Pro/Con Game Review

bewbless

First off all a warning: This game is for people who can stand the fluffy, cookie, lolipop graphics. If you can stand them, you can continue on reading my Review, if you can't stand them, game isn't for you and you don't have to read what follows.

 

First of all I will start with list of Pro's and Con's and then discuss some of them a little.

Pro's:

- Aeria Games is the "licensed one". (1)

- Smooth gameplay even on weaker PCs but only when server isn't crowded.

- Server has channels.

- Interesting story line / quest line.

- Impressive overall game content.

- Interesting reputation system and guild system.

- Nice character classes. (2)

- Interesting idea with crafting pets.

- You can really play this game without Item Mall items and accomplish something. (3)

 

Con's:

- No PK system.

- Not enough dynamic gameplay.

- Item durability system.

- Really buggy combat system.

- Not enough skills.

- No character building.

- Item Mall items.

 

Now I will discuss only numbered Pro's and all Con's because Con's even tho there is less of them, need some more attention.

Now Pro (1) "Aeria Games" - you might disagree, I will not really argue about it, but among all distributors I have the best experiances with that company. They have very active staff and are opened to fixing issues. Also they have pretty decent Item Mall promotion system and Game Sage system, which was also added to Grand Fantasia. I see Aeria having this game as a Pro, since I would be worried that other company would take HUGE advances over one of the Con's which is Item Mall items, but I will get to that.

Pro (2) "Nice character classes" - this is also one of the biggest Pros of this game. You have variety of 4 basic classes which later on change to 8 classes among which most are DD classes with pretty fun skills. So the first 4 classes are: Priest (not hard to follow that it's a healing class), Mage (magic DD), Warrior (Tank/DD) and Hunter (typically "rouge-alike" class but also a nice DD), those 4 classes split on two on lv30. Priest changes to: Cleric (healer with some offensive spells) and Sage (healer more melee based, really close to Druid, he changes into monsters); Mage changes to: Wizard (spell based DD) and Necromancer (Summoning Beasts/Debuffing); Warriors change to: Paladins (super heavy tanks with some healing skills and barely DDing) and Berserkers (semi-tank class focused on melee DD, good crowd controlers); Hunters change to: Archers (i think I haven't put much attention to Hunter classes, Archers suppose to be focused on distant combat) and Assasins (can't tell much about them either).

Anyway that variety of classes makes the adventure very interesting and basically covers all players needs for classes.

Pro (3) "You can really pay and not pay" - this one is little sticky. But basically yes, Item Mall items suck and mostly they are useless for your adventure in game. Most of those items you can easily obtain in little weaker in-game form.

 

Now Cons. Those need much more attention because they are what made me quit and forget about Grand Fantasia.

"No PK System" - very annoying. Even though game system allows you to get a kill and all exp from monster you hit first there are some bug skills that will not prevent the KS. Mostly Paladins and Hunters have skills like that, thing it has something to do with Malice (means Threat for Agro system). Beacuse it is possible to KS and there isn't anyway to PK a player I treat lack of PK as huge Con.

"Dynamic game play" and "Buggy combat" in one. Game isn't dymanic at all. Attacks are slow and skill cooldowns are generally slow too, even though they seem quite fast - 8-10sec cooldowns. Nevertheless their effectiveness leaves much to hope for and that makes it even more annoying. To lack of dynamic actions there comes buggy combat. Meaning of it? Well you can loose your target for no reason and stop attacking it. You also generate much less agro then you think being a Paladin and some classes when they go full RAGE on mob will easly drag it on themselves even if you do all it takes to hold the mob on you. Makes whole grinding hell of annoying.

"Not enough skills" and "No character building" again I will put two togather. Only thing you can do to your character is get it a good piece of gear and enchant it, that works for building. There is alos Talent system which increases some of your stats and your pet "buff - cards" which also help with building. Nevertheless you can basically have all skills there are, and there aren't many, all depands on how much gold you have to put in it. Meaning: You are as strong as rich you are. Which is great Con. Building character is one of the biggest entertainments, at least for me.

"Item Mall items" like mentioned above most of them are useless. Exp boosters are really expensive and last for 30minutes giving you either 50% more exp or 25% more exp. They are hardly worth the money you would have to spend on them. Similary with enchant boosters. Rest are consumables - which have lover cooldown or give more HP/Stamina/Whatever and 3day Pet costumes, which are also hardly worth the money. Item mall except for a Repair Hammer was badly thought about. Repair Hammer on the other hand combined with last Con is the BIGGEST CON EVER.

 

Getting to it.

"Item Durability System".

All items have 2 types of Durability. One is "overall durability" and other is "actual durability" Once you die or fail to enchant the "Overall durability" decreases and changes to "Actual Durability". On example.

Shield has 140/140 Overall Durability.

I failed to enchant it several times and shield was left with 14 "Actual Durability". In game it looks like that:

Durability 14/14 (140)

When "Actual Durability" gets 0/0 you can throw out the item OR you can buy Repair Hammer which costs 8 dollars and repairs all your "Actual Durability" to "Overall Durability".

Same thing happens when you die. When you do the "Actual Durability" gets decreased. Die couple of times and you can find yourself wearing item with 3 out of 5 durability.

I think, haven't checked yet, that when your item gets to 0/140 because of fighting the "Actual Durability" will decrease too, leaving you with 110/110 (140) for example.

What I wrote here looks little messy. I have troubles explaining it properly. Anyway to preserve your items, and remember that power of your character comes from items, you have to spend nice ammount of money on Repair Hammer.

Of course "Actual Durability" can be repaired at any NPC, but that will not make it come back to "Overall Durability". Meaning when you have:

10/120 (140) it will repair to 120/120 (140) not to 140/140 (140) Only Repair Hammer can repair it to 140/140 (140)

Also I'm not quite sure if repairing items at NPC also doesn't decrease your "Actual Durability". Haven't checked that.

 

Concluding. That durability system forcing you to buy Item Mall item to keep your item is really a huge con for me. Especially that durability decreases upon your death (among with exp loss) and you do die quite alot in this game on later levels.

 

Hope my Review will help you decide if you would like to play this game or not.

DustyBallz

Good honest review. The best F2P (free to play) MMO I have seen yet. Not a grindfest, full of quests, level gain is like WoW or LotRO.

I've heard of some people wanting to play a pay MMO like WoW, but have no credit card and don't want the hassle of game cards. Forget the P2Ps... Grand Fantasia is basically the same gameplay and features as WoW, EQ2, and LotRO, just completely free. Nothing to buy, no monthly charge to play, no expansion packs to buy.

No, the graphics aren't the BEST, the gameplay isn't the BEST, there are no flying mounts, only ground mounts. But it has mail, guilds, banking, sales brokers (like AH), factions, pets, crafting, and all the basics of a MMO, just free of charge.

silenos

nice review. no PK is actually a pro for me, haha xD I rarely get into KS situations, most of them are accidents (attacking the same monster at the same time). I agree with the skills though, there should be more... and mages should have more mana... I mean, my mage has more HP than mana... wtf. in most MMOs, mages have a lot more mana than HP. I run out of mana so fast x.x I personally like autostats, at least I don't have to mess with builds. the sprites are lovely and still a lot cheaper than NPC equipment. and I love the vendor / trading NPC. finally a game where I don't have to sit and wait in my shop to sell items!!! pretty good idea!

and btw, at my graphics card preferences, I activated 8x antialiasing... the game looks perfect now

AutumnalDusk

Very good overall review, although I would mention the fail rates for , well, just about EVERYTHING are rather on the high side. Almost a given that it's to spur repair mallet sales, but even the sprite crafting, and sprite alchemy have all the "House favor" of a Las Vegas casino. And the item mall sales of "Alchemy Clay"? That's GF's version of "scratch tickets". The only one who generally wins is the one who sells the clay, rather than attempt an uber mount. It's a digital "claw game", where you don't even control the claw. (26 m-clays later, 2 mounts per row, and *nothing* to show for it. you do the math)

 That, and the fact there are not one, but TWO item malls, (one in game, one web), and almost a perpetual torrent of system announcements of what new bauble is available where.

/$0.02

 

Lvl 53 Pally, already retired.

evdaez

Okay, i had played countless of games and this is my first review so far. I was introduced to this game by an online friend of mine, was reluctant to try it out at first cause (i) i had a poor spec com (ii) I had pretty bad experience with other F2p games. But nonetheless, i gave it a try. I won't really give an account of what i had gone through as a lowbie like lvl 1-15 cause i already had forgotten it lol and anyways the fun started for me when i was lvl 18+. Why lvl 18+? Its because thats where you'll get the quest for the first instance of the game. Wanting to do the instance is one thing, finding a good party is another thing, there are times when you could spam the LFP chat for 20 minutes and still not get a damn party. The games instance works like this, you buy a quest from the mob board, activate the quest and if its your first time you hafta follow through the storyline quest like killin (x) number of boss and killing a boss name (y). Be warned that if you nvr do it properly(the main storyline quest for the dungeon), you would end up being unable to enter the final boss room thus screwing things up for your whole pt.

The rewards for the instance are pretty good, gold and also boss drops. There are two types of loot methods (1)Free for all (2)Round robin so if you got the short end of the stick, blame the system for it LOL. Anyways from all the games that i have played, i admit that the money system for GF is kinda weird like 100copper = 1 silver and 100 silver = 1g. Okay, my first few instances are fun although there are a few noob pt's in between. So what do you do if your out of luck in finding a good pt for instances? Easy answer: grind or should i put it in a more nicer way, level advancement =_=. Anyways, you could forget about killing (x) number of mobs the thousandth times cos the experience you get from one mob is insignificant. You could only get a decent amount of exp and money if you faithfully stick through the quest that the npc gave you. There are craploads of quest, too many to list, like guild quest(good money good experience bt still need pt, increase your rep in that city to allow u to buy better item), storyline quest, normal repeatable quest(kill x number of mobs til u get item y, decent exp good money), demon hunter quest(kil x number of mobs wich looks insane if u want to try it solo, good exp good money and so on. At lower levels all seem good and nice but at higher levels, the grind to increase that damn number besides ur IGN seems like a time warp where you listen to ur math teacher talking about algebra for the thousand times =_=

The guild system is kinda okay, its different from other F2p mmo that i played, it has levels(the word grind suddenly pops into my mind), the higher ur guild lvl is, the more people u can recruit to your guild and if your guild reaches lvl 4 u can post guild notes and when it's lvl 5, you can pledge your allegiance to a particular sprite king for guild buffs provided if your guild treasury has 3k Gold. About auction houses, yea the game has it, its pretty much better than those AFK stalls in some games where ALT+F4 is a pretty good idea than laggin yourself out.

There's an arena 31-40,41-50,51-60 and if you are not 40,50,or 60 you could forget bout pawning peoples asses out there. The arena works like capture the flag, if you capture this crystal your team has x number of points if you pk'ed the enemy, you team gains y number of points which brings me to a certain point, the arena rewards npc isnt even implemented yet =_=, whats the point of goin to arena if you knew you get nothing out of it. Well the pvp system is kinda imba u see, its like an advanced version of scissors, papers and stone. What classes triump over what classes, it is too long to list but if your the type that hates to lose in pvp, go paladin(1st choice), zerk(2nd choice), asasin(3rd choice).

Now lets talk bout sprite, the game basically revolves around thing little man. It'll give you buffs in combat(if you bought emblem for it), craft gears, does alchemy, and lastly collects crafting mats for you. Crafting gears is pretty much easy in lower lvls(below 30) but the rates of sucess gets diminishingly small as you level gets higher. A nice piece of advice: Failure is your new friend, dont be suprised if you fail the 15th time crafting lets say a piece of lvl 38 sword). Well if it seems that you could only fail crafting, you are pretty dead wrong =_=, heres the item that can have high failure rates

(1)Crafting

(2)Alchemy(magic and ordinary clays, i'll talk bout this later)

(3)Talents(without it your toon are pretty much screwed)

(4)Fortification(LMFAO WTF BBQ, thats where the cashshop comes in)

Suprisingly, in this game, i never go hardcore into alchemy, its a waste of gold you see, 2 dungeon runs = 24 gold(lvl 46 dungeon),, one m-clay = 26 gold, after 2 rounds of transmutation to get ur desired mount, it fails =_= but its the most easiest way to gain gold if you know how to buy and sell if theres an alchemy promotion goin on.

Talents, yea, talents are the stuff that pretty much gives your toon the boost like for example, crit rates, crit dmg, defense and other shits and stuff. If you're trying to transmute a high lvl talents from lets say 60 fragments without any alchemy clover, you're pretty much screwed LMFAO, even if you had those clovers, the chance of failure IS STILL THERE, the only safest way is to buy those bless alchemy(100% sucess rate) at a ripoff price of 400g(thats the price when i lastlog to that game)

Fortification, you know the guy saying at post 1 is basically right, there are glows if you fortifiy lets sa your blades to +5 +7 or +9, even fortifying to +5 is a chore itself(10% sucess rate) and not to mention that nearly half of the time your total durability of your blades get decrease for example

ice phantom sword(116/116)

fortify from +4 to +5 then fail, now the dura is like

(102/102)

Basically if your total dura goes to 0, your only saviour is to buy those blacksmith hammers(2 kind)

(1)Greater blacksmith(repair to total dura --> ice phantom sword(116/116))

(2)Blacksmith(repair to half dura--> ice phantom sword(58/58))

So where to i get this freakin stuff, easy answer: cash shop=_= or auction house(the price did went down)

If your the type of game thats plays to win, the only thing i can say to ya is GG. Be ready to farm or do dungeon runs like hell to save gold to +9 your blades or you can always rely on the easier way out(cash shop =_=) Fortifying ur blades is one thing, putting a slot is another, LMAO. Lets say u have a one handed sword(endgame sword) and you want to put a resonance stone in it but you dont have any, then how do you do it?

(1) Buy gold chisel(have a good chance to fail to add slot AND DECREASE TOTAL DURA WICH IMO SUCKS)

(2) Buy crystal chisel(no chance to fail) but be prepaed to save gold to buy it at an insanely ripoff price.

Im not saying that this game is bad, it does have its good points but what totally annoys me is this, the developers dont put an effort into this game. Why do i say so:

(1) Mobs when ur lvl 50(lost highlands, misty wetland) looks the same as those lower lvl ones apart from different color and different hp and dmg(its always easier to change color and variables then to design a new mob)

(2) Some bosses look the same(Sir charles in condemned mine[lvl 30 instane] look the same as bonarparte roaring maw[lvl 50 instance] and not to mention the lvl 50 final boss looks like the marriage of donald duck and a sheep)

(3) the raid feature for a lvl 50 dungeon(mutated prairie cave) they spammed on other post is basically a no effort job( it looks 100% the same as the lvl 20 version of it(prairie cave-the first instance for lowbies) apart from having an insane dmg and higher hp and defence)

(4)What is there to do after u hit the lvl cap? Nothing except pvp, arena or grinding ur specialisation points to better boost your toon.

(5)Swords look much the same(Bloody rose lvl 38 sword looks the same as ice phantom lvl 48 sword apart from different stats and different color, one is red while the other is blue)

(6)Spams, after spammers invaded the server, every 2 seconds now and then, thres spam to buy ingame gold and it gets so annoying that nearly half of the people turn off world chat or yell, not to mention these spammers sometimes PM-ed you =_=

(7)auto tracking function. Its bugged, lets say u are lvl 50 and u happened to use the auto track to auto run urself to town, well if you afk while your toon runs to the Town, its pretty much GG, y so? This function happily runs u through mobs and also badass bosses(utumno in lvl 49-55 lost highlands map) that if did survive the encounter, its pretty much a miracle cause for 90% of the time if ur unlucky enough, ur toon will die and 10% of ur exp gone and total dura of armors and weapon wil decrease.

the math

LVL 52-53(18 mil exp), 10% loss = 1.8mil exp, 1.8m exp= 6 runs of lvl 46 dungeon(old siwa), your only saviour if u die is having an item named x(i forgot the name of that item but it doesnt decrease ur total dura BUT YOUR EXP STIL DECREASE BY 3%)

I think this concludes my lengthy imperfect review of it, theres more up there in my mind bt i leave you al to try out the games for yourself to determine whether its good or bad cos every review is subjective(what i experience may not be the same as ya). Till then bb.