Hanabee Entertainment is releasing three anime titles and three seasons of Rooster Teeth’s Red vs Blue on home video in Australia tomorrow. These are all re-releases of titles previously released by Hanabee, however the new Red vs Blue release comes in a steelbook.
- Btooom! DVD and Blu-ray Combo Pack. All 12 episodes are featured with dual language options. The on-disc extras include: “BTOOOM! Digest”, the Japanese promotional videos and TV spots and the textless opening and ending animation.
- Inu x Boku SS (Secret Service) DVD and Blu-ray Combo Pack. All 13 episodes are featured with dual language options. The textless opening and ending animations are included as on-disc extras.
- Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East on DVD and Blu-ray. All 26 episodes are featured with dual language options. The textless opening and ending animations are featured as on-disc extras.
- Red vs Blue: The Chorus Trilogy on Blu-ray only. This set comes with seasons 11-13 and 11 hours of bonus content. The on-disc extras include blooper reels, behind-the-scenes footage, audio commentary with the cast and crew, PSAs and more.
That being said, there is a lot on offer here as far as the story is concerned. You see while the main storyline for the guild does follow this path that challenges those trying to revive the once great empire, players will eventually be able to unlock the ability to explore individual storylines for each of the four warring nations and pledge their loyalty to them. This means that there is a lot of content here for players to dive into, though don’t expect anything complex.
When not at the hub where they can recruit forces, purchase equipment, and take care of various other basic functions players will be spending the majority of their time out in the field fighting enemies. The field map in Grand Kingdom is designed to be something of a board-game where the player’s unit and enemy units are similar to chess pieces that must be moved along paths. Players must move their piece one spot at a time and occasionally they can find items, treasure chests, fall into traps, or uncover hidden paths that allow them to skip past an area or sacrifice turns in an effort to take a shortcut. For almost every basic mission that isn’t simply exploration, players will be given a limited number of turns to complete an objective so whether to avoid fights and take a shortcut or simply powering through is a choice that appears fairly often.
Thanks to the seventeen classes available to the player over the course of the game, players can craft a squad that fits their play style perfectly or can change things up if a certain mission isn’t working out well for their initial set up as every class plays differently and has unique skills that may help in combat. Each of these classes can be broken down into four types, melee (where the most variety can be found), ranged, magic, and specialty units. These specialty units fit special niches such as being able to heal allies, place obstacles or platforms, and even bring a dominant force into combat at the cost of taking up the place of two units.
This is especially true with some classes that have skills that can target separate aisles that may accidentally strike one of your units or accidentally healing an enemy while also trying to heal your frontline solider with a health potion since some strike zones are poorly displayed. In fact some occasions might even call for striking your own team mate once to cause separation and then deal more damage to the enemy afterwards. The enemy is also affected by this and can attack their own units so this is something of a double edged sword that will keep players constantly keeping an eye on who will be acting next in an effort to take advantage of the battlefield layout and take out the enemy without damaging their own team.
NIS America has released this game with their own well-handled English dub and have also included the Japanese voice track for those who prefer that route. As far as the soundtrack is concerned, Grand Kingdom sports a satisfying array of tracks that fit well during battle sequences as well as a wide array of background music that plays while simply exploring the menus at the Guild base.