Grand Chase Preview
Thursday, March 19, 2009 – by Steve Mahone, Staff Writer

Grand Chase is a party-oriented, 2D side-scrolling action RPG complete with in-game currency as well as a cash shop. The game is based on running zones with other players to either pick up the loot dropped by the enemies, or complete missions relevant to each zone. All the zones (which might have 3-9 screens) end with a boss who might drop important quest items and must be defeated to gain any experience or items from the entire zone. Basically, once you enter a zone, you have to go all the way through or else you end up with nothing. Depending on how many members you have in your party (up to a max of 4), an entire zone could only take two minutes, where if you are attempting to be a lone wolf, you might be fighting for over a half an hour. 

Mr. Noss and I started our tour diving right into the massive shop Grand Chase provides to the players. When I say there’s a lot of gear from which to choose, there’s a lot of gear from which to choose. For a free to play game, the shop is massive. It’s a bit overwhelming for an inexperienced adventurer to dive into the game and try to make sense of over 64 sets of armor, 112 weapons and 128 accessories, each complete with their own style, statistics, and attributes. I was lucky to have a GM explaining everything to me; otherwise I would have been completely lost. One of the aspects Mr. Noss made very clear was that the difference between the armor you can buy using the in-game currency (GP) and the similar armor sets one can only purchase using real world cash is negligible. Every armor, weapon, and item set is completely standardized, meaning a cash player does not have a significant advantage over a GP player. At first glance, it appears there is a substantial increase in defense between the armor you can buy with cash than you can with GP, but Mr. Noss assured me whether you are running zones or are PvPing, a GP player with more skill will always win over a cash player of the same level. A tale was then told of a specific GP player who has no cash items whatsoever who can defeat the GMs in combat. That was good to hear for those of us who want to stay competitive while maintaining our budget.

The next thing we discussed was the pet system. Typically, pets are reserved for the paying customers who are very intent upon suckling every bit of sweet nectar from the flower of the game, but this is not necessarily true in Grand Chase. In your quest, there are things called “P” points, which you are automatically rewarded simply for playing for a set period of time. These points can be spent in the “P” shop, where you can buy one of the most widely used pets by cash and GP players alike, the slime. Different pets have different abilities, both passive and active, but the only one you can get for free is the slime which has a devastating knockdown attack. In a PvP battle, once you take enough damage, you are put into a “Fatal” status, where all that separates you from certain annihilation is a single knockdown. The slime then acts as the game ender.

When equipping your weapons and armor, you will notice little holes in those slots where runes can be placed. Runes must be acquired by either creating them through obtaining enough material goods, or as a reward for completing a mission. Either way, they always start at level 0 and can be powered up indefinitely, adding buffs to your stats at every level. There’s a catch to leveling these runes and having no limit, though. Once you level your rune up to a certain level, there’s a chance the upgrade will fail and the rune will drop a level, losing power in the process. However, once it reaches level 9 and you attempt to upgrade it, there’s a potential the rune will outright break, rendering it useless and obsolete. Each attempt at a power-up requires a certain amount of gems, which are acquired from defeating baddies or completing missions. The higher the level upgrade attempt, the more gems it consumes. Mr. Noss discussed how he levels his runes up to 9 and stops, fearing he will lose the investment. Players who role the dice, though, can be greatly rewarded with a significant advantage in battle with a high powered rune.

There’s also an active tournament community throughout Grand Chase, where cash prizes are awarded for the top placers. Recently, GC finished their 5th tournament where over 200 players fought for a prize of $120 and a drawing of their character in their armor set by one of the artists of the game. If that’s not a cool prize for a hardcore gamer, I don’t know what is.