Grand Fantasia

by Mario Escudero

Grand Fantasia, the new Team-based MMORPG from Aeria Games, begins with the most compelling feature up front; the sprite. A cute, cuddly ball of goo with a personality and flare for the dramatic, its initial job is to hunt and gather materials which it will then use to craft weapons and armor for you. A truly useful feature, however, not without its downside. While the sprite is generally well behaved, it's subject to a series of moods that affect its production value and desire to work with you at all. Letting your sprite's mood drop too low and it gathers less, has a poor success rate in crafting, and sometimes even runs away never to return. Raising its mood requires a bottle or two of soda; that can be quite costly in the beginning levels and often feels like a painful chore to carry around, since the item does not stack. Keeping your sprite's mood above normal becomes more desirable as its second featured ability, being summoned to your side in battle, comes into play. Summoning your sprite requires it to put aside gathering and crafting tasks in exchange for bonuses to stats and heal rates, depending on your desired configuration. You can alter which bonuses your sprite will present with a series of cards that can be equipped to them specifically.

Summoning your sprite becomes a big part of the game when you get into, what I believe to be the second most compelling feature of the game; boss battles. In the game you will find a series of three different boss types including: field bosses, which spawn in the middle of large groups of enemies on the playing field; summon bosses, which are linked to quests that provide you with a particular item you must take onto a specific marker on the playing field and use to call forth your challenge; And finally, dungeon bosses. Dungeon bosses tend to be the most challenging, as each dungeon holds three of varying difficulty within the normal structure of the map. Completing a series of quests for each dungeon, requiring you to defeat each of the three bosses one by one, reward you with access to a final; more challenging boss that will truly test your skills and abilities to work within a group.

Despite the games shortcomings, it holds a charm that grants it a higher appreciation in my experiences within. The game is easy to understand and thus smooth to work into. The community is lively and there are no shortages of guilds to take part in. The dungeons are instance-based, freeing you from the typical crowds that form around boss spawns, that plaque so many other games. There is a decent amount of classes to try and enjoy. The game feels very solid for still being new to the market, and with a little more content in between the grinding, could easily find its way on the usual top 10 lists of best free to play MMORPGs.