinks villages harbouring evil must be purified (burned) and even a pope: Posted Image As you’d expect, the story focuses around stopping the evil people reviving Valmar by collecting the pieces. Perhaps a little dull, but the characters make that so much more interesting. There are so many witty comments, so many interesting sub-plots and if that doesn’t interest you, you could always laugh at Elena, she’s the ‘I like fluffy animals’ type. Like in the original Grandia, the battle system is really where Grandia 2 excels. The system is unique to the Grandia series. Each character and enemy is represented by an icon on a bar called the IP Gauge. The icons move along, and when they reach the COM (command) point, you tell them what to do (or in the case of enemies, they decide what to do), and then they move along to the ACT (action) point, where they carry out the action. Meanwhile, the character move around the battle area, either automatically moving away from enemies after attacks or if you tell them to, allowing for ranged attacks to add extra strategy to the experience. And the superb and numerous bosses add yet another dimension to the system. Grandia 2’s main competitor at the time of its release was Final Fantasy X, whose battle system, while good in other ways, could in my opinion not offer this to such a depth. Posted Image Like in most RPGs, characters can learn magic and moves. Moves are unique to each character, and are learned and powered up by using Skill Coins gained from victory in battle. Magic is also learned like this, but rather than teach the character the spell, you teach a Mana Egg, of which there are many. Each egg can learn different spells, the more advanced spells becoming available when the egg has reached a certain level (+1 level for each spell learned or powered up). You then equip the egg to a character. This is quite unique and makes learning more advanced spells easier than in Grandia 1, which forced every character battle constantly to increase their magic levels. The graphics aren’t absolutely brilliant, but Grandia 2 was originally for the Sega Dreamcast. The characters’ appearances are similar to dolls – they have no facial features other than eyes and hair, but are distinguishable anyway. The enemies look superb anyway, particularly the bosses. The CGI cut scenes, in my opinion, are not of great quality, but there are only about 3 short ones anyway. The voice acting is not perfect, but certainly better than that of Grandia 1. Some of the American accents can become a little tiresome though. There is little voice acting, though, because it has always been the way in Grandia to reserve voice acting for key parts in the story. The soundtrack, like in Grandia 1, is superb. Grandia 2 offers more lively music, with lots of drum beats and what-not. Noriyuki Iwadare has produced a soundtrack that is of a quality that lives up to Grandia 1’s soundtrack, but is quite different in style, which is interesting. The final boss music particularly stands out as the best final boss music I have heard in any game. Scores out of 10: Music: 10 Graphics: 7 Story: 8.5 Overall Score: 8.9 Additional Comments: Not as good as the original, but still superb. A must-buy for RPG fans. Ignore the negative reviews. One-Word Summary: Stunning Worth Buying?: Yes |
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