Grand Kingdom Ps4 Review

ReviewDominic Sheard

Grand Kingdom is a big game, and on paper it seems to offer. Via the Playstation Network by the reviewer and reviewed on the PS4 and Vita. PlayStation 4 (PS4) Features With an impressive battle system that combines fast-paced action with strategic planning, and featuring robust character creation and customization options, Grand Kingdom is a tactical RPG unlike any other.

Fans of developer Vanillaware might remember a title from a few years ago called Grand Knights History, a tactical role-playing game for the PSP. It was initially announced for a release in EU and USA in 2011 by XSeed, but a year later was cancelled due to the publisher lacking the ability to program translations into the game, having to instead send the words to Vanillaware in Japan. The Japanese studio was busy making Dragon’s Crown at the time and did not have the staff to manage one of its older titles for translation. It was a huge shame, since it looked like another great game from the studio. As sad as it was, we can be happy now, as everything is different with the release of Grand Kingdom, a spiritual successor to Grand Knights History by Monochrome, a new studio that includes the director of the original game, Tomohiko Deguchi, who has managed to – with help from NIS America – bring one of the more interesting Japanese RPGs for the PlayStation 4 over to our shores.

The weakest part of Grand KingdomTuner life online drag racing engines for sale. is its story. The player is put into the shoes of a leader of a small group of fighters, who must take command of his squads when they begin working for the mercenary guild in this fantasy world. You never see your avatar – people speak to you in a similar style to visual novels. Hanging with you are two advisers, Flint, a fighter who just wants to fight and earn prestige or get drunk in the taverns, and Lillia, tasked by her father, the leader of the mercenary guild, to keep you in check and offer tips and advice to keep everyone alive and get the most out of your band of fighters. These two will talk a lot, being more like a group of friends then business associates. This gives them personality, more so than most of the other characters you come across, especially the enemies, who don’t get to be all that memorable, due to the lack of screen time. Expect the story to be similar in experience – one that will be forgotten after you are finished with it.

The base story is only 12 chapters, which you could easily get through within 9-10 hours. It also starts on the easy side, feeling like a big training regime (makes for a good tutorial) for about half of the initial 12 chapters. There is a reason why the main game is a little on the short side, as back in Japan, Grand Kingdom didn’t have a typical release. Adding to the cheaper priced game was 36 chapters through downloadable content to expend to a total of 48. What NIS America has decided to do with the Western release is combined all the DLC together into the package, so the game is complete from the get go. Once the 12 chapters are finished, Grand Kingdom allows to then proceed to play each of the Four Great Nations’ nine chapters, finding out additional details about why the states of Fiel, Magion, Landerth and Valkyr can’t seem to do anything but fight with each other. It extends the content of the game by a huge margin, but just like the main campaign, you’ll probably won’t find it compelling enough to be remembered in the future.

I feel story was never the focus of Grand Kingdom, since its gameplay is what sticks out above all else. There are two main mechanics that make up the core of this game – exploring and battling. Going on a quest will take your selected squad into the field. These battlefields are linear pathways made up of squares. Your unit is a silver piece that can move on these squares, with each move taking a turn. As you move, so does the purple enemy pieces. Movement can be done with the analogue stick or dpad, although due to the isometric angled view, the dpad default directions means that pressing right is actually moving up right, which made me often move incorrectly, due to my brain stupidly not getting the grasp of directional control. I do have to thank Monochrome for putting in the option to change the dpad direction, so that up will actually move you up-right, rather than up-left. For me, it felt more natural using this setting.

Tactical play is important, as a counter will display how many moves are available to finish the quest, and hitting that limited means failure. Do you save moves by going straight for the goal and getting into battles that block the direct route? Or try arriving at the objective by managing to dodge enemies and deadly traps that litter the field? Things become more complicated further into the game, as invisible enemies and secret routes become more frequent, requiring a key eye to spot them. Of course, you can’t have an RPG without loot – treasure chests are hidden in the faraway corners of the field, so one must take into account the detour if collecting every secret is what you enjoy doing. Missions will sometimes have objectives to defend a point, stealth to the goal (get to the goal without being noticed) or attack all units, while skills can be used in the field to heal or buff certain aspects, and traps can also be disabled with specific items, although these are limited in supply. Traps can be passed safely by skipping three turns to wait out a dangerous thunderstorm or take apart a mine trap, and are usually the best way to survive instead of risking potential damage or penalties.

Touching an enemy will initiate the battle, but before any of that, you want to have a well balanced team. A squad is typically made up of four units from one of the 17 class types that can be bought from the hire menu – plenty to play around with to master their abilities. Included here are the typical Paladin, Fighter, Rogue and Medic classes found in many other RPGs, but the game also manages to chuck a few surprises in. One cool unit is the huge Dragon Mage class that takes up two unit spaces, but has the ability to attack with strong melee attacks with her dragon, but also deal long-range damage with magic spells. Overall, no matter if the unit uses a sword, lance or bow, you can find a class that will fit into a confident role, either being up close and personal with melee damage, staying on the back rows with range magic or physical attacks, being sneaky by hiding and/or setting traps/buffs for units to walk into, and healing classes, who excel at keeping fellow combatants alive. On the customisation side, you can switch hair, skin and armour colour, and change the pitch of their voice, giving you a unique team when taking the squad online (more on that later).

Battles are portrayed from a 2D side perspective. Think similar to Vanillaware’s Odin Sphere or classics like Streets of Rage 2. Fights are turn-based, with speed determining which character will attack next. Having a team positioned well is key. Starting grid positions for battle can be set in the party menu either in the home base or when exploring the field board. The battlefield is divided into three lanes, and units can switch lanes or move up and down them freely until the movement metre has expired. Imagine if Valkyrie Chronicles’movement system was made in 2D – that is exactly what you have here. Performing actions, such as attacking or using items and magic, will reduce an action metre. Movement and actions are performed in real time. A melee fighter will have a small selection of skills on the face buttons, and during a fight, they can deplete all their action metre by constantly performing a combo by linking each move. If you don’t do that, the unit will stop attacking, as it assumes you are done with dealing damage. Throw in time cancels to deal extra damage between linking moves and you have one example of how the combat tries to keep your attention. Another good example is the bow user, whose basic attack is to shoot arrows into the air. The player has to time the cross-hair perfectly onto the enemy to get the hit, but doing so can create jungles, as volleys of arrows come raining from the sky, but if you miss a hit, the combo stops and the attack ends.

Fighting in Grand Kingdom requires focus. I learnt this early on when I found out that friendly fire exists. It’s easy to forget to take into account the size of an object, the poison bottle by the medic is a good example. This little bottle of death is thrown at an angle, and it also has an area of effect when it smashes, so not only do you take care throwing it over a friendly comrade, you also must take into account the spread it does when it hits an enemy or the ground. Same goes for health potions, where its area of effect will also heal enemy units next to the unit who is calling for help.

Melee doesn’t escape friendly fire either. Using a wide range attack will need to take into account the team members who are lined next to the attacking unit on the different lanes, otherwise they will get an unexpected surprise. Tactical RPGs are often true to their name, but Grand Kingdom comes across as one that fully embraces this concept with all its battle mechanics that need to be taken into account. It also manages to do all this in a battle system that’s rapid without waiting out tedious turns, which isn’t always the case with some titles.

Getting through all the campaign and the many side quests will last you a good few hours, but Grand Kingdom keeps the content coming with a huge online feature built into the War mode within the single player campaign. Signing a contract with one of the four kingdoms for a determined amount of battles will give you access to the online war, along with that kingdom’s shop that will sell unique items and gear. It’s in this War campaign where you will fight other players with a squad of six heroes (your four plus two hired mercenaries). Battles are not actual fought against another live players, but against a squad created by them and controlled by the computer who tries to act similar to the player sat on the other side of the internet. These units spawn onto the battlefield constantly unit the skirmish timer finishes.

Online was initially confusing. It isn’t clear what is going on in the battles. The gist is that each war has a 24-hour period, and through asynchronous gameplay everyone in your Kingdom who is currently online can pick a place to invade. Players can then send either a spare group of mercenaries or take a squad themselves to go into battle and try claim the enemy forts, switching them over to your colour to push the percentage of the war in your favour, eventually claiming loot for all the hard work. It’s more complex than the main offline game, but this mode keeps the game going on past the story, allowing you to level up units, resetting their levels to improve masteries in specific stats, then level them up again for stronger units on the harder difficulty.

There is a sense of Vanillaware with the aesthetic of Grand Kingdom. It’s visuals, drawn by Chizu Hashii, merges some of his own style with the animation and look of a game like Dragon’s Crown. It’s a fantasy world that is infused with Japanese ideas and brought to life with beautiful and detailed sprites that make for a great looking title. On the audio side, there’s a mixture of good and mediocre voice acting for English, but there is a Japanese audio track for anyone wanting to keep the game in its natural language.

The story might be forgettable, but Grand Kingdom‘s gameplay certainly is not. This is a game that features a refreshing and unique battle concept for a genre that can often feature formulaic combat, mixing its deep mechanics to bring a challenging, beautiful and inventive game that is a fascinating breath of fresh air for tactical RPGs.

Grand Kingdom is a bit of an odd game. While it technically stands as the spiritual successor to Grand Knights History, a PlayStation Portable RPG that ultimately never saw an overseas release, players do not need to play it to understand Grand Kingdom. Both directed by Tomohiko Deguchi, Grand Kingdom shares a similar framework to Grand Knights History, but it is important to note that this was developed by Deguchi’s newfound studio, Monochrome Corporation, instead of Vanillaware this time around.At its core, Grand Kingdom revolves around constructing a mercenary group to tackle various quests. There are numerous systems that surround the simplicity of its foundation – some well thought-out and some poorly conceived.First and foremost, the most outstanding part of this game spawns from the act of executing missions in quests. Presented like a board game, parties travel the landscape in the form of a chess piece through straight paths.

Each “move” consumes a turn that allows time to continue forward and thus, allow all the pieces on the battlefield to progress as well.Players are tasked with leading their band of mercenaries toward different objectives from acquiring resources to eliminating key enemy groups, gathering hidden treasure, and much more. Traversing the field is not as easy as it seems when Mother Nature comes knocking. Wild weather conditions, like quicksand and thunderstorms, often stand in the way of players, in which they must decide to wait it out for a few turns, force their way through it at the cost of some HP from all their party members, remove it with a Disaster Talisman item, or simply back out and find an alternate route. Grand Kingdom resembles a board game in its map overview; it's quite lovely.Turn count is a key factor in Grand Kingdom; game over occurs if that counter decreases to 0 in most cases. Luckily, quests give you an ample amount to diverge from the main path to explore around for items and materials.

To those who are willing to be a bit more tactical, adjusting the difficulty for a quest entails decreasing the overall turn count in exchange for higher rates on EXP, Gold, and Royals. This enriching trade-off mechanism helped make my experience with quests feel more rewarding and push me to consider all the factors on a given map.Party groups only consist of hired mercenaries which can be acquired in the Barracks for a small fee. Only a set amount of them will be available at a given time though, so trying to find a desired class can be a test of needless patience. I wish that at least one of each class was always available in that hiring pool, instead of forcing players to wait until it shows up for them. There is a decent amount of options to customize each unit from their name, clothing color, and voice.

I had a blast creating goofy color-themed parties filled with ridiculous character names.When a player’s piece lands on the same spot with an enemy, a combat scenario ensues. This is where Grand Kingdom really shines.A player’s mercenaries face off against foes on a horizontal plane split into three lanes. They can freely move left to right and switch to other lanes as long as a character’s move gauge allows them.

Accidental steps can be undone as long as that character did not take damage already by a hidden trap or other miscellaneous item.Each of the 17 classes of units in Grand Kingdom is unique from one another, but their method of attack is primarily split on their distance from the enemy. Classes like Fighters, Rogues, Blacksmiths, and Dark Knights must close in to attack with their melee weapons while Arcanists, Archers, Witches, and Hunters can attack comfortably from the rear to inflict damage from a distance. Performing attacks from these ranges vastly differ since players must manually carry out every single attack on a target.Melee interactions consist of a combo chain from a customizable move-list.

A button corresponding to an attack will pop up on screen once the engagement starts; it will flash with a white light for a split second shortly after an attack is executed for a chance at a Just Cancel. Correctly pulling off a Just Cancel will immediately start the animation of the next attack and grant bonus damage.On the other hand, ranged attackers must time their shots to hit targets effectively.

When a player begins their assault, a designated area on a lane must be assigned which “mark” where the projectiles can go. From there, a reticule will travel along the ground within that region; successful shots depend on a player's ability to time attacks when that reticule and enemy line up together. Some powerful skills need to be charged up for a few turns before activating them. Plan accordingly!Beware that some attacks from specific classes move the enemy in a specific direction upon impact. A Witch’s Fire Spell, for example, launch units back if they are hit from the front, so there is a risk that they could be knocked out of the target zone due to the spell. Certain types of units are weak to others with melee classes taking additional damage from magic users who get mauled by ranged attackers.Friendly fire is also a big another factor to consider, since all attacks in Grand Kingdom can damage friendly units! Imagine my surprise when I first found that out with my Medic hurled an Acid Bag at my Fighter's back. From there on, I quite enjoyed constructing multiple parties that possessed an effective chemistry in damaging enemies, sustaining their HP, and attacking from ranges that would not inconvenience their comrades in the following turns.Note that all these attacks consume a separate action gauge per attack, but saving the leftovers of the move gauge will actually stack onto it allowing more attacks for greater damage potential.

Therefore, managing how much a unit moves is vital to maximizing damage output.Another key resource in combat is the Assist Gauge, which encompass the top corners for both allies and opponents. Catapults and cannons can fire devastating projectiles at certain places during a battle.

They hit hard, so watch out.Each class learns several abilities as they level up, which further evolve the potential of how a party can approach battles. Every level up also grant stat points to strengthen a character’s offensive and defensive capabilities. Additionally, reaching level 20 on a unit opens up the ability to give a substantial boost to a stat by increasing its grade.Parties are fully customizable down to a character’s weapons, armor, move-set, abilities, spells, accessories, and so forth. Each piece of equipment come with a certain number of slots to place gems into; these gems provide additional buffs to attack types, physical defense, and magical resistance, along with many others. Players can even select between two types of control schemes (Simple or Technical) per character that give even greater control on how they want to operate a unit in battle.Though there seems to be an overwhelming amount of elements in the combat alone, I had a thrill in exploring what kinds of parties worked for me. Grand Kingdom openly encourages players to fiddle with a composition of classes that work best for them. It is a bit of a shame that its tutorials only cover the bare basics, though discovering the finer points were a reward in themselves.Experimentation is essential in keeping the experience fresh though.

I quickly discovered that I grew weary of parties if I stayed on them for too long. Therefore, I structured multiple parties to commence unconventional battle tactics to keep encounters entertaining; how much Grand Kingdom’s battle system will keep players interested largely depends on their willingness to simply trying other party configurations.From there, multiple modes in Grand Kingdom revolve around that elaborate framework. A single player campaign chronicles the tale of the player’s mercenary group working for the Guild and their struggle against a cult group attempting to resurrect the Uld Empire through shady methods.

This only lasts a handful of missions and I did not particularly find it engaging.With only a handful of shallow characters and no narrative hook to grab me, Grand Kingdom’s campaign proved to be a slog to play through. Objectives consist of traveling toward a designated point, viewing a story sequence, and maybe a fighting a boss at the end. I do admit that the four medic characters were amusing distractions. You can even place traps, obstacles, and other items in your formation, so be creative in how your set up your battle plan.What particularly frustrates me about the story is that its scope is ridiculously tiny making little use of its interesting world design.

Grand Kingdom takes place in a land divided between the Four Great Nations: Landerth, Valkyr, Fiel, and Magion. Each of these nations support certain philosophies, whether it be for tranquility, valor, or otherwise. A player can visit the capitals of their nations to check what their citizens have to say, upgrade their equipment, purchase special wares with the Royals currency, and meet their rulers if they are in a contract with them. None of these nations play a factor in the campaign at all, so players are stuck with a rather uninteresting group of characters for the duration of it.These Four Great Nations only really come into the picture when a player participates in the online-only War mode. In these asynchronous online multiplayer operations, players must first enter into a contract with one of the nations to fight for them. Then the game provides a striking amount of strategic information outlining the territories being contested, which nations have entered into a treaty, and the overall progress of how the current war is turning out.The presentation in War mode is awesome; I felt like I had a significant stake because I was given a detailed insight on the bigger picture. Players can deploy their other parties to fight in the war and they will gain passive EXP upon their return, even if they lost all their battles (the AI in Grand Kingdom is not particularly intelligent in handling them).

Plunging into a battlefield inside this War mode has players simply trying to take over more settlements than the other side. Players can hire two more additional units into their party for a small fee for extra support.That is basically the gist of War mode in Grand Kingdom; it helps extend the longevity of the game, but it did not leave a strong impression on me in the few Wars I took part in. Players who cannot access the online mode in the game still have a plethora of quests to do, but they cannot level their other parties passively unfortunately. There are also ways to assist in the war effort by investing their resources in a nation’s capital to aid them through indirect means by purchasing war armaments, setting special rules, and even developing higher-end weapons for their troops.Content duration in Grand Kingdom is not lacking at all.

While the campaign alone only lasts a bit over 15 hours, the amount of different quests is staggering and the War mode can easily keep interested players busy for many hours to come. Building up powerful squads takes a lot of time and it solely depends on how much a player loves the core gameplay systems. I found Grand Kingdom an absolute treat to look at; its artistic style does resemble Vanillaware's unique flare, but it utilizes it in creative ways. The character designs are excellently crafted – both the full-body portraits in scenes and the game models themselves.

Animations are fairly decent, though some classes could use a few more frames to smoothen out some of their combat stances for several actions.Attacks themselves are rich with beautiful graphical effects married with powerful sound effects to provide satisfying impacts on each hit. I especially loved chaining melee attacks with the dual swords on Dark Knights due the ferocity of their attack patterns. Every time the last foe is killed, a dramatic slowdown showcases the end of the battle that adds a last satisfying punch; I thought I would grow tired of it, but it still continues to amuse me.Just like in Grand Knights History, the team from Basiscape returns to Grand Kingdom with wonderful tunes to reinforce the overarching theme of war. The theme for the Barracks left a great impression on me though, due to its calm, easygoing nature of taking a breather before marching forth once again to the front lines. I do feel that the track selection seems limited, but what is there is most definitely effective.Environmental variety is lacking from the board-game perspective of the overall map; there are different regions that will unlock once a party reaches certain levels, but the particular backdrops did not really stick out.

Combat backgrounds seem limited too, but the amount of detail in them was a welcomed feature to my eyes.I feel mixed on Grand Kingdom because I want to like it, but it just seems lackluster on its feedback loop of repetitive mission design; there is nothing that significantly caught my attention outside of the intricacies of battle from constantly building parties of different classes. Its story is severely lacking, and the War mode has a few neat quirks that overstayed its welcome rapidly. Grand Kingdom is an entertaining experience that presents neat, unconventional approaches to the genre, but there are so many aspects of its infrastructure that just seem haphazardly unrealized.Versions tested: PlayStation 4Disclaimer: A copy of this game was provided to RPG Site by the publisher.