Last week I discussed Grandia II and its solid-but-uneven story, well written-but-tropetastic cast and well presented-but-uninspired style. That's a lot of hyphens and not a lot about actual gameplay.
Let's get started with something positive. Grandia II absolutely nails one of an RPG's most important elements: the combat system. It's a bit difficult to explain so bear with me here. You enter (random) encounters with a party of four. Each party member and enemy combatant are denoted on a scrolling bar, called the IP gauge, at the bottom of the screen. When it gets to the command section, its time to input your command. Each party member can use a combo or critical attack, special move, magic attack, evade, defend, use items or change their equipment. Enter your command and the IP gauge will scroll through its last section, the command section. If it reaches the end, your character will perform their attack. The same is true for enemies. It sounds simple or like its just the ATB system with extra steps, but there's a catch.
Critical attacks in Grandia II don't do any extra damage. By they can cancel your enemies' attacks. Connect with one when an enemy's IP gauge is between command and act and your foe's move will be canceled. You can also get the same effect from certain special moves and spells. Magic and special moves take longer to charge (though they can be leveled up, more on that later), but they will activate as soon as the gauge hits act. Physical attacks will clear the act gauge instantly, but your character will have to reach the enemy on screen to actually connect with their blade. This makes it critically important to target the right foes, as forcing your character to run across the battlefield can be a waste of a turn. All of this leads to some truly hectic battles, with players forced to plan out their attacks while being cognizant of what the enemies are doing. Is it better to try and cancel their attack or should you just take the hit. The margin begin canceling an enemy and getting smashed in the face with a big damage spell can be milliseconds, especially later in the game. The gauge resets if you or an enemy pull off an attack, but not if something gets canceled. This makes it important to pace out your characters commands and try and lock enemies out of attacking. Of course, defending or evading don't fully reset the gauge either. Sometimes its better to wait and try and cancel an enemy attack or even wait for them so you can react to what they do than use a sub optimal spell or item. It makes commands that are normally wasted space in an RPG worthwhile. There's a lot going on here and while I don't love it as much as some pundits, I still think its a great battle system.
I also like that there are a lot of options for character customization, yet each character feels unique. Each has a set of special moves that fit exactly the role you think they would. Ryudo has typical OP RPG hero moves, Elena has healing magic, Millenia has offensive magic, Tio's moves are speed based, etc. etc. But rather than learn magic by leveling up, characters can equip one of many mana eggs that you find throughout your journey. Each of these eggs has several spells, which can be learned by spending magic coins earned in battle. Each egg offers something different and its fun to expiriment with all of the different skillsets, all of them are useful in their own way. I will say the endgame almost requires you use the eggs with the allhealer spell, but that's a nitpick. You can also use the coins to upgrade these spells and abilities. The higher the level, the faster they charge. That becomes critically important, as late or even midgame enemies can and will cancel all of your specials if they charge too slow. You also find skill books, which can be upgraded for access to stat boosts. I think it's really cool that there are so many options for customization, its kind of like Final Fantasy VI. Side note, I have to give them credit for the menus. When you have this much going on in a game, they can become crowded or confusing. That didn't happen here.
Battles are initiated through touching enemies in the field screen, so no random battles here. I don't necessarily love that, but I would rather touch based encounters than an insane random encounter rate. I do absolutely hate the fact that there's no world map. It's just menus. Sooooo many RPGs of the time did away with these and I don't get it. It made everything so linear and it felt like you were being led by the nose through the whole game. Some games, like Final Fantasy X or Shadow Hearts, do a good job of masking that feeling. Grandia II really doesn't, its very obviously linear. There are also little to no sidequests to speak of.
My biggest gripe with gameplay though is the dungeon design. It's awful. Everything feels completely random, like someone said "let's just program a bunch of hallways and smash them all together." There's only ever one path you can take and dozens upon dozens of random dead ends. I am okay with rewarding players for exploring, but you actually have to reward them. If more of these dead ends had treasure chests it would feel a lot less frustrating. I can't put my finger on it, but the best way I can describe the dungeons is that they feel like they came from a poorly programmed roguelke game. So many of these feel like they were randomly generated and not programmed by actual people. So much of an RPG is spent in dungeons and field screens, so it's sad that it turned out this way. For better or worse, I think this is the only RPG with touch based encounters where I always engaged enemies. The combat was just so much better than the exploration.
And maybe that's why I found Grandia II to be incredibly easy. It could have just been a result of overleveling, but I rarely ever felt like I was in any danger of dying. Enemies can frustrate you, but rarely can they actually take you out, especially if you have the right healing magic. It got to the point where I was using all physical attacks all the time because there was no reason for me to do anything else. This is also the kind of early "modern" RPG where you have a million save points and those points all heal you. One exception to this rule though, the bosses are actually pretty tough. ALl of them are multi-target enemies who will through the kitchen sink at your party. I feel like the boss AI here is pretty good, they rarely ever do anything completely ridiculous. You really need to be on your toes with healing, canceling and damage dealing to get past these guys.
Graphics and sound were pretty good, not much to write home about. The enemies, both regular and bosses, are detailed and are all well animated. The towns and dungeons look solid and there are some truly stomach churning designs later in the game. I think the Dreamcast version actually looks better than the ports. Overall, the graphics are just okay, there seems to be a lack of texture and your characters are very blocky. The same is true of the sound, the battle theme is great but I found the rest of the soundtrack to be just okay.
There's a lot of polarity here, so perhaps that's why Grandia II isn't remembered as fondly as some of its contemporaries? I don't think so. The real reason? Skies of Arcadia. These two games will forever be joined at the hip, two thirds of the Dreamcast's "holy trinity" of RPGs along with Phantasy Star Online. PSO was so unique and revolutionary that it was kind of its own thing, but Grandia II and SOA were very similar; traditional RPGs with similar graphics and layouts. However, history widely regards SOA as the far superior game, with its unique setting and different kinds of battles. It really took advantage of the whole pirate trend of the early 00's (the game is about sky pirates, I probably should have mentioned that) and left Grandia II in the dust. I'm not sure I agree that's what should have happened. Its time to put the flame shield up for a second, because I think Skies is massively overrated. The encounter rate is INSANE and the combat is dull, which is not a good combination. It's kind of a polar opposite of Grandia II in terms of characters. SOA has unique characters that are poorly written, while Grandia II has hackneyed characters that are well written. I don't think either game is bad, I just think that Skies' reputation exceeds its quality.
But what about Grandia II, the game this review is actually supposed to be about? I think history has judged it properly. What it does well, it does really well. But its flaws are too apparent and it relies too much on RPG tropes for its own good. Everything is of good quality, its just not as attention grabbing from a technical or stroyline standboint as most of its peers. Going through the same exercise of pseudo ranking golden age RPGs I did way back when I played Legend of Dragoon, I would certainly play Final Fantasy 7-9 and Tactics before this. It's predecessor is a better game, as are Suikoden II, Xenogears, Legend of Legia, Vagrant Story and the first two Shadow Hearts games. The Lunar games are certainly better as well. I had initially scored Legend of Dragoon a 7.5, but bumped it up to an 8 at my end of year review. Grandia II doesn't quite reach that level. I would still put it above any Persona or Tales games, Shadow Madness, Beyond the Beyond or anything of that ilk. All in all, it was a good solid RPG with an interesting battle system that just didn't do enough to separate itself from its peers.
7.5/10
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