{"id":15171,"date":"2016-07-13T00:01:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T00:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=15171"},"modified":"2016-06-28T15:38:54","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T15:38:54","slug":"grand-kingdom-ps4-vita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/13\/grand-kingdom-ps4-vita\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Kingdom (PS4, Vita)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GRAND_BOX\"<\/a>Four opposing countries have turned their island continent into a war-torn battlefield, and hired mercenaries protect the land rather than chivalrous knights.\u00a0 You lead a squad of these mercenaries as you take quests from a guild on this continent.\u00a0 Grand Kingdom is a game that mixes strategy, RPG, and action, and it\u2019s available for the PS4 and Vita (reviewed on Vita here).<\/span><\/p>\n

Right off the bat, one thing I really liked about this game is the beginning tutorial is interactive and relates to the story.\u00a0 So you learn things easily by doing them and don\u2019t have to wade through a bunch of exposition text.\u00a0 After the tutorial you are accepted into a guild and can do a few things at base before setting out on your next quest.\u00a0 Most importantly, you can hire out classes of warriors to be on your team.\u00a0 These include sword fighters, hammer-wielding blacksmiths, long-range hunters, spell-casting witches, healing medics, and many more.\u00a0 You can customize many aspects of your team, too, like the color of their outfits and even the tone of their voice!\u00a0 You can also buy items at base, visit each country and talk to people in the plaza and buy items from them as well as visit a blacksmith to improve your weapons and armor.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Once your squad is ready, you can take on quests.\u00a0 Main quests progress the story, but there are also side quests to take on as well.\u00a0 In quests, you view the action like a board game, and move your piece onto squares.\u00a0 Certain squares may have treasure chests, traps, enemies, and more.\u00a0 As you move, you\u2019ll use move points but be careful as there is a limited amount of these points and if you run out, you\u2019ll fail the quest (you\u2019ll also fail if you are defeated in battle).\u00a0 Avoiding traps and battling enemies also uses up move points, so you\u2019ll have to plan accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once you run into an enemy, a battle will ensue and the screen will change to a 2-D side scrolling perspective.\u00a0 When it\u2019s your characters\u2019 turn, you will move them around and attack enemies in real time.\u00a0 Just keep an eye on your action gauge and make sure you\u2019re in a good position to defend when your turn is done.\u00a0 While there is a bit of strategy in moving your players on the field, there is also quite a bit of action as melee fighters have combo attacks. Magic users and long range bowmen must press buttons at the right time so their spells and arrows hit the right mark.\u00a0 And healers can throw potions that attack or heal, and you must be careful that they don\u2019t hit your if they are acid potions or hit the enemy if they are healing potions.\u00a0 This mix of action with the strategy make battles a lot of fun.\u00a0 After winning you\u2019ll earn experience points and maybe even pick up helpful items.<\/span><\/p>\n

After completing a quest, it\u2019s back to base where you start the process over again.\u00a0 There is a bit of online functionality as you can go to war and battle other players, too.\u00a0 The problems with this game are pretty minor, but I\u2019ll go over them anyway.\u00a0 While the tutorial is great for getting you started, they don\u2019t do quite a good job about explaining other things after that, like the online features and such.\u00a0 Plus, I felt some of the text was too small on the Vita, and the game has the potential to get too complicated for its own good.\u00a0 But other than that, this was a pretty decent game.\u00a0 Normally I don\u2019t like strategy in my RPGs, but the mix of action in the battles was really fun, and I thought the graphics and character designs were neat.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"GRAND_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Grand Kingdom is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, and Use of Alcohol.\u00a0 While you do hit monsters and other soldiers with swords, hammers, and magic spells, they just get knocked back and disappear when defeated.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t really notice any blood.\u00a0 One of your team members likes to talk about going to the tavern and getting drunk, and does curse a small bit.\u00a0 And some of the female outfits are a bit skimpy. But it\u2019s all presented in a fairly campy anime style.\u00a0 Really the best reason why this game is better for older players is the high level of reading involved in the complexity of the gameplay, but I\u2019d be OK with mature preteens playing this as well.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four opposing countries have turned their island continent into a war-torn battlefield, and hired mercenaries protect the land rather than chivalrous knights.\u00a0 You lead a squad of these mercenaries as you take quests from a guild on this continent.\u00a0 Grand Kingdom is a game that mixes strategy, RPG, and action, and it\u2019s available for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15173,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15171\/revisions\/15173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}