Video Game / Grand Summoners

"This is a story of memories and bonds.

Raktehelm, a land where Gods and Demons once fought for supremacy.
Hundreds of years have passed since the end of the Great War and humans lived in peace.
However, these days of peace will come to an abrupt end when the once sealed Demons return..."

—Excerpt from Google Play Store page.

Grand Summoners is a mobile phone RPG released for the Android and Ios in February 2018. The story revolves Rayas summoning ancient heroes in his fight against demons.

The player must make a team of four characters randomly obtained from a gacha to fight on quests that are usually made up of three sets of enemies. The party performs their normal attacks automatically on the field, and the player is allowed to trigger their special moves, Art super moves, and equipment. Besides the main story, the game also features several side missions and multiplayer components.

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This game has examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Rayas is granted his ultimate form by Goddess Iris to face Marzex at the end of Quest mode... in a cutscene. This does not affect his playable form at all, and it's in fact impossible to play as maxed-out Rayas upon first playing that mission because the item that unlocks it is only obtained in the post-game!
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • You can set skills, equipment, and Arts to be used automatically and specify certain characters' Arts to remain on manual use in case they are better performed at specific times. By default, the auto CPU will only use equips and Arts on boss fights.
  • You can use crystals to continue fights with a fully healed party upon losing but the cost surprisingly does not increase with each continued use, allowing players to spam quite a bunch to clear highly difficult quests.
  • In the main story mode, you can continue after defeat for free five times per day.
• Awesome, but Impractical: When Clyde is upgraded to 5 stars, his Art changes from charging a sword beam of fire and swinging it into the opponent to slashing three times and turning into a flame missile to send the opponent sky-high. While powerful and cool-looking, this super move is very unwieldy. Timing it to interrupt enemy Arts is terribly difficult, meaning most of the time you would be protecting the enemy from the rest of the party by pushing it away! Furthermore, you are forced to use it at point-blank range to even hit the missile, in a chaotic game where you can't directly control character movement... except its hitbox is so broken that either it will somehow still miss or let enemies slip off mid-flight. Tellingly, upgrading Clyde to Awakened level changes the super to force the missile forward and removes the pushing gimmick.
• Bald of Authority: Ganan has no hair on his head and is the Reigard branch guild master.
• Boss Banter: Some bosses talk on the status box at certain points of their fights.
• Break Meter: Bosses will be stunlocked for several seconds once their Break meter runs out. Players are encouraged to figure out to make this happen as often as possible to keep them from using their potentially deadly Arts.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Nui uses her True Art, Marionnette, she warps out of view and pops up on the interface, over the lowest Arts gauge in the team. She drops an energy ball that boosts the gauge by 100 points and warps back into the field to slash the opponent.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: You can purchase crystals with real money and use them in truckloads to bet on gacha and brute-force difficult quests. Purchased crystals count as a separate category from ones obtained in-game for the purposes of gacha betting, so you can expect it to cheat to hell and back so you'll never get good characters with free crystals after the first couple of summons.
• Color-Coded Elements: Red for fire, blue for water, green for grass, yellow/gold for light, purple for shadow
• Combination Attack: Certain Awakened characters have a Cross Art instead of a True Art. It only triggers the company of a specific character related to them.
• Continuing is Painful: Continuing after a loss costs a crystal and typically fails the second task for earning rewards for a mission. Underestimated how many crystals it would take to just get a high-level quest done with? Too bad. Several bonus missions also prevent the player from continuing after a loss.
• Crossover: Had several with a few works such as One-Punch Man, Kill la Kill, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Goblin Slayer, The Rising of the Shield Hero, and YuYu Hakusho.
• Cooking Mechanics: Different recipes can be collected for foods that can boost stats, including cheeses, croquettes, hot dogs, curries, soups, fish fillets, bread, salami, tomatoes, and salads.
• Counter-Attack: Sometimes when Nui gets hit, she'll fly off the screen and Wrap Around to slash the enemy. Also, when she uses her normal Art to summon her small fry clones, she'll poof into a doll and perform that same attack if she takes damage.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Corsair has blue hair and eyes.
• Devour the Dragon: During the final battle in chapter 10, Fongion is willing to help Celia against humanity even though her arrogance offends him. Then she backstabs him to absorb his powers and gain an One-Winged Angel form.
• Elemental Hair Colors: Corsair has blue hair and she is of the water element.
• Exact Words: The game sometimes advertises 50% greater drop rates on the characters people actually want. Of course, 1.5 times zero is still zero.
• Eyepatch of Power:
  • Ganan wears an eyepatch and is the Reigard branch guild master.
  • Nui Harime wears an eyepatch designed like a mix of Japanese characters for her first name. She might have lost her left eye to a wrinkly old man, but don't take a Humanoid Abomination like her lightly...
• Fading Away: The fate of the YuYu Hakusho heroes, or rather the clones created by Rem's alchemy, appearing during the crossover campaign I didn't die for nothing. All four disappear once they run out of the energy maintaining their existence.
• Flash Step: Ashe frequently dashes in and out of the screen. This makes party members unable to do anything while he's free to attack and use his powerful Art at his leisure, which forces you to obtain units that can stun or freeze him over and over somehow.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The game is known to frequently break and fail to download or update files for hours after connecting to its server regardless of the player's internet connection performance or available space on the phone.
  "Failed to updated the app."
• Game Plays Itself: You can set up how automatic mode works in general in the settings menu, specify whether a given character will use their Arts automatically, and toggle the mode on and off during battles. While the CPU cannot always judge the right occasion for every kind of ability, particularly when defending or when trying to interrupt boss Arts with a well-timed Break, this option is necessary because it's also difficult to determine when to manually use skills and attack equipment properly with all the chaos going on.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Saitama from One Punch Man is a playable character. He's beatable and cannot knock out opponents in a single hit, but he also doesn't react to damage at all and simply leaves while waving goodbye if he runs out of HP.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Your team is never required to have anything to do with what's going on with the story.
• Gameplay Grading: To win a given mission's four prizes, the player must clear certain tasks. For the most part, two of them require beating the mission without teammates dying or using continues and the third will be a time limit of 3 minutes.
• Gratuitous Japanese: The "Endless" Art used by Marzex and Fongion starts with a long incantation that leaves a wall of text on the screen. For whatever reason, this is left untranslated from the original Japanese in the English version of the game.
• Guest Fighter: As a Gatcha game, Grand Summoners has had many crossovers that had units playable for a limited time, including One-Punch Man, Kill la Kill, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Goblin Slayer, The Rising of the Shield Hero, and YuYu Hakusho.
• Guide Dang It!: Rainbow Gems are a rare item that is required in amounts of 30 to unlock most of the True Equips. The intended way to get them outside of timed events is to specifically Limit Break a 5-star unit for the final time with a copy of the same unit instead of the more easily obtained Unit LB Stones, but there's no in-game explanation.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: It's Rayas's weapon of choice.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • Ragsherum at Demonseal Tower Liima's final mission cannot be defeated. After a while or once you reduce his health to 1/3, he raises an almost invincible barrier (his health locks up before the barrier but can be vaguely reduced afterward) and unleashes an instant-killing super move when his Arts gauge fills up. The story continues normally once the party is defeated. Of course, when you fight him for real in the next chapter he doesn't do any of that.
  • At first, Fongion likewise stomps on the party after a short while by turning time back and performing an instakill move. This is reflected in the story, with Rayas being told to flee right after the villain uses his time powers.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Quest difficulty is indicated by a number of stars ranging from 1 to 10 (and above) as well as something like [BGN], [PRO] or [AWK] on its title. Some bonus Exploring scenarios have something like [EX] or [SPEX] instead. [SPEX Nui] is a unique example that indicates a boss who has approximately a Nuillion HP.
• Idle Animation: Everyone has a Hyperactive Sprite, but some characters have an extra touch while idling like a bored Saitama looking around and poking his ear or Nui flipping and posing like a piece of paper.
• Light Is Not Good: Nui Harime from Kill la Kill is one of the most bubbly dark-type units in the game, with her deceptively friendly appearance, pink dress, and parasol. However, the game downplays this by making the illustration of her Awakened profile card one where she's got a wide snake-like smile with Scary Teeth and a dark shapeshifting artificial limb where her left arm should be.
• Limit Break: Playable characters and bosses have a powerful Art attack that can be used once its meter completely fills up.
• Luck-Based Mission: It's a darn gacha game. Success depends on whether you get powerful characters and items from random summons or not. And don't expect to get all your cool favorite crossover characters without spending hard cash on the game...
• Luck Stat: Characters have a luck stat that increases the more times they drop on the gacha and those points can be exchanged for stat boosts on top of their overall value raising chances of item drops during quests. Have fun getting a rare top-tier character's luck even in the double digits... In fact, this causes a ton of gatekeeping in multiplayer mode. Most people only allow max luck characters in their teams and the Luck Boost from everyone choosing the same food item is preferred over mixing the effects of multiple items.
• One-Winged Angel: Out of all the antagonists with monstrous transformations, Emi stands out because hers is available to players via her Revelation skill. While transformed, her three pieces of equipment change to unique special moves, and her Arts gauge changes to the Rage gauge that bosses have.
• Our Dragons Are Different: These creatures appear as enemies and bosses, and recruitable units or sometimes can be summoned from an item.
• Pet the Dog: Nui's comment upon being enhanced in her normal form is a backhanded compliment to the player, but in her Awakened form, where she's got Scary Teeth and an Artificial Limb, it changes to genuine praise. Made ironic by how, considering the source material, she's not supposed to be in her best mood after losing an arm or two...
  "At least your meager efforts are enough to help me become even more amazing."
  "C'est magnifique!^note "Suteki suteki!" You turned out to be quite the technician."
• Play Every Day: The game contains all sorts of login bonuses and timed events to keep people playing it every day.
• Power Creep:
  • Rayas is the protagonist and Iris is the Big Good, and yet for a long time they both capped out at just level 70 instead of 90 and without a True Art super unlike all the other 5-star units you can obtain. Characters who can be more easily unlocked with paid crystals also usually have advantages like Arts with a ton of bonuses and being able to equip Rank 5 items on all three slots.
  • Eventually, Chapter 14 was added with Lv. 90 Awakened Rayas as an unlockable after the entire supporting cast had been upgraded to that class first. Even then poor Iris was left in the dust, with a Running Gag of her looming ominously in the background of the comics in the game's Twitter account promoting the new chapter.
• Power-Up Food: You can earn food items and choose a single one for each quest, boosting certain stats for its duration.
• Red Is Heroic: Rayas dresses in Red and is the main protagonist of the story.
• Set Bonus: The "True Equips" have bonus effects when used by specific characters.
• Sore Loser: The bosses who have defeat quotes usually sound regretful, except for Nui Harime who as the Super Boss of the Kill la Kill quest set throws a temper tantrum instead.
  "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"
• Timed Mission:
  • Certain missions run on a straightfowarded timer and will result in failure if it runs out. They are always very difficult and will be unbeatable if you don't figure out how to actually rack up damage in the game.
  • A recurring gimmick on bosses is for them to start spamming super moves nonstop after a certain point, turning your entire team to dust if the fight goes on any longer.
  • This is also the point of Takedown Quests, where the bosses have both bogus abilities and a billion HP. You aren't expected to win on the first time without likewise broken premium characters, so progress is saved between attempts. The Takedown level featured in Training in particular has the boss cast Millenium Curse, an unavoidable One-Hit Kill, once its Rage gauge fills up. Even if you happen to Break the boss' defense at just the right time to reset its Rage gauge, the asshole just cheats casts it again right afterward.
• Title Scream: Characters shout the game's title on the start screen, though not all of them. In the case of the Kill la Kill girls, the only one who does this is Nui, who was added several months after the other three.
• Your Size May Vary: Giant characters like Marzex can be unlocked, but they'll be downscaled to the size of normal people during gameplay.