835 hours…

After all that time, I feel that finally my patience coming to an end, I guess I have to thank Elden Ring to help break the spell… not that the spell itself was running smooth, oh no, it was not, the cracks were all over the place.

However, a couple of days ago I did one last push in the part which I was stuck… I managed to get past it, but only because there was a way to skip the quest, by using five of a somewhat rare item, and from there I spend around two hours in a mindless back and forth doing the rest of the quest arc, until I finish the Leaders of the New World quest.

Now I find myself in a curious spot, in one hand I am curious to keep pushing forward, on the other hand a quick glance in some guides, show me that would be, due Granado Espada nature, very time-consuming… and to be fair I don’t feel like adding even more hours to this…

But there is a feeling that with might won’t take long, or maybe not, but one day, this mmo will close…GE have already outlasted several other MMOs, but the day it will come, I mean, in a way it already happened, as you remember that the 3tfun server, was closed and the one which I am now is different one…

So, while I decide upon this, I might at least share a couple of though I have with the game, mostly will expand stuff which I covered in previous entries, I will cover in topics to make it easier for me to explain the problems and for reading. When I start this I had a rather ambitious plan to talk about the game plot, I even take tons of screenshots to remember some key points, but I confess due to very weird quest structure, hitting a wall and thin patience, I am mostly like to give a short resume later as I need to analyze tons of screenshots.

Product of a Bygone Era

Granado Espada is a game from a time before many of the main concept of mmos become more standardized, this is both good and bad, as mean it was something from an era where developers were experimenting more, but also mean that a lot of modern concepts aren’t present.

The main features such as of the family system, multi control characters help the game fell unique, but also very strange and given concepts of mmos simple don’t work the way they should or are there at all.

To make thing complicated, years of development and the changing of hands behind the game, mean that mechanics are often introduced and then throw away as time passes, making the game itself a confusion of past and future systems.

The UI, tries it best to be helpful, with its own inside guides, however it is sort of deceptive: As an example, they way the UI summarize quests, only cover the major steps, which can trick you in thinking that a quest might be not that long. For context, remember the two hours I mention? In the UI it mentions I was only missing a handful of steps of that quest, while in reality, each step often branch in steps which branch in other steps and keep going for much longer that you might expect.

Even the color code for ideal quest and enemy level is strange as you can be pointed to something which it appears that you can do, but turns that no, but other times can.

Quest design itself its own mess, often, like I said, quests have way too many steps, often pointless back and forth between places.

Again, let’s back on my two hours: What I did there was often going in and out from a place called Lucifer Castle and talk to a npc, problem is, I can’t just teleport to there, I have to first go a map, which from there I have to travel another two maps to then reach the castle and talk to a npc.

To make things worst, Lucifer castle have some high level mobs which plus the Montoro´s curse mechanic which can make your characters week depending on the day of the week, can make the trip impossible, your best solution most of the time is simple run past mobs (this is true even in the days which they are supposed to be weak, at least for me).

Between this there were three main combat encounters, none of them were fun and I had to burn several Soul Crystals (item which auto resurrect your party, I had around 120 when I start, and I had around 80 by the end), there were also a handful of moments going to other places and talk to other npcs.

During all of this there were some cutscenes, which limited by the game engine and quest structure and poor localization, lost their impact or meaning, which reinforce a problem, where while sometimes GE tries to tell a story, the constraints often weaken it making it feel broken. Oh, by the way, there is no way to skip them.

To be fair, they are trying sort to fix some issues, as some patchs include change in main quest structures, such as reduced the amount of items you need or reducing enemy difficult, in fact, in the last patch, they mention adding “skips”, which I still haven’t figured what they mean, but I suspect is something they already do, where at certain quests steps, you can either do the quest, or spend family reputation or some item to skip or go to easier alternative.

Problem is, that without rewrite the whole thing (I mean both the text, design and even cutscenes, something which likely be too much work and the cost won’t be small), all they can do, with an old structure like this, is offering some skips or trivialize the content.

Autoplay does not work.

In case you wonder, how I reach the 835 hours, let me tell you, most of it was not really playing, but using the autoplay, as I explain earlier, you can leave your characters in a map, alt-tab and do something else, if you have a pet and pet food, you can even set to auto pick loot.

However, this does not work, at least not in the long run, while early on it might be a way to rise character and skills levels, as you progress, less and less this is worth, until it reach a point, that save some maps hide behind a pay wall, what you gain versus the pointless time you let the game run isn’t worth. And even the said unique maps, might not be worth due to begin overflow with people and more likely bots, that can make it impossible to take advantage of said maps.

Worst of it, I think the autoplay create a weird path of the least resistance, where is simply easier to left your characters in auto that actually playing the game, so you can sort have a lot of time but still no idea on how to play it.

Now, to make things complicated, there used to be a way, where the autoplay, sort worked: In each map, there used to be a statue, from which you get a repeatable quest, to kill X monsters, by doing it, so you gain XP cards, which are the main, and fastest, source of XP. However, this system was removed, the statue still there, but now you can no longer get XP cards… and this will become a problem which I will cover later…

One more thing, now you might be wondering, how about make a mixed team, maybe one or two high level character and a low level one? This can work, but most time, at least in my experience, it does not.

I did use this when I got access to one of the paid maps because of an event, which give some tickets to access it for a short while. There, using two of my highest level character and leaving the low level slightly behind, for a while I could level several characters, but still it was a time-consuming event which require constant checks, so I could just alt-tab for very long periods of time.

Outside that, due to how fast mobs move and attack, it is pretty hard to do it, without micromanage it and even the xp, for reasons I can’t fully figure, isn’t that worth, I tried this in a map in Viron, but unless I keep micromanaging it for very long periods of time, it wasn’t worth. Instead, strange as it to say, the most effective thing appear to be to leave the characters in lower level maps and simple auto-tab for long periods of time…

The reasoning for the autoplay system is something I feel show how much GE was a game of another era, it feels that it was something meant to both to take advantage of the three character system and address things like bots (which was at the time a huge concern and still is), but now with newer concept of idle play, which don’t require you just leave the game running for hours, feels strange. Also, autoplay does not fix or helped the bot issue, which is still a huge problem, it just makes it difficult to tell them apart, it appears, at least from what I heard, bots have features which the default autoplay does not offer… the result is maps can be filled with either bots or people, which can make some quest impossible to complete, as every spot will be filled, and they will kill everything so fast that you can’t do anything.

For those which remember, this was a huge problem for me, as I need to finish a simple quest, which require only to kill some enemies, but it takes me forever because the map was overcrowded.

Know what is strange? GE sort have a system of idle play, which have a slightly better design way as it connect some different mechanics of the game: The expedition system, where you can form team of character from your family and send them away for some rewards.

Overall is a nice idea, which combines well with the family system and giving you an incentive to have lots of characters.

But the execution is strange, you might think that such thing would be simple, but even forming the team is something which I never really figure out, because each character is given a set of theme,s and each team must have certain themes which I think change overtime, and again, while this look simple, is very strange and hard to form teams, you fill one slot and everything looks fine, now you try to fill the second slot and either don’t work or just replace the character in the first slot.

Once you manage to form a team, you can send them away, as long you have a certain amount of rare metal, each expedition does have a chance of success and if successful, you gain an item, which if you have enough you can change for a character card.

Directionless

A consequence of the above is that when you hit a wall it is very hard to figure what to do, this isn’t helped by UI and other problems.

Leveling your character and your family, is slightly smooth early on, but as you progress, it gets harder and harder. To make things complicated, your best source of XP isn’t farming (save that maps which mention, but even they aren’t that reliable), but from XP cards, so how you get them?

Here is the problem, save some quest rewards and events, there is no way. Remember I said, it used to be you could get the by doing the repeatable quest, but no longer.

Ok, I said those XP cards do exist, but I might need to be more specific on what they are and how they work: There are several types of cards, each one aiming at a certain level range (such as they might have a minimum level to be used), so from levels 1–100, finishing on veteran (the most common), expert (rare) and master (very rare). But to fully level a character you will need lots and lots of them….

As a refresher, in Granado Espada, you have 1–100 levels, from there you get promoted to Veteran, which is composed of 10 levels, past that you go to Expert and more 10 levels and from there, Master, with again, 10 levels and finish at High Master, with another 10 levels.

Now to rise your Family level, something you need to be able to use some items, you need to level several characters and I mean a lot of them. Because the Family level is decided by the combination of all characters you have.

That is the main issue which I have, right now I am at Family level 47 and have around 52 characters, several at master, three High Master and the rest around standard, veteran or expert. I just need 3 more levels to reach 50, where at last I can use some Valeron Weapon Boxes, which I got in previous events. But to get there is the problem… I need to level lots of characters…

For context, after the Leader of the New World, I got for as a reward, the Leona card, she starts at level 100, from there I upgrade her to expert, and this only give me a small percentage of xp for the family level…

For a while, my solution was simple wait events, which give special cards that allow a character to instantly level up to master, but those have been rare.

The situation on gear is even stranger, like I said earlier, most gear of the game have been replaced for the Crescemento weapons/armor, whose stats scale as you gain levels until a max point, where at maximum they reach AR/DR 32, to Constellation (33 AR/DR), Evil (34 AR/DR), Experimental (35 AR/DR) and from the Valeron (36 AR/DR) and maybe others.

So how you got them… Most by events and maybe some quest/raids/ achievement rewards, some of them came in boxes (which might require minimal family level), there is some timed stuff, like Experimental weapons/armor and other gear, which came from tickets that have a real time limit until expiration.

Outside this, you can craft them… which I think that what that game want you to do, however, the while crafting itself it is not very different from other mmos, to use it is convoluted. In essence, you need a recipe and crafting materials, so far so simple, however good luck figuring where you can get the recipe (or even knowing the recipe exist) or the materials without a database or guide, not only you have to deal with this, the amounts and rarity will be also an issue.

Now let’s suppose, you manage, you get the recipe and all materials, somehow… now you need to upgrade the weapon, and here is the problem, crafting in this game use the chance to break, and maybe you are seeing where this is going… you can have certain items which lower the chance to break, and guess where you get them… the cash shop… in fact many of the updates, which game receives are more timed additions to it (most from what I remember are either some timed promotions on crafting material and some boxes, which I never used or brother figure what is).

The somewhat result is that what you need to do, or at least I think, is that you should do several activities, such dailies, bounty hunter quests and maybe individual raids (maybe those with other players, but I never managed to do a single one) and so on…

But while it look simple in the surface, things can get both time-consuming and convoluted, like those dailies? In general, they almost don’t give you anything good, supposed you managed to do them (remember there is a limit of players that can do them), but rather you what really get our might want comes when you do them a whole number of times.

Those quest and raids, mostly give you tokens, which you can spend in stuff, but accumulate them and the item prices mean that it might take lots and lots of time.

All of this mean that while there are things you can do as you hit a wall, it all feels like joining bread crumbs toward a very vague objective that can feel very time-consuming as it means to do individual raids, dailies, let your character in auto and so on for very long periods. While this isn’t usual for a MMO in the late game reach a point like this, in GE feel this even more overstretched out.

But despite this, Granado Espada, still a pretty unique take on the MMO genre, between its visuals, which push for a more high colored fashion, the three characters you control, the whole family system, music which goes from epic to techno and beyond, even the game take on its themes, despite being a bit weird, it still feels unique.

For that would be all, next time, I will maybe, if my patience allows it, at least I can talk a bit the game main plot, I can’t promise much, as I haven’t reached some late parts of the game and I need to analize lots of screenshots...

Links to all posts:

Granado Espada - Overview (Part I)

Granado Espada - Visuals and Early Game (Part II)

Granado Espada - Issues and Bits of Progress (Part III)

Previously on Granado Espada (Part IV)

Granado Espada - Adrift (Part V)