Gran Saga Details World, Combat and More in new Trailer

January just finished, but already this year is looking exciting! I just finished videos on New World, Temtem, Lost Ark, Genshin Impact, Phantasy Star Online 2 and Project TL, and already we’re moving on to Gran Saga!
Before we get into this though, let me quickly preface this by stating that while yes, the bottom of the trailer states it’s mobile footage, Gran Saga is fully cross-play compatible, meaning it’ll also be releasing on PC and possibly consoles.
Now at the end of January, NPIXEL, which had only revealed a full CG trailer up until that point, finally showcased some gameplay from Gran Saga, and I’m going to be the first to admit.. it looks pretty damn good. Like.. really, really damn good.
Perhaps even better than Genshin Impact, depending on whether or not you prefer cuter characters or more mature ones.

The game gives us the first glimpse of the open world, along with a lot of the environments found within it. And holy crap the game looks ridiculous. Not only the world, but we also get a small glimpse of some of the instanced combat in the form of dungeons.
We get a look at the action combat, which looks incredible, actually. The combination of special effects and fast-paced combat looks like it could be somewhere between Black Desert and KurtzPel.
Or, well, okay, the combat looks much more like a Tales of game in terms of gameplay. Not only combat, but the graphical style as well. I daresay that Gran Saga and Blue Protocol could be the two best looking Anime MMORPGs coming this year.
One thing that interested me though was the fact that we saw a variety of different characters.. actual characters, granted with different outfits, and with different classes, but.. still, characters as opposed to characters we create ourselves.
Which leads me to my biggest concern while watching the trailer: And that is that the game is going to end up locking us into playing as pre-determined, pre-set heroes – which will likely be gender locked and class locked as opposed to allowing us to play what we want without restriction.

This is one of the things I hate the most about South Korean MMOs: Either gender locking classes, or more recently, locking classes behind “characters,” that you play as as opposed to creating. Now don’t get me wrong.
The characters themselves look incredibly detailed, and they all look incredible.
But even so, when I play an MMO, when I decided to jump into a virtual world I want to have the ability to create my character on my own – it’s just something that I find is necessary in an MMO. Otherwise you have a sense of.. disconnection.
But then singleplayer games don’t feel that way, so honestly… I dunno. Maybe it’s just the MMO genre. Then again, NPIXEL really haven’t revealed much to us thus far.
We know that the game is supposed to be open-world, but then again at the same time, we see some form of overworld-map that you look to be traversing like the older Final Fantasy games for the PS1.
Which begs the question.. if that’s one of the methods of exploration, then how exactly are we going to come across other players? Is the overworld instanced? As in, are the zones themselves segregated kind of in the vein of Final Fantasy XIV or Blade & Soul?
Regardless, other than the world we know the game is supposed to feature a heavy amount of storytelling, which if you watched the first teaser you’d already have been aware of. I’m a fan of story in my MMOs though so I don’t feel this is a negative.
One interesting thing worth noting is that NPIXEL have stated that they aim to do things a little different.. they don’t want to focus their game on vertical progression, instead, they want players to find their own unique play-style.
I’m not entirely certain what this means – I know that there are supposed to be a plethora of different Gran Weapons, each allowing you to have an entirely different play-style.
However, not featuring vertical progression would mean a lack of levels and a lack of gear-progression, right? There would be a single, finite set of gear, skill points and… then what?

Now as I mentioned earlier, Gran Saga is going to be completely cross-play compatible. What this means, for players that have never played a cross-platform game before is that while you can play on PCs, you’ll also be able to play on mobile devices.
Whether you can play the same characters on both devices remains to be seen.

Honestly, I’m pretty excited for Gran Saga. NPIXEL are known for their mobile game Seven Knights – which honestly I never played so I can’t really elaborate on.
However, recently they received over $25 million dollars worth of funding to grow their operations from a mobile developer to an actual, full-fledged game developer.
Their goal is to transition from the mobile market and develop MMORPGs for both platforms – something I believe is actually going to prove quite fruitful.
The mobile market right now is booming, and by developing games for both PC and mobile seems the direction South Korea is going. It, after all, allows for developers to tap in to two separate markets of players.
Now, Gran Saga itself is being built on Unreal Engine 4 and you can tell. The game looks beautiful.
NPIXEL have also made the claim that the game will feature “console level graphics” and “epic narratives,” which honestly, yeah, I already touched on the graphics, and.. I guess we’ll see how the narrative plays out.
I’ve played my fair share of South Korean MMOs and I can safely say.. I’ve never been impressed by the story- okay, actually that’s a lie. Blade & Soul was pretty good. Its story, anyway.

And.. yeah, that’s pretty much all I wanted to say.
The game looks really good, there’s a brand new trailer out right now, which honestly is what you’ve been witnessing play out in the background, and I hope you’re all as excited as I am. More MMORPGs is never a bad thing!
If you’re looking for more info on Gran Saga, more in-depth info on the game and its features, check out my last 2 videos. There should be plenty there to satiate your thirst.