Grandia II: Povo is the second of two CD soundtracks containing the original music from Game Arts’ RPG masterpiece. Deus encompassed the majority of the music for the first, brighter half of the game, while Povo encompasses the rest, which has darker, moodier songs, various sadness-inspiring themes, and a few others. If you were to see the back of the CD cases, on Deus, Granas, the good god was shown brightly, with the tracklist printed on the opposing side. On Povo, Valmar, the evil god, is shown brightly, with the tracklist printed on top of Granas this time. Clever.
There are a few really beautiful piano themes on this CD, each accompanied by various instruments such as flutes, violins, and so forth, really nice. There are also three vocal songs on the CD, all three basically the same song, entitled “Cancao do povo”, each having different vocals but the same lyrics, the first being a crowd of villagers on track 14, the second having Elena starting off and a group of people joining in afterwards on track 22, and just Elena with some background music on track 24. Perhaps it is the event in the game at which it played that is making me think in this way, but I favor track 22 out of the three, as it starts off rather quiet, seemingly distant with Elena’s voice, and it slowly grows louder, then hitting with other people joining in the song. Quite touching.
As with Deus, I highly recommend Povo to all RPG music fans. “FIGHT!! Ver.3~Middle Boss Battle” is a scarily catchy battle song, and “Despair And Hope” is one of the best sad themes I’ve heard in a long time, and with a copy of this soundtrack in your CD player, you’ll be listening to the music for months.
