If there's one thing Japanese developer Spike Chunsoft tends to be good at, it's story-telling - most notably in the cases of high school murder mystery Danganronpa, or the high-octane escape room adventures of 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and its sequel Virtue's Last Reward. With a number of our Everybody Plays team being huge fans of the aforementioned games, the news of their latest game, the role-playing game Grand Kingdom, certainly piqued our interest. Until Sarah heard it had 'scary' tactical battles, anyway...
Even if said battles don't actually look that obviously 'tactical'...
Set in the fantasy medieval-ish land of Resonail, roughly a hundred years after the fall of the Uldein Empire, the world is still scarred by the years of conflict. Split into four separate kingdoms, each vying for control of the land, mercenaries fight across the land at the behest of the kingdoms' rulers. Playing as a rookie mercenary leader, you'll need to assemble, train and kit out your own team of fighters to take on these requests, uncovering the secrets of the empire and taking on a mysterious group of terrorists with a hidden agenda that threatens the entire realm. Outside of the game's main story, you'll also be able to head online and wage wars against other Grand Kingdom players, with the matches working across devices, so Playstation 4 players can face off against Playstation Vita players and vice versa.
In terms of the main game though, you'll spend a lot of your time taking on missions for each of the four kingdoms, although precisely how these will work is a bit unclear. From what we can see, each involves moving a counter around a zoomed out world map of winding paths, with enemy counters moving around in time with your movements. Collide with an enemy counter, and you trigger turn-based, tactical battles, where you and your party face off against enemy troops, wolves and the like.
With battles taking place from a side on perspective, your troops will be divided across three horizontal rows, with your characters and enemies alike able to hop between them, with your relative positions dictating the kind of attacks you can do. For example, you'll need to stand directly in front or behind, on the same line as an enemy if you want to attack it with a sword, while an archer or mage can attack from a greater distance away, although still only in a straight 'line'. Each character has a certain amount of 'energy' to spend each turn, whether it's on moving, attacking or defending, while magic users have a certain amount of 'charge time' before they can deploy a spell at a later turn. By carefully positioning your team so that the weaker ones are kept out of harm's way, and strategically deploying your magic attacks for maximum damage, it looks fairly tactical, but not overly intimidating. From the looks of it too, it has an element of Paper Mario-style timed button presses thrown in for good measure, where pressing the buttons at the correct time will let you deal extra damage or launch follow up attacks too.
Switching between the different 'lanes' of the battlefield is key to victory.
Keen Grand Kingdom-ers will be able to plump for one of two different special editions of the game at launch. If you're quick enough off the mark, you'll be able to nab yourself one of the special Launch Editions of the game, which includes a 32 page art book and soundtrack CD alongside a copy of the game, for no extra cost. Those who want something a bit fancier can kick it up a notch with the Limited Edition, which adds a 128 page faux leather hardcover art book, a soundtrack CD, a character poster and a sheet of Grand Kingdom-themed stickers, all encased in a fancy Limited Edition Collector's Box. Unfortunately, it seems these fancy editions are only for the Playstation 4 versions of the game - based on the shots NIS America sent across anyway, although once preorders for the special editions opens on their online store we'll know for sure.
A grand way of getting your hands on Grand Kingdom.
Grand Kingdom will be hitting the Playstation 4 and the PS Vita in a couple of months time, on the 17th June. Why not check out the new trailer below, which shows off the battle system in action:
