Grand Kingdom (PlayStation 4) Review

A war rages on between the four kingdoms of Resonail. Swords, magic, and death are ever-present across the land. One man's death is another man's bread, however, and mercenaries are feeding themselves quite well on the ongoing tragedy. The biggest group of them, The Guild, has recruited a new band led by a silent and initially nameless protagonist (the player) and a pragmatic alcoholic who only cares about one thing more than the flavour of the next beer: prestige.

The setup is quite minimalistic, along with the rest of the story. This does not ruin the experience at all, however. Far from it. While normally, story is in focus in titles like these, this allows Grand Kingdom to take many liberties that few other games in the genre are allowed to do thanks to plots in which the player is the undisputed hero/heroine. Namely, it allows the game to feel like a war by adding other players to it.

Grand Kingdom offers vast possibilities for players to face off against one another indirectly by taking on their crews in many of the great fights taking place all over Resonail. Fighting other players' bands of mercenaries working for the opposing nation in the current conflict allows the war segments to feel flavourful while still making it possible to fight other players' armies.

Even with this much focus put on conflicts between players and the factions they choose to fight for, there is also much to do for players who prefer to stay out of battle. The big pull for solo players is the main story campaign that gives some varied larger scenarios to fight, smaller missions that are scaled to the level of the characters going in to make grinding easier and more fun, and maps in which players hunt for high-bounty enemies to gain access to new weapons and other rewards.

The concept is great, as it offers a new angle to the genre while still keeping veterans of the genre feeling welcomed, but for fans of TRPGs, the gameplay is the greatest pull, and here Grand Kingdom does not fail. The combat is simplistic, yet it allows many tactical decisions. The combat itself is, however, only the tip of the iceberg. The real tactical elements come from the objectives the player is meant to do. Many missions can be won without engaging in a single battle. Some even have this as the requirement to win. This makes moving around the board game-inspired battlefield as important, if not even more so, than being good at combat.

The result is that Grand Kingdomis an easy title to put a lot of time into, but the thing that puts the cherry on the cake is the character customization and progression system. Grand Kingdom offers a great character creation system in which mercenaries for the crew are hired and created by the player, then each character levels independently. This makes it possible to have a lot of characters to level up and prestige for better stat-growth, giving the game an extremely long lifetime to experience the semi-PvP wars that plague the world of Resonail.