Aeria's Best

Sunday, June 27, 2010

This Week's Blog: Grand Fantasia

To kick off this blog, I would like to talk about Grand Fantasia and its good points:

Grand Fantasia -- in case you don't know -- is a free mmorpg developed by Easy Fun, and licensed/playable through Aeria Games. Some call it an anime mmorpg or an anime themed mmorpg but in short, it's an mmorpg.

It is not based on an anime or manga (Japanese comic) to my knowledge.

Recommended system requirements are: Pentium 4 2.6ghz or better, 1 gig of RAM, 2 gigs of HD space, and nVidia GeForce FX 5700 or ATI Radeon X 1600 or better video card. The download was completed in an hour or less (depending on your connection). Patches and updates are done speedily and for free.

I personally play on a Pentium 4 2.4ghz, 1 gig of RAM, a GeForce 7800 512MB DDR, and use a hi-speed connection. So far, no technical issues even at highest graphics settings but you can lower the in-game graphics if you feel it's a bit slow.

Starting the game is a piece of cake and introductory videos like this one are really unnecessary. 5 mins will take you through the character customization, class-type and Sprite (virtual pet) selection. GF starts you off on a few easy quests and a reasonably challenging boss battle before you get into the game proper.

After leaving you starting island and making you way to the continent, the whole world of Grand Fantasia - the land of Saphael - is open to you to start questing, grinding or just grabbing a seat near a river and enjoy the scenery.

Party quests make up the most fun parts of the game since you'll always need a few people to tackle tough gathering quests or taking down a boss monster.

PVP is quite fun and there is nothing like picking a quick fight with a passerby while waiting for the rest of your friends to show up.

What makes this mmorpg a keeper is it's stunning resemblance in quality and graphics to WoW, DOMO and other games. The free-to-play aspect is enough to enjoy the game in its entirety without going broke - although, gold is quite hard to come by, it's not impossible to rack up a good bankroll simply by grinding and raiding dungeons.

Also, the in-game help via Aeria's Game Sages (GS)and Game Masters (GM) staff makes sure you have a good time (advice, spats with other players, etc.), but over playing GF for the past 3 months,I haven't once had to call on a GM for anything. However, as an Aeria Player, GF events include "Find the GM" which will give you prizes for reaching out.

First-time MMO players should find this game easy to get into and hard to turn off.

I hope this gives you enough info to at least check out the game's homepage found at http://grandfantasia.aeriagames.com

Labels: aeria, computer game, free mmorpg, free-to-play, grand fantasia, online