As I was pretty impressed with Grandia, I decided to give the sequel a go.
I'm undecided about the story so far. It's a very different tone / feel from the first one, and also ramps up much more quickly. However, gameplay wise, I'm completely impressed. They've kept it pretty similar to the first one, but with some minor quality-of-life achievements (eg. the first game has a "each character has their own, very-limited, inventory" system; the second reverts to a typical RPG style inventory).
Interestingly, the first game averted the usual "use big numbers because they look cool" trope; you'd have around 30 to 40 HP and be dealing single-digit damage at the start of the game; by the end of the game you'd be averaging a few hundred damage and maybe have 200 to 300 HP. The most damage I ever managed in a single attack to a single target was about 1000, and that was by exploiting an elemental weakness and a "counter" hit (both games have a system where if you hit an enemy in the middle of their attack, it does more damage) with a spell that was ridiculously overpowered and expensive to cast. In this one, I can't say what it's like at the end as I'm still pretty far from that (I'd hope, anyway), but you'd need to add an extra digit (not necesserially a zero) on the end of the starting figures, and I've got several attacks that manage 1000 damage at times without any elemental factor. I don't see this as a particularly huge matter either way, but I do find it strange that they averted it for one game but then jumped straight into it for the next - the two games have only minimal story connection (so far, at least) and no returning characters, so this isn't just a creative way to avert the "characters lose their power suddenly when you begin the sequel" situation.
There are a couple of things where I feel the first game did it better. Firstly, the controls - the first game's controls felt completely logical. The second's are a bit awkward, especially being forced to use L1 / R1 to rotate the camera (in the first, you could use these, but you could also use the right analog stick). Secondly, in a lot of places it feels like the game isn't being aggressive enough with not rendering certain walls / ceilings from certain angles - the first game did this almost flawlessly, you'd rarely if ever be unable to see your character no matter where you stand or what angle you look from (because it would cull rendering of walls that would block it); the 2nd game doesn't make much effort in this regard though, which feels a bit awkward - as a reminder, these games don't allow full freedom of camera control; you can rotate the camera but not move it up / down, it always focuses on your character from a fixed overhead angle. These are relatively minor concerns, and I'd still (so far) recommend this game.