One of the best.
The truth is that the difficuly level in Grandia 2 is just right, there are some ways you can abuse or exploit some items and save points to make the game easy but you can find these sort of "cheats" in every game
There were a lot of battles in the game that had me on the edge of my seat, fighting with my teeth, calculating exactly what to do and when to do it so I won't die, which leads me to the battle system:
The battle system in Grandia 2 is probably the best I've seen in a turn based RPG, it's pretty complicated but once you get it, which shouldn't take too long, it's the most addicting battle system you'll ever see.
In most turn based RPG I usually fall a sleep while moving through the grinding parts of the game, the parts where you have to fight weak monsters over and over again so you'll gain experience and gold, that's not the case in Grandia 2.
I don't think I'll ever be able to play another turn based RPG without getting bored after completing G2, the counter system is just something else.
About the story: I thought it was adequate, not the best I've seen in a video game but definitely not a bad one, the characters are all great, there's great chemistry between them.
The graphics are stunning, you won't notice it at first because the models remind me of some ps1 games but some of the environments in this game are just breath taking, at some points I had to stop and rotate the camera slowly to absorb all the beauty around me, like when you stand on a view point in assassin's creed, but the effect was much greater here, because I appreciate old games with good graphics a lot more than new games.
The only thing I didn't like about this game is that some of the special moves in the game show you a short anime clip along with the animations, this is really cool and it works great but sometimes when you have to do a certain special move like 5 times in one battle, and the clip is about 25 seconds long, and you can't skip it then it gets frustrating.
Last words: this isn't a game to miss, and if you're looking for a game that will help you start in the japaneseconsole rpg genres then this is it, forget all the real time crap developers are throwing at us today.