Grandia was heir apparent. In the wake of PlayStation’s Final Fantasy VII tidal wave, the original Grandia was held up to the light as the Saturn’s best answer. Internal politics at Sega ruled out a timely Saturn localization, but Grandia eventually made its way to the PlayStation, through a visually compromised port, in 1999.
It’s not remembered as fondly as Game Arts’ Lunar series, but Grandia still made a name for itself inside contemporary Japanese role-playing game circles. The sprites-on-polygons art style drew comparisons to Xenogears, but battle mechanics bore no equal. A mixture of turn-based selection and real-time attack delivery, Grandia’s battle system made a name for itself during the height of JRPG mania. 1997 to 2000 saw the niche genre shift into supersonic popularity, and Grandia’s sequel, then exclusively released for the Dreamcast, arrive at the tail end of that beloved era. Together with Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star Online, Grandia II was a defining role-playing experience for Sega’s console curtain call.
Ports of Grandia II to the PlayStation 2 and PC in 2002 were unsatisfactory. Poor texture quality, graphical inconsistencies, and disappointing hitches and frame drops came to define a supposed new and improved experience. Given the relative power the PlayStation 2 had over the Dreamcast, it was hard to justify damage caused by the apparent compromise. Like the PlayStation port of the original Grandia, a majority of the audience had to deal with ravaged version of an admired game.
With its presentation, Grandia II was ahead of the JRPG curve. Voice acting, celebrated as a novelty in Final Fantasy X nearly a year afterward, was an integral part of Grandia II’s narrative. Granted, what sufficed as a move from the Hollywood playbook in 2001 barely steps out of kitsch in 2015. Grandia II is a cheese fest, basically, even with contributions from Cam Clarke, Jennifer Hale, and Jodi Benson. Spoken dialogue isn’t omnipresent throughout the narrative, but what’s there is absolutely a product of its time and place. Even taking Grandia II’s (understandably) dated visuals into account, I don’t think it’s aged as poorly as its voice acting.
Grandia II plot is headed by Ryudo, a Geohound (read: bounty hunter) and his eagle-like companion named Skye, both experts in sarcasm and indifference. He’s contracted to protect a songstress by the name of Elena as she embarks on an errand to help rid evil from the lands. The backdrop of Grandia II is a post-post-apocalypse, a world long past the recovery phase of a god-versus-god cataclysmic battle. Everything’s back to normal with pockets of civilization and the serenity of nature in equal measure, which comes in especially handy for Grandia II’s structure.
Town. Dungeon. Talk. Integrate save points, and repeat. Grandia II’s pacing adheres to conventions of its time, or, more accurately, conventions from before its time. By 2001 role-playing games were starting to play around with their format, with ranging from Saga Frontier 2’s disregard for linearityor the parallel worlds dynamic of Chrono Cross, but Grandia II seemed content to rely on an established flow. This is also exactly what the original Grandia did three years beforehand. Very much a model sequel, all Grandia II seemed interested in was creating a more refined interpretation of an existing idea. If it ain’t broke, fix it some more.
This includes—and surely this is the reason you’ve been told Grandia II is great—a spin on the original Grandia’s exceptional combat mechanics. A mixture of turn-based and real time, all controllable party members and opponents are fixed to the same turn line. Some turns move faster than others, leading to a chaotic but manageable combination of action and agency. Inputting commands and waiting precious moments for the attacks to take place is a satisfying game of risk and reward. Adding depth, landing a strike at the proper moment can cancel out an opposing attack, a matter further complicated by everyone moving all over the field during a battle. Filtering combos and magical attacks through your entire party, all the while calculating enemy turns and basic distance, makes for an appreciably tactical experience.
Coming to terms with Grandia II’s level design isn’t especially difficult. Dungeons, while not necessarily linear, are painfully easy to push through and more of a test of endurance. It’s not so bad because battles, outside of some tricky boss fights, are quite easy. Carrots on the stick to chase along the way include leveling up Mana Eggs, which hold spells and give birth to new spells. They can be interchanged between each character (a bit like Final Fantasy VII’s materia system), though each character responds differently to different types of Mana Eggs. Skills function similarly; they’re developed through Skill Books and are typically good for a nice selection of buffs. In the end, grinding through battles and earning enough Skill and Magic Coins to properly immortalize your characters is an effective draw.
Time being what it is, Grandia II’s visual presentation is dated by most measures. There’s a sense of place about the original Grandia’s sprites-on-polygons look that simply screams Late 90’s, but the sequel is slightly better equipped for the future with a full blown polygons. With the Dreamcast was something of an in-between-generations console, Grandia II looked way better than most anything that came before it, but increasingly worse than everything after. It’s blocky, but highly colorful, and Game Arts spent a ton of time outfitting building interiors and other trace environments with unique assets. Appreciating Grandia II’s time and place, as with any retro game, comes easier with time spent acclimating to its presentation.
As an Anniversary Edition, this release carries a couple extras to ease Grandia II into our current timeline. It’s available on Steam and GOG (among other places), which is a huge plus in accessibility. Despite a claim that Anniversary Edition was carried over directly from the Dreamcast original, there still appear to be quite a few bugs, as well as more than a few people having a hard time running the game. The nature of PC gaming always carries the risk of certain games (or software or anything) not running correctly on an assortment of hardware configurations, but, anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen quite a bit more performance dissatisfaction than usual with Grandia II. Minus some puzzling frame drops, for what it’s worth, Anniversary Edition ran mostly fine on my rig (it’s also worth noting that, as of this writing, GungHo America appears to be on top of patches).
Other adjustment also made their way into Anniversary Edition. Anti-aliasing and a host of resolution options are expected, and help ease the burn of a fifteen year old game. At 1080p, Grandia II now sports an ultraclean appearance, but the some of the character portraits (which appear to guide along the dialogue) look a bit washed out. The addition of the Japanese voice track is a plus, as is hard mode that boosts enemy movement and HP.
When I first played Grandia II, I considered it one of the finest RPG’s ever made, and included it the usual Best Ever conversations I had with my friends. Under the stress of superior contemporaries and the value of an additional fifteen years of life, my opinion has shifted. It’s still a rock solid experience, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s little more than a slick reprise of the original Grandia. It behaves better in a vacuum, of course, but Grandia II’s return to commercial availability won’t set the world on fire like Panzer Dragoon Saga, or even Skies of Arcadia. In an age when long sought after titles re-releases are often vaulted into second-coming hyperbole, Grandia II gets by on a simple expression. The battle system is fantastic; everything else is there for the ride.
