"Grand Fantasia is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) set in an expansive and carefully crafted fantasy world. Grand Fantasia offer players a variety of innovative and engaging features, including, character and sprite customization, a branching class system, sprite crafting, an incredible menagerie of mounts, player-versus-player (PvP) combat, team-based battlefields, challenging dungeons, epic region and world bosses, a player statue feature, in-game bulletin boards, auction houses, a player romance system, robust guild management and communication tools, and a host of quests (solo, party, and guild) that will entertain gamers of all play styles."
-http://grandfantasia.aeriagames.com/overview/features



Closed Beta testing for Grand Fantasia started on November 19 and will last for two weeks. Its elements are very familiar to online gamers such as cute anime style. What sets this free to play game apart with others? Well, I will share with you some of my early game experiences and thoughts about this game. Hopefuly this can help you decide if you would want to join the closed beta testing and/or the open beta testing too.

In the World of Saphael, players will start out as a novice and can choose from four starting classes which are fighter, hunter, acolyte and spellcaster. And at level 15 and 30 they can further choose what specialized class they like.

At the start, characters are equipped with a companion called a Sprite. Sprites are one of the games key-features. They will guide players through out their time in the game. Sprites can craft weapons, armors and can pick up useful stuff. The Sprites will also be the ones to hunt/mine for the materials needed for crafting.

Players will start out as Novice in a small island called Siwa. They will learn the basics of the game and have a few quests untill they reach lvl 5 and will come across their first job change. The island has beautiful lands, mountains, and the sunrise and sunset are clearly noticeable. After having the first job change, the player will journey by sea and choose between three starting points, Kaslow, Jale, Ilya. Each type of character is assigned to an area but can still choose other towns to start in. HOwever, once you leave Siwa Island, you can never go back.

There are lots of other features in the game, Here is a list some of them that includes the good and not so good things about the game.

 Gameplay:

    - easy point and click
    - game interface is easy to learn
    - day and night feature
    - nice and smooth graphics
    - regular mobs drop lots of useful stuff like stronger weapons, etc.
    - scattered around the fields and towns are chests and urns that you can break and get items from(reminds me of console rpg's)
    - autopath is available, that lets you automatically move to other parts of the map by just accessing the map and clicking your destination
    - characters can choose to specialize on different weapons and are not bound to one
    - three starting towns, each with numerous quests

 Grand fantasia lets players choose which town to start with and makes them stay there for a while. Which is a good thing because most games now just makes players start out in one big town as soon as possible, and thus, makes it quite chaotic and messy. Character models, though with limited customization still look good. The fields looks gorgeous accompanied by the day and night feature which make the visuals appealing.
 

 Sprite (Pet/Companion):
   
    - very entertaining, it interacts a lot, does and says a lot of funny stuff too
    - they guide out players and give out tips when talking to them
    - loots items and gives buffs when they are summoned
    - can craft weapons/armors/shields and can also get rare materials
    - hunts/mines the stuff materials needed for crafting
    - they can be trained to get higher level crafting equipments and hunting materials
    - crafting with your Sprite is cheaper than buying stuff

The pet will be useful in many ways but while I was playing, I find it hard to maintain the relationship with the pet. Relationship is the stat used to measure the mood of the pet. If the pets mood is low, the tasks that are given to him can fail and you can't summon it.  The mood can be raised by buying food from an in-game vendor which is expensive for low levels or from the item mall. Mood and relationship can be raised when the Sprite encounters an "Event" during its journey. Events can be bad or good, bad events lower relationship and stamina while good events does the opposite. Often, the pet gets tired and you will need it to rest. There are also items that you can buy to instatly increase its stamina/vitality, but it is costly. One must really be dedicated in taking care of a Sprite as neglect can cause you reputation points.


  Quests:

     - good source of experience
     - repeatable quests are constantly available and can help players who ran out of regular quests
     - give out rewards that are beneficial and useful

Quests are your typical kill (?) amount of monsters and talk to certain NPC quests. Sometimes mini-boss quests are given also. But this does not set them differently from other games, and this is quite dissapointing.

Here are the some of the bad points in the game so far:
   
     - character customization is very limited
     - translations are quite incomplete
     - when starting out, you will get lots of (?) items with unknown purposes for new players
     - lots of NPCs in the main towns with different purposes that can confuse new players
     - storyline of the game is hard to keep track

While here are a few more screenshots of the game.
 

The game is in its early closed beta stages and still has lots of time to improve before going to open beta. Surely this game will be a hit in the future, so watch out for it.



Overall rating: 7.5/10