Click Here to Try Grand Fantasia 
I’ll be frank. I had no intention of trying this game, until I heard that one of the classes was “Templar”. Even then I hesitated; from game play videos and screenshots, the graphics looked awkward and the whole thing just didn’t seem to fit together. The armours and mounts looked amazing, their designs were creative and simply cool, but why go to all that effort, when you make characters that look like they are made by a cheap, rip-off version of Playmobil?
However, seeing as they were offering rewards for Open Beta, I thought I might as well try the game for a day or two, give them the benefit of the doubt. After all I had thoroughly enjoyed Dream Of Mirror Online, which in many ways has a similar background to Grand Fantasia online. I’ll elaborate; both of these games are made by companies that have made extremely successful single player RPG’s that have almost become cult in mainland China, kind of like the Final Fantasy series in Japan. Love it or hate it, you daren’t criticize it. Hopefully I would find some redeeming features that weren’t evident thus far from the little information I could gather.
So against my intuition, I downloaded, installed and launched the game. The first thing immediately I noticed was the music. It was beautiful. In all the MMORPGs I’ve played, my first move has always been to mute the music, or replace the in game music with my own. This time however the music was fitting and enhanced the playing experience, which is truly rare.
The second thing I noticed was that the mass of pixelated crap on my screen was actually meant to be a backdrop for the intro screen. I’m not joking, the backdrop for the intro screen is awful. It’s unpolished and pixelated. I don’t really care that much about graphics (I enjoy older, isometric games, such as Pharaoh etc..), but I really think that in a game, everything should be similar, have a similar art style, or at least fit together everything looks awkward (in the game as well). You start off fighting creatures which you would find in Maple Story, cute and kiddy-like, suddenly you move onto creatures which look like they’ve been drawn to scare children. Ok, that was exaggeration, but you get my point. This games art-style lacks consistency; the lone components are fine, but together…
Fortunately the rest of the game is quite good. The game is truly quest based, there are a huge amount of quests you can do, some repeatable, others to move on the plot. Money and experience from quests are relatively easy to get, and the quests themselves are interesting. Most are of course, kill x monsters or get x drops, but among the more interesting quests are, explore a location or kill a summoned monster with a party. These monsters ramp up on difficulty as you level and will punish you badly if you try them on your own, which I experienced first-hand when I attempted soloing the level 13 boss…at level 13.
This brings me onto the next point. Each of the classes seems to be solo-able, obviously some do it better than others, but with a few tweaks they all deal about the same amount of damage (allowing for rest times and what-not). There are four base classes, which can branch off into 2 subclasses (Warrior, Cleric, Hunter and Mage), at class changes at level 5, 15, 30 and 60. There are no stat points to distribute so you don’t have to worry about messing up your character, and all skills can be learnt via a skill master, so where, you ask is your customization?
Well, one of the answers is your gear, gear can be upgraded (hard) and can be fit with resonance stones (much like Materia in the Final Fantasy series, apart from I can’t find a way to take it out after I’ve put it in), resonance stones are crafted by an alchemist, for a recipe, ingredients and some gold and failure means that you lose both the recipe and ingredients. Failure to upgrade your gear on the other hand can result in a much harsher penalty, loss of maximum weapon durability. The other are in “talents” which can be acquired via scrolls, these are much like passive skills and can enhance your current skills. However these are much harder to get, requiring you collect a scroll and the ingredients needed to make these talents from across the world.
The second answer is gear. Gear can be bought from NPC’s, crafted by sprites or dropped by monsters. They come in a variety of “colours”, grey, green, and orange, grey being the type which you can get from NPC’s. You quickly learn however that having your sprites craft your armour, is cheaper and more desirable than armour you can buy off NPC’s. Gears have different attributes, as you would expect, and each class can wield a variety of different weapons, each with slightly different characteristics (Swords are more accurate, while Axes critical hit more etc…) allowing for more customization of your character.
Sprites of course, are the main selling point of the game. Thus far, there has been nothing new and unique about the game, apart from the sprite system. Sprites are dropped by monsters (You also start with one), though those dropped by monsters cannot “evolve”, that is they have a limit to the level of gear they can create. Beyond a certain level you will choose to release them at an altar to obtain brownie points and items. However, the evolution is fairly late in the game so you will get a lot of use of your sprites before you need to change (to note, there are 3 evolutions a sprite can undergo). Including your original sprite, you can have a maximum of 3 sprites, each specializing in 2 collection talents (to obtain raw materials) and 1 crafting talent (to make items form said materials). No one sprite can create or collect everything, so getting sprites which complement each other is very important.
At any time during the game, you can bring up a sub-menu to order your sprite around (collection, crafting etc..), this can be done anywhere so while you’re killing McLargeMcHuge in order to dance over his dead body for ganking you when you were last there, your sprite can be crafting a nice new shiny set of armour for a small fee. Of course, for collection and crafting, there is a chance of failure. Failure will usually result in a decrease in the sprites mood and stamina (stamina is used up for any task, low mood means sprites have a chance of running away), while success will gain them valuable experience points in that particular area (higher level means they can craft more items, collect more items). In rare cases “happy events”… “happen” increasing Sprites mood, stamina and/or giving you an item. Sprites can also be summoned to give you bonuses (dependent on their equipment) and help you loot in combat.
Overall a fair game, Western style MMORPG, in the skin (albeit a little ill fitting) of a Korean grinder.
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