I got pretty close to beating it and it actually seemed more anti-religious than anything to me. Either way, the difference in is that D2 tried to tie in a lot of real world stuff like the twenty minutes of facts and statistics at the end and live action clips where Grandia 2 stayed in the realm of fiction; if Grandia 2 had the characters pray to Jesus or Allah that would be much different
. Anyways, it just wasn't my thing but some people really dig that stuff. I personally loved Grandia 2 even if the story was a bit weak (I credit translation in large part and I wouldn't call it cliche for its time) but that game had an amazing battle system. Sadly J-RPG's really don't do anything for me as of late
. FFVIII used to be my favorite game of all time though, that game got a lot right.