Review: Grand Kingdom

Grand Kingdom is the successor to Grand Knight’s History and looks even better with ex Vanillaware people on the title as well as Spike Chunsoft and Vanillaware did work on the previous title but never made it to the west sadly.

In Grand Kingdom you get a lot of choices of characters throughout the game like knight and archer or my pick dragon mage but sadly dragon mage takes up two character slots so you have to decide on power or a bigger unit. The maximum is five I believe but I use three which is knight, archer and the dragon mage. Doing attacks can take some time getting used to if you want to combo with certain characters while others are really easy.

The graphics look great and are so well done and the spell effects look great to see. The story is confusing but handled at a good pace with the four factions who are all at war but your character Flint will not win character of the year by any means. He is the opposite of what you want in a protagonist but luckily you have someone to steer him in the right direction.

Missions are on a game board of sorts with weak enemies being the regular color, strong enemies being red and the stronger enemies worth money being gold. Random things happen as well from battling creatures, getting a chance to be healed with cost of course and finding items. You have side quests as well which go into one of the four factions. When you pass a mission trust goes up and if you fail a mission trust goes down. Some are mostly fetch quests while others are defend missions and defeat a certain amount of enemies.

Generally, the game is fun but some info feels left out. It seems the Japanese instruction book was bigger while the localized is smaller plus not a lot of info is given in the tutorials dealing with training like class up or how to use field items. I can use Salve but what about the five healing items I bought before the mission?

Also after dealing with enemies then heading to a boss it would be nice to be able to heal without dying and losing the whole mission and having to start all over again. These are just a few issues I have with the game. Online is sure to be big but I haven’t tried it yet and waiting till release to dive into it.

Conclusion

Grand Kingdom is fun and features some gorgeous looking graphics. If you like role-playing games then pick this up but be prepared to lose a lot.

Review: Grand Kingdom | PS Vita

• Presentation - 9/10
• Music - 8/10
• Gameplay - 8/10
• Lasting Appeal - 7/10

Summary

+ Gorgeous graphics
+ Lots of customizations for characters
+ Lots of characters
- Hidden enemies
- Sometimes you just want to heal
- How do you use items you bought

Grand Kingdom is fun and features some gorgeous looking graphics. If you like role-playing games then pick this up but be prepared to lose a lot.