Grand Kingdom Review (PS4)

Grand Kingdom is a game that players will love and hate at the same time.  You love the throwback graphics.  You'll hate how small everything looks.  You love the gameplay mechanics.  You'll hate the BS that comes with the mechanics.  You'll love the game's length.  You'll hate the hours of grinding.  That's the way Grand Kingdom is.  For everything it gives you to enjoy, it turns around and kicks you in the balls with something else.

The premise is that you play as a some guy with no face, voice, or body and lead band of mercenaries through numerous battle, all while being lead around by a pair of badasses who don't do any fighting.  It's worth noting that without a body, your character doesn't fight, either.  Instead, you put together said band of mercenaries and have them do the fighting.  This is where the fun begins.

Move your "chess piece" around a board full of enemies, obstacles, and even helpers.

Upon meeting an enemy "chess piece", their leader gets a fairly cool intro.

Combat is fought on three planes.

After the initial tutorial disguised as a battle, you will have the ability to hire your own band of mercenaries from whatever jobless bums the game decides to give you, each with his or her own strengths, weakness, and abilities.  Maybe you'll get lucky a the game will give a beastly unit early on.  Yep.  You are given a totally random set of characters to choose from after every mission and there's a chance you'll get a few godly characters if you know what to look for.  You can hire of to fifty of these guys, so don't be afraid to take a chance, just to see what someone can do.  If you decide a unit is garbage, you can simply fire them later and replace them with someone better.

Continuing with the units you can hire, there are fifteen different job classes and some are definitely better than others.  All have their uses, though.  For example, the Paladin is a pure tank, having the crappiest movement in the history of videogames, but he can take a hellacious beating without flinching.  The Dark Knight can deliver quite a beating, but falls apart like wet toilet tissue when he's is hit, despite wearing full armor.  The Dragon Mage will pretty much rape whatever you pair her off against.  You'll get a chance to edit the appearance, voice, and stats of anyone you hire.  The enemies will have access to these same classes, as well as monsters, so they can deliver the same beating you can.

The coveted dragon mage.  Careful, though as she takes up two unit spots.

Hit "square" to learn about your character's job class.

As mentioned before, you can hire fifty characters.  You can put together six teams with up to four members each, meaning some characters will undoubtedly get left out of the action.  The key to winning is to build balanced parties, but you can structure these parties anyway you want.  You want a party full of slow-moving Paladins who look the same?  You can do that.  You want a party with nothing but women?  You can do that, too?  Perhaps you'd like a party with nothing but long ranged fighters.  Go for it.  But, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

What do I mean?  Some characters have bad synergy.  Characters may not move the way you hoped, blocking off the attacks of other characters.  This means some characters won't be able to attack at all because of the turn order.  If by chance you do get a strong shield of a frontline to protect your backline, you'd better beware of using big, sweeping attack.  This is because your characters can hit each other, breaking the guard of any allies they hit and potentially turning them away from the opponent.  So your characters might die because they get raped twice, first by their own allies, then by the enemy.  It's BS.  Make sure your sure you check the characters' speed (which determines turn order) to prevent screw ups.

Ranged attackers can be frustrating at times.  If you use the wrong attack, you'll mow down your meatshields with a lightning bolt or an arrow to the back of the head.  Not only that, some of these attacks have a charge time, meaning your enemy may be able to move out of the way depending on how the turn order plays out.  The ranged attacks that can go past your allies require good positioning and successful successive button presses to pull off.  If you're to slow or fast with your button presses, you won't get the fullest out of these attacks.  If you position your character wrong, you risk hitting an ally.  It's as big of a headache as possible.

While moving around the board, you'll have to watch the turn count (if the mission has a turn limit), TP (which enables you to use techniques on the board, and morale (which affects your party's performance).  There are also invisible enemies, bounty heads (the gold "chess pieces"), traps and weapons (which damage you if a battle starts in their attack radius, among other things that want to mess up your day.

Not everything is bad, though.  You might randomly encounter a "friendly" enemy who will reward you for helping them or beating them.  You could also encounter some shady-looking guy who will sell you an item.  This guy is not to be confused with merchants, who will sell you a bunch of stuff if you have the money.  There are also some medic girls who may heal you for free or be a bitch, depending on which one shows up.  On top of that, make sure you gather resources so you can visit towns to make weapons and power up characters.

Time for the other stuff.  The graphics remind me of a little of Odin Sphere.  In other words, they're darned good 2-D graphics.  The music is a mixed bag.  The battle themes seem too upbeat, but they're neat songs as a whole.  If you have an internet connection, you have access to other stuff.  Not much wrong here.

This whole scene is just cheesy enough to make you feel good.

Grand Kingdom is a one of those games that's hard to judge.  As mentioned earlier, it does as much wrong as it does right.  It can be challenging to put together a balanced winning team with good synergy, but when you do, you'll have fun.  The music won't get on nerves, but being able to hit your allies will.  You'll have to grind to beat some of the more powerful enemies, so bring plenty patience.  Check it out.