Seneste anmeldelser af IceHedge

1000% great and hype: Chrono Cross-over!! YES!! Wicked awesome to see these amazing characters again. The game is great. None of the random characters you throw the dice on are needed.

1000% awful: Redownloading the entire game after every update. Whoa, HELL no!! I have kids. I have between 2 and 30 minutes for game time at a time, usually towards the former, and waiting HOURS to download this everytime I want to play?? Are you absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥? Transfered data to my phone ASAP. Not looking back. Highly not recommended because of this. PLEASE FIX.

I gave this game as many chances as I could- 26 hours in, and I'm 100% confident I can say this is not worth playing, even if you loved the first one.

Let's skip all the reasons I straight subjectively dislike it, and get right to the bugs.

When the music ends and loops, there is a 2 - 5 second delay, guaranteed, everytime. I'm not keen on technical jargin, but basically, it skips that many frames. Or, in other words, it fills in what it thinks you were doing in that amount of time. If you were in a frantic fight and slightly holding right, have fun dying in a pit of lava. This actually happened to me twice! Other times it ran me into enemies and also died.

There was another. Whatever, I forgot. It sucks that the adviser doesn't let you know where the citadels are to be able to infiltrate the main dungeon. This goes for any tile that it doesn't outright tell you where it is. So many times I've been one tile away from a space I needed but the game's coloring of unpurified tiles is so dark I had no idea I'd been right next to it.

I would explain what purifying tiles means, but really, truly, it's not worth it. Hard pass on this one. The first game is miles better. I tried.

One of the best 2D action platformers of all time!

Update 3/7/2020!

Grandia II is something special.

In a nutshell, gameplay is centered around an active battle system but it's visible who will be attacking next. When a move is chosen, there is a small window to interrupt or cancel the move.

This makes for an engaging battle system. Only downsides: Special moves and magic are OP- even post HD Remaster update, you still can't skip or fast forward through these lengthly animations.

Music never gets old. Some RPG's make me bow out due to repetitive 5 second battle loop, but it never came to that.

Great story, loved the post game ending, you don't see very many games with a post game like this either for its time or in modern day.

Finale: Corros are heavy weight contenders with Victini from Pokemon, Crystal Fox from Star Wars, and any other cute rodent like creature you could think of. They need to be the mascot for this franchise and it's time it got a deserving sequel!

I haven't played Grandia I yet, on my list to do now. I just bought Ni No Kuni and need to finish many other adventure/RPGs before plopping down cash for another one, but maybe one day!

I wanted to retcon my previous review, but I saved it below. I wrote it in 2016 75% through the game. I've beaten it now- still highly recommend it!


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After playing a lot of modern indie RPG's and JRPG's, no one really seems to 'get it.' Developers are being retro for the sake of being retro, so I feel like I'm playing Final Fantasy I's and II's again in another creator's eye, and that's not very exciting to me.

I judge the fun factor of a RPG based on almost every detail, but the big 4 are: Gameplay, Story, Characters, and Music

Gameplay: Grandia II attempts to do what Chrono Trigger attempted(and succeeded) to do with RPG's- and that is to spice up the formula. I really like the unique turn meter and combat system. Countering, dodging, attacking, and buff/debuff magic all receive their fair due attention instead of having one core strategy and using it to annihilate all enemies. Sure, magic is OP and you get enough MP refreshments via save points to spam your most powerful magic attack, but many enemies' resistances are so strong it is faster to know who to hit with and who to cast magic and what type instead of spamming one spell over and over.

This was my first play through and a I chose Hard- there were spots that were genuinely difficult where others seemed to breeze by, only one occurance did I grind to force the boss to be easier. The other time, I COULDN'T grind as the save point was in a 'point-of-no-return' area, and it took a lot of trial and error to realize one character's special move affects a lot more than the description lets on, so the translation or at least the descriptions could have done with more symbols showing exactly what it can cause the enemy to inhibit or at least better wording.

Story: I won't give much away here, but it is an enthralling adventure with a distinctive world with huge landmarks and many dangers that kept me interested in what was around the next corner for the protagonist.

Characters: Oh, did I say protagonist? Within the first 20 minutes of the game you'll see how much of a 'hero' this guy is. I had never played a JRPG before this one that followed such a realistic(or at least non-stereotypical), outspoken, and 'I'm done with your ****' type of 'hero.' It was definitely refreshing, and at times cringe-worthy to see how badly he insults a party member early on just because of their differences. The interactions between the characters were made better with Grandia's signature 'camp and chat' feature where certain parts of the story have you selecting different characters and reading their banter on water-cooler topics that don't necessarily effect the main story.

Music: It's actually ok, nothing great or forgettable. If anything, it isn't repetitive, or at least it never rubbed me the wrong way unlike many other JRPG's. I can't recall any outstanding pieces, but it serves its purpose.

My only complaint is there is no way to fast forward or skip the long magic cutscene animations. Of all JRPG's I've played I've never had a reason to use the fast forward feature that many are receiving with these anniversary and HD editions- but Grandia II sorely needed it.

I had a lot of fun with this one and look forward to coming back to it later on!

Better than juice and jam