Grandia II Melodia

Grandia is one of my favorite RPGs of all time. As I've said before with other games, the game was in part made wonderful by the excellent music. Because of all this, Grandia 2 is one of the main reasons I got a Dreamcast. The import version of the game comes in two versions, one is the regular edition, and the other is the limited edition, which comes with the CD I'm reviewing here, as well as a very nice art book. The limited edition costs about $10 more. Is it worth it? Well, that depends.

The bonus CD, called Grandia II Melodia, contains 7 tracks, totalling about 22 minutes. The first two tracks are techno remixes of the two vocal songs in the game. The first one is quite well done (this coming from someone who doesn't like techno much). It keeps a nice beat and isn't too harsh. The second one, on the other hand, doesn't fare as well. It gets really annoying, especially when this annoying guy comes in and starts to do what sounds like rapping in Japanese. Yuck.

The rest of the tracks are arrangements of the original Grandia's music. The third track is a very nice arrangement of the main motif. Unfortunately, it's less than 20 seconds. The fourth track is a very odd version of Gadwin's theme, almost sounding like one of the odd pieces Yoko Kanno in known to write. The fifth track is another common theme in Grandia; it's all right but nothing worth writing home about. Track six is a sort of pumped-up version of the Military Base music. It's very good, though not overly different from the original.

The final track is definitely the gem of the CD. It's an arrangement of "Lily's Bar", running almost 5 minutes. It actually uses similar instruments to the original, but it still sounds very fresh, as there are some new strains and an extra modulation as well; it's a wonderful reward for listening to the whole CD.

Overall, whether or not the contents of the CD are worth shelling out the extra money for the limited edition is up to you. I enjoy the CD enough, even with the relatively crappy track 2, but I am big fan of the original. Your mileage may vary, and this is definitely a case of caveat emptor. Oh yeah, the game is pretty damn good too.