Port issues mar a good, if predictable, story that doesn't quite live up to the original.
Grandia II follows Ryudo the Geohound, which seems similar to a mercenary, right down to being unpopular with the general citizens. Ryudo is a jerk that cares only for himself, and isn't afraid to fire off a string of insults or jokes at someone else's expense. Early on he finds himself earning some cash by being the bodyguard for Elena, a Sister of the Church of Granas, as she goes to perform some religious ceremony. As expected, things do not quite go so well. Elena gets possessed by the dark god Valmar himself, causing her to sporadically morph into an agent of darkness named Millenia, and the world itself seems poised to suffer as a result. The seemingly incompatible two get stuck together as they travel to prevent the Day of Darkness.
The story itself is pretty good, though more than fulfills its quota of Japanese RPG clichés. Though Grandia II places a higher importance on the story than its predecessor, it also seems to lose some of the charm that the original had. What was so appealing about the original Grandia was its minimalist story that tells just enough to keep going, its joyful innocence, and its positive outlook throughout the bulk of the game. With Grandia II, the world begins to heads down a path of peril within the first hour of the game. Ryudo also has some old scars from a tragic past. At times, the characters are so devoid of hope that they just talk about how horrible their situation is and how there's nothing they can do for about ten minutes straight, enough to cause anyone to become depressed just playing the game. Still, there's a few decent plot twists later on that keep the story interesting enough to encourage you to keep moving along.
Some of the characters themselves are hit or miss. Ryudo, Elena, the flirtatious Millenia, and the wise Mareg are all worthy characters. However, Roan is a little annoying and tends to serve little purpose overall. Tio, the artificial life form, attempts to understand humanity and fit in after years as being a virtual slave. Anyone who has experienced one of the countless sci-fi stories about a robot trying to fit in with humanity will know exactly how Tio's story will turn out. Those that haven't experienced such a story will still know exactly how it turns out as well.
Grandia's battle system was critically hailed as one of the best found in RPG's, and Grandia II follows a similar formula. Unfortunately, the tinkering that Game Arts did with the system caused it to regress a bit. The actual core battles are the same, with characters and enemies spread around a map, regular combo attacks, and critical attacks that can delay or cancel the actions of their targets. The fact that this was left almost untouched keeps Grandia II's system among the best in any RPG, keeping battles strategic and turn-based while feeling like they are real-time. This time characters can only use one type of weapon, and how much they use a spell or special move has no impact on how proficient they are with it. This time every skill progression revolves around Magic Coins and Special Coins, which each enemy drops a set amount of after each kill, much like experience points.
Each special move or spell has five skill levels. Each time the skill level increases, its attack power increases and its casting time decreases. Given how much MC and SP you earn throughout your journey and the fact that each character has far less special moves than characters in the original Grandia did, characters have the capacity to max out the skill levels of key special moves relatively quickly in their quest, even if they never use the skills. Characters equip mana eggs to learn magic, with each egg providing a maximum of 18 spells. The eggs themselves learn the spells, enabling them to be transferred between characters and still retain the same magical properties on their new owners. The key spells can be maxxed out very quickly, but you'll find yourself spending MC on some of the many worthless spells just to increase the magic level of the egg to unlock new spells. The system gets the job done, and fans of Final Fantasy VII may appreciate how the mana eggs are very similar to materia instead of the magic being permanently learned by the characters. However, it certainly lost a lot of the depth and personality of the original game's system.
Also new are equipable skills. Books provide skills such as increased health points, greater strength, faster speed, more powerful magical abilities, and the like. These skills are learned and boosted by spending MC and SC, depending on the type of skill. These can then be equipped on the characters, the number depending on the point in the game you are at. These skills can make your characters considerably stronger - with the right skills you can have a character's regular group heal spell essentially completely heal the party for just a minor amount of MP per cast.
The graphical scenarios are rather beautiful in Grandia II. The areas tend to be bright and colorful, many feel immersive, the backgrounds in the battles add a lot of depth, and each town has a very distinct architectural style. The character models lack noses or mouths, which is very odd but the unusualness fades away before long. Many of the texture resolutions were decreased from the Dreamcast version, but those that never played that version probably won't notice a thing. These factors alone would make Grandia II a pleasure to look at, but unfortunately the port had some rather glaring problems. The most noticeable of these issues is the speed of the game itself. The graphics range from having noticeable slowdown to annoying slowdown to downright unacceptable slowdown. You move so slow in the detailed cities that you'll want to run through as fast as you can without exploring just to get to a less graphically intense area, which is unfortunate. In some areas, polygons fade away before returning. After certain fights, the screen showing your battle rewards has transparency issues, especially in foggy locations. In some battles, Ryudo's textures totally disappeared for the remainder of the battle, leaving a solid white outline where Ryudo should be. Some textures that were supposed to have very high resolutions in the Dreamcast version have weird graphical artifacts on the PS2. It would almost seem that they are interlacing issues, but the flickering isn't horizontal. This is most apparent on the clothing of certain church NPC's, which do not appear very often in the story. The floor of one key battle has this problem, causing so much flickering across the entire screen that your eyes will literally start to ache. Fortunately most of the issues but the slowdown are rather uncommon, but the sheer frequency of all the issues as a whole can lead to a lot of frustration.
The audio issues aren't as bad in Grandia II, though they are still present. The music itself is above average, it gets the job done but does not stand out and no track will prove to be all that memorable. The voice acting is pretty decent as well, but the characters themselves hold the acting back given how stunningly one-dimensional they can be. Of particular note is Ryudo, who has some great lines when he's his insult-flinging self, but gets rather cheesy when he starts preaching about the strength of the heart and friendship. Only a few key scenes have voice work, with the rest being just driven by text. As a result you'll hear Ryudo and Elena the most, both of whom are voiced by actors rather experienced in lending their voices to video games. These two actors are probably best known for their roles in Metal Gear Solid, Liquid Snake and Naomi Hunter specifically, but their voices for the Grandia characters sound totally different from the Metal Gear Solid ones. Some of the sound effects can cause a few audio issues. A few sound effects are rather short and repeated on a loop, which cause them to get very tiring. A few of these loops even have an audible click on the end of the sound sample, resulting in them being flat out annoying. There were a few rare issues where a sound effect gets stuck in an infinite loop and won't stop until you physically reset the game. Thankfully both times this happened to me I was close to a save point, as some are a good half-hour or so apart.
As far as RPG's go, Grandia II is rather short and exceptionally linear. As you move along in the game, many of the old areas you passed through become inaccessable, keeping you confined to a short list of areas. There's one small optional area very late in the game, all the rest are required and must be done in order. There's no persistent minigames to draw your attention, nor are there any side quests at all. Not only that, but all your special moves are either learnable right from the start or are learned after key story sequences, and virtually all mana eggs and skill books are received as drops from required bosses. The very few mana eggs and skill books that are not automatically gained are rather redundant and don't really boost your power at all, plus are rather easy to find. The whole game is rather easy, with just a couple of bosses and a certain enemy in the optional zone having any realistic chance of killing your party. In all, expect the quest to last about 35 hours with no way to extend the playtime and little incentive to replay the game. However, it's entertaining enough to play it through once, especially given how much the game sells for at this point.
Grandia II shot to emulate the success of the original, but fell a little short in a number of areas. Still, the story is decent, and the battle system remains one of the best of the genre. Unfortunately, the technical issues of this version of the game can be quite a handful and sap a bit of enjoyment out of the game. For a developer who does a good job of pushing the boundaries on the hardware they program for, it's rather odd that they would continue to put out ports with so many issues. Fans of the Grandia series will likely enjoy Grandia II, but will likely feel a little disappointed when comparing it to the original. RPG fans in general will certainly want to consider giving Grandia II a try; as while its story is rather ordinary, the battles are not. However, for those that only dabble in RPG's, the total package does not outweigh the performance issues enough to recommend this game over a few other RPG's on the market.