Grandia II (PS2 Version)

Developer(s): Game Arts, Rocket Studio(PS2)

Publisher(US): Ubisoft

Release year: 2000

Platforms: Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows XP and                   Up 

                    (HD Remaster and Anniversary versions Released on                       Steam, GOG, and Nintendo Switch)

ESRB: T (Teen)

Genre: Single player, Role Playing Game

Fun Factor

    Gameplay was enjoyable due to the very interesting battle mechanics system. It employs a turn based Real-time system similar to some of the Final fantasy series like FFVII, where all characters act on a timeline of sort. Divided into segments and progress of each individual character's turn is seen.

    An interesting gimmick used in this game is that all characters have the ability to Cancel and Counter one another. By timing your party's commands you could prevent enemies from carrying out their own moves, as the same could be applied to the player's party from the enemies.

    There is also the ability to let the game play itself as you can issue preset AI personas to determine how the party characters would automatically issue commands in battle.

    As with the rest of the package there's a story to get into and the game in it's Early stages seem decently paced, though bit slow. The game gives a terrible first impression to those who want to go straight into the action as all cut scenes are not skip-able. Speaking and nonspeaking lines cannot be skipped as well as FMV and animated cutscenes. 

    The same is applied to ones in battles as any special skills and magic used by any character in battle pauses other actions to have the scene play out, and some could hang for a while due to the game losing speed due to some camera perspectives creates situations where there is too much on the screen such as forests in a third person kind of view that goes perpendicular to a character.

    The above issues tie to playing this game on older hardware, as there have been Remasters and Updates on much more powerful and modern hardware.

 

Learning Curve

     The various systems that combine into the combat starts off plain with our main hero Ryudo your basic swordsman character. With basic attacks, an attack skill and items to start off the adventure after the introduction. This will be enough for the start of the adventure.

    The combat system is quick to understand with the timeline showing the botten right of the screen and options that easily self explaining what they sort of do. All characters have different timings and animations that determine how and when attacks and skills land. These however are easy to determine after a few battles.

    The game mostly lacks any proper tutorial till you get into the first town where in the item shop is an npc who will tell you things about battles. Of course it maybe too late as player's would've probably been through a few battles and played with the systems or struggled trying. 

    The simple act of leveling up is not simple in this game. As player's win battles they gain EXP, Magic Coins (MC), and Special Coins(SC). These help build up a character's stats. EXP for levels and basic expected stats, the MC and SC however are like skill points used to purchase abilities. In this game world magic is tied to an equipped item called a Magic Egg. These eggs determine the spells an equipped character can cast.

    Spells range from Buffs, Debuffs, Status ailments, and Attacks. However when you first get an egg it would have some skills available, but there is more to unlock. These are unlocked trough the usage of MC to purchase and level up these abilities on an egg. 

    SC is used for two purposes. One is unlocking and leveling character skills, the other is to unlock and level skills in items called Skill Books. These items have a list of stats and skills that are unlocked and leveled like Magic Eggs, but are instead equipped individually to each character as long as they have enough skill slots to equip them. These range from increasing the Basic stats, to giving characters more attacks to work with as abilities used by the Magic Egg uses MP, while Skills from Books and Characters use SP.

    Save points in this game will also heal and recharge the MP and SP meters when used, and there is one in first zone when you start the game. Unless you had a manual some things would make no sense.

    These systems are introduced after each sort of milestone in the game like chapters. So it eases you into its systems, but in the beginning if you are experienced in turnbased RPG systems, you could accidentally get yourself stuck into some bad habits as many initial battles are 1 on 1 on similar enemies and also not much variety, so it's easy to get into a bad habit that doesn't work when the game does something new.

 

Graphics

    The graphics for the PS2 port that was played has occasional glitching in the UI as well as having lower resolution textures compared to its original DreamCast release. While downgraded it still offers a decent experience visually for the era as majority of scenes are done in realtime with character models emoting and delivering performances as the camera shifts and cuts on the screen.

    Many special effects and major cutscenes are video files, especially the magic abilities. Obvious compression artifacts and varied frame rates sometimes didn't match the 3D animations or de-synchronized. The rare 2D anime cutscenes used in some moves were the worst affected but this could be an issue of viewing an old interlaced system on modern HD tv's.

    But it doesn't beat the CG backgrounds of the overworld and in-battle higher-poly character models of FFXIII released a year prior, and eventually out-shined by the soon to be releasing FFX on the PS2 system. characters are mostly made in a style similar to FFVII with blockey character models. Still in its era many games were presenting their world using a mix of 2D and 3D to present the world and its characters. This ambitious game tried to do it all with a almost totally 3D presentation, and this was a DrearmCast game ported to the PS2.

 

Audio

     The audio in this game is very good. The music tracks are surprisingly high quality as well as the voice lines that are spoken by characters. Though they seem to contrast with some of the sound effects such as crunching grass and other terrain that make sounds as characters walk across them. Though they maybe a relic of it's era.

Controls

     Controls are decent though some aspects are clunky as using the left and right bumpers to rotate the camera, but this was before the era of using the right stick as a camera control. Also due to slowdown caused by the port, controls seem a bit sluggish and/or delayed sometimes. Also some areas due to the nature of the camera and level design will do some odd behaviors like vibrating/jittering due to going up and down certain steps.

Story

     The story itself is engaging as you start off as a simple scenario of a bounty hunter type of character doing a simple job that goes wrong and just gets involved due to character history and motivations. It mostly goes straight to the point in some exchanges and so easy to understand and introduce things that pique a player's interests, whether it'd be the world or its characters.

Characters

    Your initial characters seems interesting and grounded, due to their mysteriousness and realistic nature. Same applies to many of the other NPCs met during the story. There are some of the cast who are traditional tropes meant to act as a way to have the store move in certain ways. Some of the tropey characters like sheltered ones who step out into the real world may get annoying as they are used as plot points to move the story's earlier stages, but hopefully develop over time as the story goes on.

Level Design

    Level design seems similar to PS1 era design of blocky, low resolution terrain but serviceable enough to convey locations. However the levels can obstruct the player view as walls are not culled when obstructing the player character moving around the world. The camera is a bit too close to the character that it doesn't offer enough view of the world space which leads to issues of knowing if you are going the right way or not. While the game does give a general compass to where you're going it doesn't help with navigating areas that have snakelike branching paths, which can lead to back tracking or sometimes getting lost and annoyed.

Changes

    Performance elements of the game are solved with the modern remasters, as well as some control issues. Still some portable tutorial or notes would help as the only way to access them in in shops in towns and having to talk to an npc to learn the battle system. The beginning of the game is a nice way to sort of organically learn the game battles systems as its various features are given to the player over the course of the story, but sometimes they take too long to unlock, such as the earn rate of SC and MC to buy and level up abilities, which again is somewhat fixed in the modern re-releases.

 

Recommendation

    This game is recommendable to play for its very engaging combat system where players time their actions to counter and cancel enemy actions. The music is also a great listen as there are great tracks in this game. It also has great performances by the voice actors with the great sound quality helps give a pleasant story experience.