| Product: |
Grandia 2 (DC) |
| Date: |
09/04/01 (44 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Novel story details, believable characters, interesting battle system
Disadvantages: Maybe a bit too easy. Several points of no return.
I've played quite a few RPGs in my time, and this ranks up there as one of the best.
The battle system is innovative and interesting - you can really speed up the battles by a little bit of planning. You need to be aware of your charcters' positions relative to the enemies, and also be aware of how fast everyone is. It's a little tricky to start with, but after a bit of practice it's almost automatic. There's something very satisfying about quickly finishing a battle without even being hit - you can achieve this by cancelling enemy attacks by using a "Critical" attack of your own.
The magic and special moves are pretty damn good, but not as spectacular as the ones in Final Fantasy 9. Still, they're interesting to watch.
There are some puzzles, but they're very simple. You're very unlikely to get stuck (unlike in Zelda - Ocinara of Time!).
In general, the graphics are as you'd expect from the DreamCast - spectacular. The town designs are particularly pleasing to the eye - great imagination and detail. Each town has its own particular style, and it's actually worth hanging around in the rooms just looking at the decorations! The inside of the cathedral is particularly magnificent.
The monster designs are not particularly diverse. But this doesn't matter too much because you'll need to tackle the different monsters differently. If there were loads of different monsters then it'd get too hard to try and remember the best way to kill them all!
One flaw in the game is that there are save points within easy reach most of the time. This means you can easily win battles by using powerful special moves, and then "recover" your characters with just a short walk back to the last save point. The only time you're really in danger of dieing is on the bosses, but even then you'll always be OK unless you decide to never heal yourself!
Puttin
g your levels up is often tedious in RPGs, but in Grandia 2 you can upgrade your moves, spells and skills after almost every fight. This is strangely addictive, and keeps you really interested in the advancement of your characters. Don't worry, there isn't much danger of your characters becoming super-hard too quickly though.
There are loads of stats if you're into that sort of thing, but you don't really need to pay much attention to them. It's fun experimenting though - if you REALLY boost a character's speed, they really sprint around the battles!
There are lots and lots of items to collect too, some with really interesting and useful effects.
Once you've completed a large portion of the game, you can't go back there again. This is slightly frustrating because the later monsters do not give you as much experience etc as you would expect. Plus, if you just rushed through an area, you won't get a chance to go back and see what you may have missed. However, this has a great plus point in that you don't have to wander around talking to "old" characters, only to find out they still say the same thing as they did 10 hours ago. The interaction between the non-player characters and your characters is really well-detailed and thought-out. The inhabitants of the towns tend to keep things pretty interesting, and if you talk to them more than once will often reveal lots of interesting info which really helps to flesh-out the game world and make it more believable.
The story is loosely based on the classic good vs evil line. But it is really well-detailed and interesting, with lots of novel ideas and plot twists.
The characters are really well designed (with the exception of Tio, a boring andriod) and believable. You can really get drawn into the way they're feeling... but I know - it's only a game!!! Of course, the characters don't have THAT much depth to them, but they
have more than in your average RPG. A really good plus point for me is the main character's sarcasm and harshness to everyone else. He really made me laugh at some points!
Another plus point is the speech in the game - all in American English unfortunately. There still is a lot of text to read - not that I'm averse to reading - it's just that the speech adds an extra dimension to the realism of the game.
My personal preference for is for Japanese speech/soundtrack with English subtitles. I have to say though, in this game the translation is done very well - but I can't help wondering what was left out or changed from the Japanese version...
I think I've mentioned just about all the notable points in the game. If there's something you're wondering about, but I haven't mentioned it, then just assume that it's like most other RPGs!
To summarise, this is just about the best RPG I've ever played, but it's just a tad too easy for my liking. Buy it even if you don't normally like this sort of game, it might just convert you.
Summary:
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Last comment:
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kero-chan - 09/04/01 Pointless Trivia: Did you know that Cam Clarke - who plays Ryudo - was Leonardo in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon?
Anyway, I agree with most of what you wrote here (I would have loved a subbed version, if only because Iwao Junko played Tio ^_^). I think the problem with save points goes back to the original Grandia in which you had a much more limited inventory, and being able to heal at save points was more important.
That said, I think this is one of Gamearts weaker RPG titles. It isn't as good as the Lunar games or the original Grandia. |
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