There isn’t much more appealing to me that customisation. I’ll admit fully that I’m all about making characters and worlds my own; and usually purple to some degree. At the start of each Bethesda or Bioware adventure I usually spend a good three hours making my lead character into everything I want them to be. When I was reviewing Sword Coast Legends, I’ll admit that I started my character again after three hours because I couldn’t stand his haircut. It’s a combination of creativity and OCD, but I love it.
It’s for this reason that I sometimes struggle with games which give you complete creative freedom over an entire party of characters. Too much choice will inevitably lead to despair, as unless I have the ability to customise them throughout almost at will I’ll never be completely happy. So as soon as I realised that in Grand Kingdom I could design an entire mercenary band full of colourful misfits, I shivered with anticipation… and with a perfectionist’s fear.
Before I go too far into the customisation though, Grand Kingdom is a tactical RPG originally released in Japan in 2015, and a spiritual successor to the PSP game Grand Knight History. Brought across the pond by NIS, the premise is simple; create a mercenary squad from a selection of unique classes and send them on a variety of missions to decide the fate of the world. The whole game is set in an ongoing war between four great nations; Landerth, Valkyr, Fiel and Magion, who vie for land and power over the continent. Early on, your small group of misfits are inducted into “The Guild,” an unaligned umbrella company for Mercenaries, who help manage your efforts. After being assigned the daughter of the Guildmaster as your assistant, you are set free to wage war on whomever you like and ally with whichever “Grand Kingdom” you desire. As you work for each Empire, your affinity with them will change and you’ll be rewarded for your efforts.
There is a main guild storyline to play through, as there was in the original Japanese release. Luckily for us Westerners, the paid DLC which was offered in the East is also included on the disc, giving us four extra campaigns related to each of the four great nations. The main campaign is pretty well written, with some interesting moments along the way, and the addition of the DLC campaigns is a great value preposition. Kudos to NIS for including those for free.
Most of the game revolves around Quests and Wars; with both of which taking place on large, branching maps. The initial phase of any Quest or War involves wandering around a meandering path on the way to a goal. Enemies, traps and events all appear on the map, and as you move towards your objective you can choose a variety of ways in which to tackle these obstacles. Sometimes, battle is your best option, but the flexibility of this system allows the player to avoid enemies and pitfalls using timing and skills. It takes a little getting used to, but if you think of it as a board game it’s much easier to understand. The main gameplay loop can sometimes feel a little repetitive, but the tactical nature keeps it from ever becoming tedious, and I really like the stylistic battle-map style, as it’s something you don’t really see a lot of.
The battle system is an interesting combination of real-time and turn-based combat, with each character acting in a pre-defined order and allowed limited movement around the battlefield. The battles are played on a side-scrolling, three-laned area, allowing for tactical lane-switching and hiding behind obstacles. Your 4-man squad takes turns to move along the path and attack the enemy with a variety of interesting and varied attacks and abilities; chipping away at your opponents’ health bit by bit. At first, it’s usually a case of sending in a warrior to block the enemies from advancing, but as you move through the game you find that adding objects and obstacles of your own into the starting formation of your squad becomes increasing important. It’s a really fun style, combining the look of side-scrolling brawlers with lane-based tactical RPG combat, which has a surprising amount of depth.
Grand Kingdom, as mentioned before, allows a huge amount of customisation. Whilst the player character is a mute, faceless captain, you choose your own name and the name of your Merc band. As you progress, you unlock the ability to change your “pawn,” or map-piece, and your banner, and that’s before you even start to think about individual units. In total there are 17 different classes to use as the basis for characters, and whilst not all are completely different there is a load of variety between most of them. Of course, you have your basic classes; Warrior, Hunter, Witch and Medic, fulfilling the typical 4 roles in any RPG party, but then you have combination characters…and a bloody Dragon Mage. There are about 10 different colour combos for each class and variations on faces, hair, skin colour and voice. It’s relatively simple, with only 10 or so choices for each element, but you can make a load of interesting combinations, and that’s before you even start unlocking wearable items (EYEPATCHES!) Oh, and you can have dark purple armour. That made me happy.
Whilst I can’t really see myself playing much of the online component personally, I can see the long-lasting appeal of it. Wars allow you to take part in asymmetrical online combat with the teams of other players, representing your chosen faction and furthering their interests. It doesn’t seem to require a PS+ subscription, which is a huge plus, and I can see the more varied nature of player-created teams being a huge plus for playing with after completing the main questlines.
All in all, I think Grand Kingdom is an interesting twist on a few different genres. With interestingly fresh and original combat, a good storyline and customisation options out the wazoo, it’s definitely worth a try for fans of tactical JRPG’s, and I’d even say that W-RPG fans could find a lot to love.
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