A few years ago, I played Grandia for the Playstation.  I found it to be a rather cheesy RPG.  Don't get me wrong, I love cheese.  The storyline was kinda silly.  The voice acting was terrible, although with my slightly warped sense of humor, I found that brilliant.  The only problem that I had was that it was too damn long.  I admit, I often gripe that RPGs of late have been a bit on the short side, but Grandia's length was painful; it could have been twenty or so hours shorter, but noooo...I had to endure hours of believing that I'd finally made it to the location of the last boss, only to find that I had another billion places to go and things to do.  In the end, it was a vast sense of relief that I was finally ALLOWED to finish the game, and that really was how it felt.

Grandia II, for the Dreamcast, does not suffer from an overly long storyline.  The story begins with the introduction of the story's main character, Ryudo, a Geohound (I suppose a Geohound could be described as a sort of mercenary) with a troubled past.  (I know, shocking stuff for a RPG.)  His only friend in the whole world is Skye, a talking, sentient bird.  Tragically, one never does find out who or what Skye really is, I mean, how common are sentient birds?  Anyway, Ryudo is hired to act as a bodyguard to one Songstress of Granas, Elena.  During a demon sealing ceremony, things go horribly wrong, and Elena is infected with the Wings of Valmar.  Thus enters Millennia, the human embodiment of the Wings.

Confused?  Okay, let me give you the background.  Long long ago, Granas, the god of light ruled the world, and all was happy and peaceful.  Then one day Valmar, the god of darkness appeared.  Both gods gathered followers, and a long and bloody war commenced.  Eventually, Granas and Valmar met face-to-face and the decisive battle was fought.  Granas slayed Valmar with the Granasaber, but the blow cleaved the planet and left a giant chasm that would become known as the Granacliffs (where the first game had a giant wall).  Granas was horribly injured, and went into hibernation.  The pieces of Valmar (wings, tongue, eyes, horns, heart, etc.) were sealed away.  Until now.  It appears that Valmar is trying to resurrect himself, and Granas is no where to be seen.

Hence, your three main characters, and the oh-so-subtle things that they stand for.  Elena represents the forces of Granas, of light, which is not always synonymous with good.  Millennia is the force of darkness, or chaos, if you prefer.  However, her silliness and concern for those around her serve to point out that darkness is not always evil.  Dear foul-mouthed Ryudo stands in for neutrality, for the power of the human heart (who, by the way, is in a sort of love triangle with the aforementioned ladies).  As anyone who has ever played an RPG realizes, it is the human heart which is always the most powerful of the three forces.  The whole point of the plot is to drive all of the characters to come to this realization, and when they do, trust me, they will not shut up about it.  It seems that the only thing that the human heart lacks, in all its flawed beauty, is a sense of humility.  Additional characters in your party include:  Roan, the boy who is more than he seems; Mareg, the beast-man who SMELLS things (mainly emotions and intent) and is awfully in tune with nature; and Tio, the automaton who is searching for her heart, mostly because Mareg told her to. 

As with most RPGs, battles are plentiful.  However, in the Grandia series (well, this isn't really a sequel, but you know what I mean) there a no truly random battles.  You can see the critters out in the field, and so, if they take you by surprise, it's your own fault for not paying attention.  There is a strategy to the battles.  It takes a certain amount of time for characters to do anything.  There is stand-by time, while I guess they meditate or something.  Then there is a command input time.  After thinking about their given command for a bit, they carry it out. It takes less time than this description makes it sound like it does.  However, if your character makes a critical hit on an enemy in the time between when it receives and order and when it carries it out, that enemy's gauge is pushed back.  So, in theory, it is possible to prevent an enemy from ever getting to carry out an action.  In addition to criticals, characters can also combo attack (plain old attack with between two and four hits, depending upon equipment, which are overall more powerful than criticals), evade, defend, or use moves/magic.

In the previous Grandia, magic was learned by purchasing the basic fire/water/earth/wind skill, and then leveled up as each individual spell was used.  Likewise, moves were learned by equipping each character with a specific weapon class and then whacking at enemies with it.  This was rather cumbersome and time-consuming and, even after playing for eons, there were still spells that I had not learned, and I was truly irked by it.  This time, the moves/magic system has been tweaked.  Now, when you defeat enemies, in addition to receiving  experience points, you also receive Special Coins (used for learning moves/skills) and Magic Coins (for spells/other skills).  Moves become available as soon as you have enough coins, with the exception of the few which depend upon plot points.  Magic is contained in eggs which are found during the game; equip a character with an egg, and they can learn the spells therein.  Skills, which I have only briefly mentioned, are contained in books, and each character can equip up to five.  These, for the most part, increase baseline stats (HP, MP, agility, vitality, etc.).

The graphics in Grandia II are lovely.  They are all fancy and clear and full of lots of color.  You know, the type of things one ought to expect from a Dreamcast game (although one does not always get them).  The rotating camera, however, does sometimes make a person feel sort of sea-sick, when one is checking to see if an enemy is lurking around the corner.  The music is obvious.  By this I mean, there's setting mood, and then there is giving away what is about to happen.  This game features a soundtrack of the latter.  If the guitar starts screeching while in a town, ugly death stuff is going to happen soon.  If it gets solemn, somebody's going to die or get all touchy-feely.  The music, as well as the simple plotline, prevents anything truly surprising from happening.  The voice acting, with a few exceptions, is vastly improved over the last Grandia.  There are occasions when a character's anger is laughable, and you've gotta love Melfice's Christopher Walken impersonation.  Really, it sounds a lot like him...

Grandia II starts out fun.  The battles seem like utter chaos, with party members and enemies running every which way and yelling things like, "Damnit...that hurts!" and "Hey...Stop it!"  There never seem to be enough coins to learn the things that you want to learn, or enough money to buy what you want to buy.  You know what's going to happen next (I told you, storyline just is not that complex), but it's the getting there that matters.  However, about midway to two-thirds of the way into the game, if you have been fighting all your enemy encounters, you'll discover that those initial challenges have disappeared.  Field battles lose their strategy as a steady stream of Combo attacks and a very rare Alhealer will finish an entire dungeon.  Even boss battles, including the final one, become just a few hits of powerful Moves.  And honestly, one more lecture on the nature of the brilliance of the human heart, and I would have been ready to carve someone's out of their chest.