Vanity and Grandia 2, in which bad jokes are made about liking things.

Do you like Grandia 2? Are you a someone who takes pride in your taste in video games? Do you want to read some nonsense about all of the above? Then this is the article for you. Do you none of the above apply to you? Well I don’t really fit the categories either but wrote some junk about it so you could totally check it out. There is some jokes and some ranting. Mostly the jokes though.

Disclaimer: Post contains words of a degenerate. The contents of which may be vulgar and disgraceful. Read at your own discretion.

I am just going to put it out there. I am incredibly awesome and super cool fantastic great. I really enjoy Grandia 2. It is a stupid game with a plot that takes itself incredibly serious while having the big plot twists be, in this order. The Devil wear’s a miniskirt, posessed a Nun who totally wants some cock, is really made up of lots of different parts and the first thing that the Devil wants is a good tonguing. Ultimately the Devil is unable to become Horny becaues her boyfriend is Horny instead. Then the Devil got eaten by a fat guy who became the Devil. In a suprise twist God is also dead, but it is okay, Excalibur is really a spaceship. The Fat Devil Guy turns into a moth. Curtain call, game is over.

There is far more wrong with Grandia 2 though. It is stupidly easy. As in like you can setup one character to be the target for almost all attacks and make them take no damage from the pathetically weak attacks of the enemy. Alternately you can easilly cancel almost every remotely threatening move in the game. Worst of all you could just heal any damage through the multitude of cheap healing methods. Shit you could even like just wipe out the enemies before they get a turn with a series of basic attacks. Suffice to say there isn’t really much at all to make Grandia 2 stand out as a challenge. That said the gameplay is exactly why it is great for vanity. The simplicity of the combat mixed with a fairly varied character development system gives you that feeling like you are putting a lot of work to completely and totally destroy this shit. Sure it is rejoicing that you effectively kicked a baby for a field goal, but who cares? You totally wrecked their shit and they never even touched you. Take that Melfice. Go cry into you stew you punk bitch! Pure fuel into the fire for how totally awesome you are. Vanity is spoon fed by games that are ridiculously easy like this. As a counterpart I suppose I should note that bad games that are hard have the same effect. Oh man you totally sat down and beat Deadly Towers? Congratulations that was a clearly positive life affirming good thing to do. Yeah bro you are totally showing all those nubs how to rock it hardcore and old school.

The best part about a game that takes itself far to seriously when it is completly ridiculous is that you have two easy ways to defend the game. If people take it seriously themselves and hate on it then they obviously didn’t get the joke. I mean seriously I just flew Excalibur into the Moon that is really the Devil. Of course that is a joke oh my god what are you five? On the other hand if someone just keeps making fun of it as a joke? I mean seriously I just flew Excalibur into the Moon that is really the Devil. THAT IS SO EPIC, WHY DO YOU HATE FUN? Of course those snarky douches amongst you are going to start crying hypocrisy now now, but I think you are missing a little important point of vanity here. Of course the vain can be hypocrites, they can’t be wrong. That would be dangerous to a carefully structured fortress that is ones perception of reality and ones self in it. I can’t be wrong I played this game for 60 hours, of course it is great and totally meaningful in every way. It isn’t that I enjoy it, it is that it is great and I am great for being great like this great game that is so bad that it is awesome like me. The worse a game the easier it is to defend playing it because duh have you even heard of irony? I like this game because it is SOOOOOO bad, but seriously you should try it out it is awesome.

Back on topic of Grandia 2 though, it is a great game for feeding vanity through both these parts. At its core it is a fun little game that is easilly broken. The core ideas behind it are fairly carefully constructed. You have a fairly limited resource in the points you spend to level up moves, skills or spells. Regardless of where you spend them though you are spending them well because everything bends this game over and greases it up ready for action. At the same time the plot just keeps escalating in scope and scale, even to the point where that little runaway homeless kid is really royalty. The Devil and the Nun totally decide to have a threesome with the main character. You fight the Heart of the Devil and it is only half way through the game. All kinds of nonsense. The bigger and louder it gets the more it fuels the escapist fantasy fetish that you are totally rad, which you obviously are because duh.

So vanity just helps you appreciate these shitty games, because no one else can see the true charm and beauty of them. It is totally a self fulfilling prophecy here, you like good things, so everything you like has to be great in its own special way. Vanity definitely helps with that. Of course if enough people hate it you may have to reconsider your position, it might be an ironic thing then.

That or I could just be talking complete and total bullshit. Yeah lets go with that. Honestly there isn’t anything wrong with liking bad games. I honestly do enjoy Grandia 2. It is pretty bad, but it is really a big pile of potential fun and a stupid plot with some tropetastic characters that are around long enough that you do get something of an emotional attachment. It isn’t great, but it laid ground work for one of the best/worst/best/worst/BEST/WORST FUCK OFF games ever in Grandia 3 which does the amazing job of having a far more compelling combat system, an even tighter balanced resource system and one of the worst plots ever written. For that I am thankful. I do think Grandia 2 in some ways is making the best of a bad situation. It was trailing on after an even more ridiculously easy game, so it couldn’t push it overly much without alienating what fanbase the one other game in the series had made. The game’s combat system is complex enough to throw new players on a bit of a bender at that. The system was still fairly fresh and greatly refined from the original, so they couldn’t turn the balance knobs up to 11 just yet. If you pushed the skill system even further in this game I think it just would have bred a habit of grinding for skill points honestly, as it is the game never really ruins its flow by making players feel like they have to do that. Sure it has a stupid amount of filler dungeons which kills the point of the argument there, but it is another carry over from the original. It is something of a compromise, but it one for the best. The game is light fun fluff, certainly never destined for greatness. None of this makes for a particularly great game, the only real reason I call it shitty is because the points where it drops the ball are pretty big fumbles and I am a picky bastard. As a game? Sure it is worth a look. You probably won’t come away from it feeling that it is was an abject waste of time.

Being a vain douchebag certainly helps the appreciation of it though. It is just a shame the ball is dropped so hard in the third act of the game, otherwise the vain douchebags would be idolising Ryudo with his stupid box hat thing which would be great fun to make fun of. Instead they just go and idolize Melfice who just dresses like a gay stripper crossed with a unicorn.

Actually you know what? I can live with that.