1. Open "Properties" Menu from your library
   
2. Click the "Beta" section
   
3. Under "Select Beta you want to opt into", select "anniversary_edition" and close the window.

Anniversary Edition was the old PC Remaster which was already functional and non-buggy.
New "HD Remaster" ver (based on Switch ver) has lot of issue despite the patches. This replaced the AE ver.

Quality port of the classic Dreamcast JRPG

+ Least buggy port of the game ever (Apparently a re-port of the Dreamcast version)
+ Quality JRPG story
+ Great boss fights
+ Simple but deep level up system for your characters, spells and passive abalities
+ In my opion the best turn-based fighting system in a JRPG ever
+ Optional harder difficulty option (Monsters: + ACT, + HP, + DEF (some) & bosses: + ACT, + HP, + DEF, + ATK, changed vulnerabilities)
+ Great windowed mode (drag resizing works)
+ Japanese audio is now an option
+ Gamepad support
+ MSAA
+ Textures look way better than I remember
+ It only took 20 minutes for the developers to realise they only uploaded half the files to the steam servers

- No widescreen, the game pillarboxes when playing fullscreen with a widescreen resolution
- Oversight / bug that can cause the camera to spin constantly, might be fixed, see guides on the community hub

tl;dr good port, good game

I never thought I'd see this day coming...
Grandia 2 is back

I played the old PC Port of this when I was in Middle School... 4 times, I belive. And I loved every second of it

the game had a wonderfully crafted story, awesome characters, a battle system that until now is one of the, if not THE best Real Time/Turn based hybrid system I have seen and a Soundtrack to die for. I do believe, this is where I started embracing game OSTs, too.

now, the old PC version had its share of bugs. a few only immersion breaking, a few only mildly annoying and one game breaking. But since this is based on the ol' Dreamcast version, those should have been dealt with.


the only thing missing right now is the Game Arts Jingle at the Start, that always brought a smile to my face in anticipation of whats to come.
I'd say if you are a fan of old-school RPGs, and you are up for some wholesome fun, get this.

Grandia 1 plz

Edit: Thank You!....................Grandia 3 & Xtreme plz?????

Short Version:
If you played oldschool JRPGs but never played Grandia II, get this game!
If you like RPGs and look for an interesting turnbased/realtime combat-system mix, get this game!
In my opinion, this is one of the best JRPGs ever made, with quite certainly the best combat system.

Longer Version:
My gametime doesn't tell, but I played through this game multiple times when it was originally released, so bear with me.

Pros:
Awesome Storytelling:
There are multiple voiced dialogues and this version actually comes with the original Japanese voices, a great plus for me who only knew the sometimes a bit wooden english voiceovers.
The story itself is pretty awesome and told in some kind of episodic format with the characters on your team rotating throughout the story, you get to know these characters not only through simple cutscenes, but, what for me at the time was mindblowing, through conversations around the campfire when they are resting. Yes there are multiple games that use this mechanic, but for me Grandia was the first I ever experienced, so it made the whole thing even more enjoyable.

The Characters:
While all of them are to a certain part classic JRPG tropes like the damsel in distress, the revenge driven clanleader, and the grumpy sellsword, each of them has facettes to their character you would probably not expect on the first glace. Each character has an interesting backstory and evolves a lot during the remainder of the game.

The combat system:
Ohh boy, where do I start. This system is in my opinion one of the best, if not the best, that has ever been created, the perfect mix between tactical turnbased and realtime combat.
Okay nostalgia aside, I still believe this is one of the best systems I ever had the pleasure to play, it builds a lot around tactic instead of pure damage dealing and overlevelling your characters like a ton of other JRPGs. Instead of grinding it's just as effective to wrap your head around positioning, not just of your characters but also your enemies, and timing.
While on first look quite simple the system has a lot of depth, with crowd control, animation-cancels, AOE-spells, a counter and a combo mechanic. There are so many different utility items it melts your brain considering the possibilities.
And the bossfights are just a blast, the mechanics they employ to make the fights different are amazing. And because of the emergent complexity of the combat system there are multiple ways to kill bosses as well.

Gearing and customization:
As I said in the combat section already, this game is deep. There are multiple ways to build each character depending on what you are looking for.
In the game you can find so called eggs. Think of them as power-items that give your characters special magical abailities. Some are build around healing, others around damage, yet again some around meele and afflictions.
While there are the obvious choices some fairly interesting and highly effective combinations are possible.
Different weapons in this game can actually affect how a character fights and what he can do, it's important to think about your current team composition as well as their gear and skills when fighting, especially in the bossfights. Oh and do not sell your resistance gear, you will need it.


Cons:
Yes the game is not perfect, here are some things that people might find annoying:

Overpowered Items:
I think this is something the new hardmode will (hopefully at some point, when it's more than just 20% more hP for enemies) fix, but there are a few Items in the game that are just insanely powerful. While the maximum damage per attack is capped at a certain level those items can reach those amounts already early in the game and oneshot a lot of enemies and make bossfights significantly easier.

Annoying character tropes:
If you do not like a Damsel-Priestess and a Tsundere as your main female characters, you are probably going to have a baaaad time. While their characters get deeper later on, especially in the beginning they can be annoying.

Slow start:
The first hour of the game is dialogues and some 1 or 2 serious fights (there are other fights but you pretty much 2-shot everything). Give the game time, as soon as your party is full and the story gets going the combat system becomes extremely rewarding.

Combat camera:
This... thing... was/is the only letdown about the combat system. It's not that it makes the game unplayable, it's just annoying, because sometime you do not see everything. But as soon as an enemy acts the camera usually zooms out and shows you what you need to see to make a decision, sometimes it can mess up your tactics though, if you "forgot" there was another enemy.

Visuals:
I'm glad they took the "HD Remake" off the title. It looks slightly better than I remember and runs on 1920x1080 (with black borders because of 4:3) on solid 30 FPS, but well it looks very, very dated. Also no 60fps, 4k, or widescreen... but... well, it's still pretty damn beautiful!

So yeah, do I recommend this: Hell yeah! If you like oldschool JRPGs and never Played this, get it right now.

Awesome port, awesome RPG, awesome battle system, great story..
Super super recommended, I know that Grandia isn't a franchise so famous (even because of its story and its consoles) but this game is really worth the while, it's been perfectly ported and if you like great JRPS à la Final Fantasy this is probably one of the best choice you'll find here on Steam!!

Grandia is a great game. Now that I've completed it again, I can tell you it's not just the nostalgia speaking.

PROS:
- The game has aged surprisingly well.
- The combat is fast paced and has light tactical elements
- The story is phenomenal

CONS:
- The Hut of Trials mini game is beyond annoying
- There is an issue with playing FMVs, after the fmv has completed the game will hang for about 10 seconds
- As with most JRPGs the special attack animations wear out their welcome rather quickly
- There are various graphical and animation glitches

Further explanation of the pros and cons follow.
This game has aged well, much better than other classics in the genre. The graphics are much easier on the eyes than the release date would imply. The combat is very fun, not until the very end of the game was I skipping fights. The story has a decent pacing to it. The third act does outstay its welcome though. The game just does not seem to know when it should end. Overall, it's an excellent experience.

The Hut of Trials mini game is the worst part of the game and it's not even remotely close. Let me begin by saying this, I've never enjoyed mini games in JRPGs, so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt. The whole structure of this mini game bewilders me. You have to talk to someone to get into the Hut, at which point you walk up some stairs and into the hut. Once inside you're greeted by another dialogue box which then leads you into the cavern where the actual mini game is. But it doesn't stop there, no, you have to read a stone tablet and then wait for this furry thing to go open the mini game door. Once inside the mini game, it's a pretty run of the mill JRPG mini game, nothing special. Once you complete the mini game you go outside and what is your reward? You get to watch the furry thing(s) dance for ten or so seconds before it opens the exit. Once you proceed, you must walk to the end of another cave and then be sprung out of the cavern. You're then greeted by a manimal that gives you your actual reward. Now, if it was just a one time thing to get all of your rewards from the mini game, that wouldn't be awful, not ideal but certainly not awful. Nope, you have to go multiple times to get every reward from the mini game. It's a time consuming, poorly thought out exercise in frustration. It takes longer to enter and exit the mini game than it does to play it, meaning, you'll never get successive tries, even if you fail.

Another frustrating issue with the game is the bug that causes the game to hang after playing FMVs. Which only seems to occur after a bit of playtime, it's not going to happen on your first few fights. It's a huge issue in the later game. I would honestly say the fights last on average 10-20 seconds longer than they should. However, the boss battles will last minutes longer than they should. It's easily fixed by closing the game and opening it again. The problem, however, lies in the fact that there are set save locations and exiting is not always an option.

The special moves outlive their welcome just like any other game in the genre, the problem is compounded by the brief hang after every move that has an FMV in it, which are quite a few. Nothing surprising here, typical gripe about games in the genre that came out around the same time as this game.

The graphics for the most part are solid for the age of the game. I did, however, notice many instances of the camera clipping through the scenery during cutscenes, animation hangs during cutscenes, and like one or two instances of z-fighting. Honestly, pretty solid game even given the handful of times these issues occur.

Overall, I fully expect the FMV hanging issue to be resolved, the Hut of Trials mini game is only mandatory once, the specials will be fixed along with the FMV bug and the graphical glitches aren't anything to get worked up over. The pros far outweigh the cons.

Verdict: Buy this game!

REVIEW AND GUIDE TO FIXING SLUGGISH BATTLES!!!

First off. This is an amazing game with a great combat system and a fantastic story and character line-up. Highly recommended.

Now onto the big problem that is easily rectified.
People complain about sluggish combat. I has this problem as well and took me many a moon-ok 1- to figure out the problem. People said all you had to do was disable 60fps in settings, which is true. however after an update that was made, that option was taken away for SOME ungodly reason...maybe Valmar didn't want us to have fun or something. i don't know. AAAAAAANYWHO. the ssolution is simple in these 5 easy steps.

Step 1.Go into your Library in steam and either right click grandia 2 on the side tab, or scroll through your library and find the game and go to the cog wheel icon.

2. Regardless of which option you pick to get to the cog wheel, go to properties.

3. Go to Beta and select which beta you would like to opt to.

4. Select Anniversary_edition-Grandia 2 anniversary edition. Update to that version.

5.back on the main grandia 2 page in your library after updating is done, click play and select the launcher option. go into settings and look for the 60fps option. turn that puppy off and beat the hell out of Valmar.

one of the best JRPGs ever behind only Shadow Hearts 2.

+ supports 1080p resolution.
+ windowed mode can be dragged to fit the way you like it.
+ Japanese audio can be selected.
+ Steam achievements and cards if you are interested.
+ gamepad support.
+ based on the Dreamcast version not the PC.
+ great soundtrack.
+ good story.
++++ one of the best combat systems ever.

- 30 fps lock.

P.S. you can listen to the soundtrack if you want, go to the game's Steam folder and you find the soundtrack under Grandia 2/Data/sound (they will be in .ogg files)

Edit:
now the update has fixed a lot of things and added support for higher resolutions and adjustable sound settings for music, effects, speech..etc. plus the game now runs at 60fps during battles.

Oh, Grandia II! One of the best games from my childhood that were fortunately ported by GungHo America to Steam. Originally a Dreamcast title released in 2001, ported later to the PS2 in 2002 and later to Steam as the Anniversary Edition in 2015, this classic JRPG still holds well even after 15 years of it's initial release, mostly for it's memorable story and innovative combat system!

The story in Grandia II revolves around Ryudo, a Geohound (a sort of bounty hunter in the Grandia universe), moved around from place to place, taking requests the normal folks would generally despise. One day, he received a letter of invitation, or a job request, to escort a band of Sisters of Granas for their usual prayer ritual from the nearby village. Things unfortunately went south and from a basic escort job, Ryudo is now stuck in a potential catastrophic event that may decimate the world.

Before moving on to the pros and cons, I would just like to mention that I may be bias in recommending this as this game is held dearly by me as one of my favorite titles ever but I'll try to point out all the positive and negative aspects of this port.

• As I've mentioned earlier, this game has an absolute BRILLIANT story! The plot itself is captivating with a mind bending plot twist occurring at the second half of the game. I've played a lot of RPGs and I can firmly say that Grandia II has definitely one of the best ones!
  
• Every playable characters are surprisingly lovable! From the sarcastic and no-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Ryudo to the calm and wise Mareg, every character stands out on their own and their lines perfectly matched with their attitude that Game Arts portrayed them to be.
  
• One more thing about the characters are their lines. Seriously, read them all if you can! You can find tidbits of Ryudo and Helena's love-hate relationship, Mareg's pearls of wisdom, Millenia's flirty-but-chaotic tone. Even talking with NPCs will net you awesome dialogues between the characters! (PRO TIP: Make sure to talk to everyone at least TWICE. There's always 2 or 3 different conversations you can have each time you talk to anyone)
  
• Innovative and dynamic combat system! I think this one is what separate Grandia II with the other RPGs at the time. What I mean by dynamic is that everyone moves freely in the battlefield during their turn. Instead of the usual turn-based battles (a la ATB from the Final Fantasy series), once the character's turn is reached, they will run forward to their enemy to land the blows. This makes it interesting since the character, implied to both friendlies and foes, can miss or evade just by moving a bit. Also, another interesting mechanic in combat is the Cancel system. Every character have the basic Combo or Critical attack to use each turn. The Critical is weaker from the pair, since it only hit once, but when used when an opponent's turn, it will cancel the said turn, shoving the said opponent queue lower and allows for tactical comeback.
  
• Great character's customization via skills and magic equip. In Grandia, magic comes from an equip Mana Egg you'll find across the game. Each have different spells, whether offensive or defensive, and can be equip by anyone, in AND out of battles! So basically, any character can be a healer or damager, with the limiting factors comes only with the mana pool and the character's stats. Same goes with skills, where upon finding and leveling up skill books, you can equip skills to boost the character's ability on what build you decide to use on him/her.
  
• Basically an all around decent port with a few minor quirks (I'll list them down in the Cons). During the whole 40 hours of my playtime, the game never crashed on me once. There's also an option to turn on VSync and Anti-aliasing via an external launcher.
  
• The game supports both Japanese and English voice over. I used the Japanese voices most of the time since I forgot how cringey the English voice actors sound in the game (still good compared to the other JRPGs at the time though). I switch to English only when there's a plot heavy cut scene comes up because they don't have subs for it. The option is available via the said external launcher.
  
• Full controller support (I used the standard XBOX 360 controller) with customizable buttons.
  
• An option to play in Hard Mode right off the bat. I suggest going for this since the game is quite easy once you got the hang of the mechanics.
  
• A perfect 100% game is moderately easy to achieve in one play. I took a little bit over the 40 hours mark in Hard Mode to complete the game with all the achievements unlocked. Surprisingly, it only took me a a little grind to get the 2000 enemies killed. Of course, you have to look in very nook and cranny for hidden treasures to ensure you didn't missed any specific ones, namely the "Bling" and "Put A Notch in it" achievements.

• In combat, the HP bar for ALL enemies is shown clearly to you, even bosses! Bosses with > 9999 HP will be shown as ????/???? but with the bars shown, you can estimate when he's going to die. It's useful but I think it dissolve the suspense that the usual RPG boss fights have.

• The biggest pet peeve I have with this game is that it doesn't support a native widescreen support. Sure, you can change the resolution and toggle the widescreen option but what it does is just stretch the aging 4:3 camera, making the game unbearably ugly. If the widescreen toggle is turned off, you'll have to settle playing with a letterbox resolution to the end.
  
• The Japanese voice over is not sync with the English dialogue. The voice get cuts over prematurely if the text advances way faster than the actual voices. It doesn't happen when you're using the English voice though.
  
• Camera controls in the fields and dungeons are frustrating and dizzying at times. Since the developers tend to hid items behind walls, you have to rotate the camera nonstop to spot it and it's annoying. Also, the camera zooms in on Ryudo when you stopped moving even for a second.
  
• Some text glitched out passed the text box.
  
• 30 FPS-locked. Yeap, it's still there. It's nothing major really but the characters does seems floaty at time during walking. Good thing is that battles runs in fully glorious 60 FPS! That's why it feels fast and frantic at times.
  
• Although the game runs smoothly at 30 and 60 FPS, there's a few area (namely the snowy mountains) where the FPS drops a bit. Not really important but I supposed I should mention it.
  
• Opening the save and loading screens took ages!
  
• The field interactions are unnecessarily and painfully SLOW! For example, when you're climbing a ladder, everyone will take turns to slowly navigate the ladder and you CAN'T move until everyone's done. Missed something up there? You might as well go and order takeouts in the meantime.
  
• Textures sometimes glitched out and you can see through walls (whoa)
  
• In combat, the game shows exactly what your opponents will do, even when it's not their turn yet. Even though it does make things simpler, I think it just ruins the difficulty. (Oh, the boss is using his ultimate move after this? Let's Cancel it!)

To the fan of the series and also JRPG fans, I can assure you that the money spent is well worth it! I would also recommend to use Leandro Eidi's HD Mod where it adds a few nice little HD touch to the apparently aging game.