While the West never got Grand Knight's History for the PSP due to Vanillaware not having the manpower to devote resources to it, Spike Chunsoft has a development team based on some of the staff from the production of that game working on this new game. Grand Kingdom is very much something of a successor to that game, and luckily NISA has localized it. And it's a pretty good experience for the RP gamer.


    Grand Kingdom is an RPG about your faceless protagonist being the leader of a mercenary troop who decides to join a Guild to more effectively earn money. As it takes place in a fantasy world, your job classes are based on the typical roles like Fighter, Mage, Medic, and Archer. But there also some interesting ones like Shaman, Arcanist, Blacksmith, and even Dragon Mages which actually take up two of the four character slots. The only real downside to this is that character recruitment is entirely random rather than fully user created, and it costs money. You'll have to not only partake in missions, but you'll need to curry favor with each of the nations to unlock more things in the game. If you want to play multiplayer effectively, playing the campaign first is highly recommended. Thankfully there are many scenarios to play that are fun, despite their individual length.


    The gameplay is made of two portions. Your troop is presented as a chess piece moving across an isometric map, with a fog of war hiding some enemy chess pieces. Of course colliding with these pieces will result in a fight. At this point the battle mode kicks in, which plays on a 2D beat em' up style map featuring multiple planes. Actions for melee characters are set to a default control that operates much like a fighting game, where you can inflict combo attacks based on the amount of AP available. Non melee units have a targeting reticle you have to quickly hit the attack button over and over once it highlights the target for several seconds. The attacks typically have knockback, so be prepared to take that into account. Knockback damage and friendly fire also are in play, so be sure to take advantage of, or be wary of how your attacks or defenses will work when committing to an action. It's really a fun game that's great for portable play especially, as the one mission a session approach is perfect for the Vita platform. The PS4 version is almost completely identical, with the only difference at a higher resolution.


    There are some things to keep in mind about the game though. Despite there being two versions, there is no cross-save system in place. This is almost entirely due to the game having it's single player campaign being heavily tied to it's online component. Even if you decide to play offline, the big point of the game is to actively participate in a war. So it might have been too hard to offer cross-save support when you've got people with the potential to abuse save files to cheat their prestige levels and the like. Maybe in the future Spike Chunsoft will do an update that splits the single player campaign saves from the online, but currently you will need to decide which version you are going to buy if you want this game. But regardless of which version you are going to buy, Grand Kingdom is a fun experience that most fans of the genre will be able to get down with. 


The Bottom Line: A great turned based RPG that good for quick play sessions, which is benefited most by the Vita version.


Acquisition Method:  This game's review codes were provided by NISA.