My resolution for the rest of 2012 is not to waste too much time on games I’m not enjoying. I’ve played several hours of Grand Knights History
My reasons
1. It’s neither good nor bad. I like my games to be at one end of the spectrum or the other. If it’s excellent, great. If it sucks royally I can at least look back several years later and reminisce over how awful it was. If it’s just meh, it’s a waste of my precious time.
2. The quests are all the same. Walk to a few spots on the map, fight a few easy enemies, warp back to the capital, complete. There’s absolutely no variation in the kinds of quests you are asked to undertake. I knew I was in trouble when I started having Final Promise Story flashbacks.
3. Speaking of the map, the scenery is seriously bland. The character and enemy designs are nice, but the scenery is painted almost entirely in yellow and brown. It’s seriously getting me down.
4. Story? Hahahaha. Well, there’s sort of one, but it’s not even worth writing about. Apart from the treasures you have to collect, there’s also this Phantom Knight Corps whose leader is your sidekick’s mom or sister or something bizarre like that. It’s called Grand Knights History, but someone forgot to put in the “story.”
5. The battles aren’t exciting at all. Each character can only use 4 skills, and your options are further limited by your scanty AP. This means even if you have better, fancier attacks, you can’t use them anyhow you like and it’s more efficient to use the same tired old attacks on the same tired old palette swaps on the same tired old maps. Running away from even the simplest battles makes a big dent in your party’s Brave, so you have to stay and tough it out.
The dull fights are the biggest problem, really, because the entire point of GKH is to create troops for fighting. If the fighting itself is no fun then the game has failed before it even started.
6. The auto-battle options has to be reset every turn. Animation-skip must be set manually every battle. They went through a lot of trouble with the graphics and animations, but if I don’t want to watch them I shouldn’t be forced to.
7. The raising aspect of the game is weak. The work in the training hall is done automatically for you, unless you care to reload for better stats. The other way to raise characters is to take them adventuring, and I’ve already explained how unpleasant that is. It might be good for people who like one-pattern grinding but probably not for anyone else.
…Actually I’m getting bored just writing this. I’ve given the game a decent amount of time and it hasn’t delivered. Better things await.
You simply dont understand what this game is.
It’s NOT RPG (thou it has some elements in it).
It’s massive ONLINE strategy.
In training mode you have 60 days to train your squad, after that you SUPPOSED to deploy them on battleground and hire new rookies.
And when you are ready you go to war to conquer territories, synchronize your game with server to uppload your progress, and download real situation.
So basicly said you expect the game being something it have not been supposed to be.
You are right that I didn’t give the game much of a chance. I never went online and barely scratched the surface of the game. The reasons for this are
1. What little I played was no fun. It didn’t motivate me to continue.
2. With the English release cancelled going online is a PITA
3. Online gaming isn’t really my thing. I like games with a definite end point, even if they’re 200 hours long.
While it’s true that I rated the game negatively for not being an RPG when it’s actually an online strategy game, the game was promoted as an RPG so it’s only natural. For example the official Japanese Marvelous site calls it a “fantasy RPG” as does the Japanese wiki and Amazon.co.jp. English sources call it a “traditional roleplaying game” for the most part.
So if I had the wrong idea going in it’s because I was misled, not because I was expecting something that wasn’t promised.
Naw it was a bad review.
Is there still some sort of “Story Mode” with an ending to play solo and offline? I purchased this game and wouldn’t want my money to go down the drain-though I actually paid only 0.01 $ for it, so that wouldn’t be a huge loss.^_^
There is a story mode which I hear is quite hard to finish. I played a bit of it and found it very boring and not enough to make up for the dreary gameplay. If you already bought it, go ahead and play it.