Gran Saga is a mobile anime MMORPG that combines character collection, gacha mechanics, and epic visuals in a fantasy world.. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Gran Saga Review Overview
What is Gran Saga?
Gran Saga’s tale is set on the mystical lands of Ethprozen, a land blessed by the goddess’ protection where many races live in peace. However, the Black Dragon appeared to challenge the long period of order that the world enjoyed. It beckoned a dark army to shake the foundations of the land and torment its citizens.
Gran Saga features:
⚫︎ Semi open-world exploration
⚫︎ Real-time combat
⚫︎ Companion system
⚫︎ Co-op gameplay
⚫︎ PvP arena
⚫︎ Character customization
⚫︎ Mounts and pets
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Gran Saga's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Epic |
 Google Play |
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| Free-to-Play | |||||
Gran Saga Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Requires Little Attention Audiovisually Gorgeous Free Characters Shockingly Large Maps |
Hard to Build a Single Character A Game Without Much Gameplay The Story’s Just A List of Chores Exploration Isn't Very Rewarding |
Gran Saga Overall Score - 72/100
Gran Saga impresses with stunning visuals and immersive audio, but falls short in storytelling and gameplay. The story feels like an afterthought, with minimal buildup and character depth, while gameplay relies heavily on autopilot, letting the AI handle most battles and quests. Despite this, Gran Saga offers decent value with a lenient monetization system: additional characters are unlocked for free, and while gacha pulls are focused on equipment, each character remains viable without maxed-out gear.
Gran Saga Story - 5/10
Quite frankly, Gran Saga's story feels like content shoehorned into the game just for the sake of giving players something to chew on. It’s not that it’s a bad story; it’s just delivered in the most lackluster way possible. There’s barely any buildup to major events, the main quest feels like a long string of chores, and there’s a notable lack of well-needed fluff to flesh out the characters unless you expressly go out of your way to view these scenes.
Gran Saga Gameplay - 5/10
I’ll preface this section with a single statement: you can leave the vast majority of this game to its autopilot function. In other words, taken to the extreme, Gran Saga’s “gameplay” is pulling its gacha, upgrading your gear, and watching the AI complete every fight or quest for you. Honestly, its only real saving grace as a “game” is that it allows you to grind without much interaction.
Gran Saga Visuals - 9/10
Despite its age, Gran Saga remains one of the prettiest mobile cross-platform games on the market. This applies not only to its gorgeous character models and stage designs, but also to the artwork and special effects. Its only real visual drawbacks are its decision to use rather cheap-looking visual novel-style dialogues and the intrusive UI that fills almost half of the screen.
Gran Saga Audio - 9/10
Hard-hitting sound effects, awesome voice acting, immersive background music—Gran Saga’s audio has it all. Yes, the voice acting doesn’t encompass every single piece of dialogue, but that doesn’t hurt the experience at all. Using earphones is highly recommended, though, as the ambient music does tend to get drowned out by background noise of real life.
Gran Saga Value for Money - 8/10
Ignoring the fact that the game constantly tries to push you toward its cash shop, Gran Saga's monetization is actually quite nice and lenient. First of all, additional characters in this game are completely free. You simply need to complete some chores to unlock them and add them to your party. This game does have gacha, though, and what you roll for are Gran Weapons, Artifacts, and Moonstones, which function as major equipment. Fortunately, every character is still serviceable even if you don’t fill those out.
Gran Saga Review: Past its Prime
Oh, man. The name Gran Saga takes me back. I remember it was part of a set of “highly-anticipated” mobile anime MMOs back in 2021, along with Tower of Fantasy. However, unlike the latter, it didn’t get a global release alongside its Korean launch in January 2021 until much, much later. Specifically, just yesterday, on November 6, 2024.
In other words, this game arrived for the English-speaking world after almost four years of waiting. Unfortunately, we’re not in the business of simply going “finally!” and enjoying the game. Genshin Impact, for example, is showing blatant signs of its age after over four years without the fresh coat of paint its older sister, Honkai Impact 3rd, enjoyed.
So, does Gran Saga, a veritably “new game” from the early 2020s, still have what it takes to compete against its much younger peers? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for.
A Feast for the Eyes and Ears
There is no doubt in my mind that Gran Saga’s audiovisuals are its main attraction. Despite its age, it still looks and sounds absolutely stunning. In fact, only a few mobile games, including Zenless Zone Zero and Wuthering Waves, could compete with it, in my opinion. Everything else settled for something that looks nice in order to focus on gameplay elements.
In other words, this would have definitely been a major point of contention a few years ago, when the best-looking mobile action games we had were Genshin Impact and Punishing Gray Raven, the latter of which wasn’t even available on PC until recently.
I mean, just take a look at those screenshots. The graphics still look like something that would make your brand new 2024 gaming smartphone sweat profusely, the environments seem like they were pulled straight out of a high-budget JRPG, and its rendered cutscenes have more life in them than the vast majority of middle-of-the-pack anime on the market.
On the other hand, it’s not like sound effects have made any gigantic strides on the mobile side. That doesn’t mean Gran Saga’s audio is dissatisfying in any way, though; it just means that it’s just as solid as more recent games in its ability to deliver a nice punch to any scene, combat or otherwise.
Heck, every character can even be customized to your liking, with different costumes, hairstyles, and hats!
The Story’s so Fast You’ll Barely See Anything
Now, I understand that there are different types of effective plot diagrams. We have the classic Freytag’s Pyramid, which is what you typically learn in school, the action-packed Fichtean Curve, and my personal favorite as a fiction writer, the Hero’s Journey (which is a circle).
Anyway, you can relate plot diagrams to the speed of a car. Typically, we start at the slowest speed and gradually accelerate toward the many climaxes of a long-winded story, slowing down slightly after every small conclusion. It allows the reader to have some time to digest what they learned and to carry them comfortably to the next story arc.
That’s not what Gran Saga does, though.
Have you heard the phrase “that went from zero to sixty real quick”? It describes an abrupt change in pace or setting, which is already jarring on its own. In Gran Saga’s case, though, the story basically skips zero and cruises at sixty all the time. Everything in this game happens so quickly that it’s hard to absorb any of the details, including what passes as its “immersive writing.” As a consequence, despite spending almost half a day going through its story, you still may have no understanding of the game’s main conflicts, the world it’s set in, or even the characters that journey alongside you.
—Which is a shame because Gran Saga’s story does have potential to be a nail-biter.
Gacha-Free Character Collection!
Fortunately, there’s at least one way to connect with the game’s characters in a way that its main story simply cannot provide; by talking to them at the Knight’s Hall or playing their unique questline.
Now, you might be wondering, doesn’t that mean you’ll have to get the character in order to watch their stories? That’s true. However, unlike its many, many peers, the characters in Gran Saga can be obtained without paying a dime or pulling the gacha.
Yes, you heard that right. Characters, or “knights” in Gran Saga, are essentially free! So, what do you have to gacha for, then? Well, they don’t exactly come with all their gear, so you’ll have to gacha for that. In a way, this is actually more difficult to accomplish due to the number of things you need to pull to fully deck out your knight.
Each character has four Gran Weapon slots, four Artifact slots, and four Moonstone slots. That means you’ll have to pull four of each to equip, which means that you’ll actually have to spend more to gear your knight. And while there are some Gran Weapons that can be obtained for free or by exchanging currency you can collect, these are scarce and cannot keep up with the growing requirements of your team.
Fortunately, Artifacts and Moonstones can be shared. But that doesn’t apply to Gran Weapons, which basically decide what abilities your knights can have and can only be equipped by specific characters. So, for example, if you really like to use Quyi but keep getting Gran Weapons for Wyin, then tough luck.
This Game Has Barely Any Gameplay
The biggest issue with Gran Saga, which may be a dealbreaker for a significant number of prospective players, is the game’s excessive hands-free support. You can entirely leave actually playing the game to its acceptably competent autopilot and literally just watch things unfold from a distance.
Sure, you can turn the autopilot off and get your fingers dirty, but since the autopilot is more than enough to clear entire dungeons by itself, why even bother? If anything, you’ll probably only find yourself having to take control of its combat in PvP and Raid content, which the game thankfully has in abundance.
Other than that, what else is left to play, then? Well, you can upgrade your characters, pull on the gacha, read the terribly-paced story, and ogle the packages in the game’s cash shop. Not a very engaging time, if I may be so humble.
The Maps Are Big but Empty
I know that having a big map can be a bragging point, sure. There's a lot of room to maneuver, and considering that Gran Saga is an MMO, it allows for dozens of players to coexist without merging into a strange amalgamation of pixels. However, this loses its appeal when there’s practically nothing to discover around you. Like, there's no treasure chests, hidden areas are useless, and everything else is already marked down by objectives or aren't worth walking to.
On top of that, the vast majority of enemies are non-aggressive. They're more than happy to share their space with you as long as you don’t draw their attention. For a game like Gran Saga, where enemies roam the field in large numbers at any given time, it makes the monster-infested landscape feel more like an aesthetic choice than a way to provide suspense or a sense of constant danger.
Honestly, more often than not, I feel like running around the game’s maps, especially when my destination is a thousand meters or so away, is a waste of time. There's not much point to looking around to admire the view when there's nothing else to see other than that. If the game used hub-based zones where you could enter a destination’s area directly, it would address the long periods of dead air that come from watching the autopilot run to your objective. At the very least, the game could have been more generous with fast travel points, right?
Is Gran Saga Worth It?
As a Casual MMO, Sure
You can liken Gran Saga to a very pretty vintage car. It may still be competitive in the looks department, but the years have certainly caused it to lose a few horses in its engine. Especially nowadays, when we have an abundance of engaging mobile games across various genres, Gran Saga will struggle to compete with its younger peers.
On the other hand, if you’re specifically looking for an MMO that doesn’t demand much of your time, then Gran Saga still fills that niche perfectly. Heck, if you have a group of friends with the same preferences, then it’s entirely possible—and even likely—that you’ll enjoy everything the game has to offer.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epic |
Google Play |
||||
| Free-to-Play | |||||
Gran Saga FAQ
Is Gran Saga cross-play compatible between mobile and PC?
Yes! However, it will require binding your account, which may still be faulty once this review is released.
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Gran Saga Product Information
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| Title | GRAN SAGA |
|---|---|
| Release Date | November 6, 2024 |
| Developer | NPIXEL |
| Publisher | NPIXEL |
| Supported Platforms | Mobile, PC |
| Genre | RPG |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | TBA |
| Official Website | Gran Saga Global Website |
