Grand Knights History is a set in the fantasy world of Rystia, which is divided into three warring kingdoms: Logres, the Ancient Kingdom, ruled by King Fausel; Union, the Kingdom of Knights, ruled by King Leon; and Avalon, the Kingdom of Magic, ruled by Queen Muse. Players must align themselves to one of the three nations and advance the story by taking part in missions on behalf of their chosen country.
Reviews View More
Conceptually the game is impressive, especially coming from a small team of mostly artists. One of the first games to do the sort of Live Campaign thing where players join factions and battle over territory with units they train in Story mode, which was ambitious in 2011 but even more so for the PSP. Novel lil tactics-lite RPG system on a board-like overworld - but in all honesty the game is difficult to understand and appreciate in an offline setting.
Delightful little PSP game.
For a Vanillaware title on PSP, presentation is about what I'd expect. The day that a Vanillaware game has bad visuals and music is probably the day I give up on video games. Kouichi Maenou brings his excellent character designs to life, and Basiscape brings bangers to the table, as usual. The English translation patch is appropriately filled with flavor text that helps immerse me in this world, small in scope as it may be. Liscia is adorable and I would die for her. You can even take screenshots at any point, and they're saved in glorious PNG format! That's how you know they're proud of their work.
The gameplay's nothing groundbreaking, but it gets the job done. There's three different unit classes to choose from, each with minor differences within each class. You get to name each unit, randomize their colors and stats a bit, and then you're good to go out and defend the kingdom from whatever ne'er-do-wells roam the roads. As you move your player piece across the map, you'll find treasure, quests, random events for extra spice, and of course, random encounters.
In battle, actions cost AP and dictate how much you're allowed to do in a single turn. Killing enemies gives you extra AP for the next turn, along with any AP you didn't expend. The part that intrigues me the most are the formations you can unlock. As long as your units maintain their formation, you gain various minor buffs, but if an enemy uses an attack that knocks a character out of formation, those buffs are gone. Random enemy mobs don't seem to take advantage of this system, which is a shame, but that's probably because they were saving the real meat of this game...which no longer exists!
I gave up on giving this game a proper rating due to a large chunk of this game being outright inaccesible. You see, when you first boot up the game, it'll force you to swear allegiance to one of three kingdoms. This'll be your base of operations, and what you would defend when you go to the WAR mode. Yep, the knights you train up in the single player are intended to be permanently sent to WAR, where they'd be put up against teams of knights defending other kingdoms. The formation mechanics don't make that much of a difference when fighting random mooks in solo mode, but fighting against actually developed teams using their own formations sounds like it would be really cool. Alas, this is a PSP game from 2011. The servers are long gone, and making backup ones would probably be more trouble than it's worth. We're probably lucky to have a translation patch of such high quality for this game in the first place.
So, this begs the question: Is Grand Knights History worth it as a single player game? Naaaah, probably not. I think it's a nice footnote in Vanillaware's library, and I'm glad there's a translation for those interested in trying it, but I felt like I had seen everything after 20 or so hours of playtime (I probably should've stopped at 10). If you're obsessed with review scores, this game probably gets a 7/10 from me. I guess the true Grand Knights History was the Unicorn Overlord we made along the way. Or something like that.
The gameplay's nothing groundbreaking, but it gets the job done. There's three different unit classes to choose from, each with minor differences within each class. You get to name each unit, randomize their colors and stats a bit, and then you're good to go out and defend the kingdom from whatever ne'er-do-wells roam the roads. As you move your player piece across the map, you'll find treasure, quests, random events for extra spice, and of course, random encounters.
In battle, actions cost AP and dictate how much you're allowed to do in a single turn. Killing enemies gives you extra AP for the next turn, along with any AP you didn't expend. The part that intrigues me the most are the formations you can unlock. As long as your units maintain their formation, you gain various minor buffs, but if an enemy uses an attack that knocks a character out of formation, those buffs are gone. Random enemy mobs don't seem to take advantage of this system, which is a shame, but that's probably because they were saving the real meat of this game...which no longer exists!
I gave up on giving this game a proper rating due to a large chunk of this game being outright inaccesible. You see, when you first boot up the game, it'll force you to swear allegiance to one of three kingdoms. This'll be your base of operations, and what you would defend when you go to the WAR mode. Yep, the knights you train up in the single player are intended to be permanently sent to WAR, where they'd be put up against teams of knights defending other kingdoms. The formation mechanics don't make that much of a difference when fighting random mooks in solo mode, but fighting against actually developed teams using their own formations sounds like it would be really cool. Alas, this is a PSP game from 2011. The servers are long gone, and making backup ones would probably be more trouble than it's worth. We're probably lucky to have a translation patch of such high quality for this game in the first place.
So, this begs the question: Is Grand Knights History worth it as a single player game? Naaaah, probably not. I think it's a nice footnote in Vanillaware's library, and I'm glad there's a translation for those interested in trying it, but I felt like I had seen everything after 20 or so hours of playtime (I probably should've stopped at 10). If you're obsessed with review scores, this game probably gets a 7/10 from me. I guess the true Grand Knights History was the Unicorn Overlord we made along the way. Or something like that.