Lutina. The North American version was showcased at the E3 in Los Angeles, California in May 2002, and was released on September 30, 2002. Enix America partnered with Versus Books to publish a strategy guide of the game and "expan[d] awareness of the franchise". The company also partnered with gaming website RPGFan for a quiz contest to win free copies of the game and strategy guide. Music The score of the game was composed by Noriyuki Iwadare in about half a year, with a focus on battle and dungeon music and an overall theme of friendship. The composer used the looped streaming ADX format as in previous Grandia titles and had no technical issues working with the PlayStation 2 hardware. However, he was perplexed at first due to not being specialized in the militaristic aspects of the game's plot; in particular, he had difficulties completing the opening "Theme of Xtreme", and could not find any inspiration for it for two months. After getting advice from one of the development staff member and realizing the game is "still Grandia, after all", Iwadare managed to compose the track. He tried to imbue it with a feeling of camaraderie and to make it a "song of support for everyone who [would hear] it". The track "Quan Li" was composed with the same melodic motif as the ending theme, but with the sharp note omitted to musically convey the wrongness associated with "causing pain and spilling blood in the name of a Holy War", as witnessed in the plot of the game. Iwadare felt that giving people the chance to contemplate this was what he was most proud of concerning the score. The ending theme was further based on the feeling of love for mankind. The soundtrack for the game was published in Japan by Two Five Records on March 1, 2002. In place of the game's ending theme, the album features its vocal arrangement, "Rein-car-nation", sung in Japanese by Kaori Kawasumi. One of the battle themes of the game, "Combat 2", was not included on the album as Iwadare thought it was not one of his favorites and felt it was not perfect. He stated that if a second volume of the album is ever released, he would agree to include the track. Reception Grandia Xtreme received mixed reviews from critics. It received a score of 71.12% on GameRankings and 68/100 on Metacritic.