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Grandia was definitely one of the Sega Saturn’s unsung heroes, as it never even made its Saturn debut in North America; instead going straight to the PlayStation – in many ways I feel that the same thing happened with Grandia II, despite the fact that it was released on Dreamcast, PC and PlayStation 2. Grandia II is definitely one of my favourite RPG’s of all time, and I’ve always felt that it doesn’t get the credit that it deserves.

The events of Grandia II unfold in two timelines, one timeline tells the story of The Battle Between Good and Evil that took place many thousands of years ago. During this period the world was blessed with light by Granas, the god that the people of Grandia II worship throughout both timelines – When people began to resist the teachings of Granas a new evil was born, Valmar. This marked the beginning of The Battle Between Good and Evil, the battle ended when Granas used the Granasaber, his sword to cut straight through Valmar and into the earth below – the scar left by this cut would later become known as the Granacliffs.

The other timeline tells the story of a modern day Geohound called Ryudo, a Geohound is much like a Mercenary in the sense that they’ll do pretty much any job for money – the games storyline begins when Ryudo is hired to transport a young songstress named Elena to Garmia Tower to perform a ritual that would seal the Wings of Valmar. However, in an unfortunate twist of fate Elena becomes engulfed in darkness and possessed by the Wings of Valmar. The priest that hired Ryudo to transport Elena requests further help, and asks Ryudo to take Elena to Granas Cathedral to have her purified of the darkness that resides within her. It’s from here on out that the tale of Grandia II begins, and trust me – it’s a story that you wouldn’t want to miss for the world! Many video game critics will say that Grandia II’s storyline was generic and predictable, and although the storyline wasn’t that original – it was still a rich story with deep character development; and because of this it’s definitely a storyline worth merit.

One of my favourite things in Grandia II is the battle system. Unlike many RPG’s such as Final Fantasy you don’t get sprung into random battles, instead whilst on the world map you can see the enemies and you can chose whether or not you want to fight them. The battle system works like this, in the bottom corner of the screen is the IP gauge. On this gauge are the faces of all the characters and enemies in play, every character begins the battle on the right; and when they reach the COM region the player will be able to command the character to perform an attack. Once a character has been given a command their face will slowly progress from the COM region to the very left side of the IP gauge – once their face reaches the upmost left side of the gauge they will attack.

Each character has a choice between two attacks, Combo or Critical – Combo will hit an enemy twice with two medium powered attacks, whilst a Critical will hit an enemy with a powerful attack that has a chance of cancelling their attacks. As well as Combo and Critical attacks, characters can also learn Spells and Specials through Mana Eggs and Skill Books. After each battle the player will earn a series of Magic Coins and Special Coins that can later be used for powering up Spells and Specials.

Grandia II’s graphics didn’t quite meet those of other Dreamcast games such as Shenmue, but that doesn’t really matter as they’re still pretty good and easily rival those of other Dreamcast RPG’s such as Skies of Arcadia.

In a nutshell, Grandia II’s storyline isn’t the most original – but this doesn’t matter, because it’s still an amazing storyline with rich character development that goes basically unrivalled. When it comes to game play, Grandia II is, in my opinion one of the best games ever made; with fully customizable characters and a great battle system to boot. To top it all off, Grandia II has some pretty good graphics, and although they aren’t the best they definitely aren’t something worth complaining about!

Rating: 10/10


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