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Japan continues to be the life support machine keeping the PlayStation Vita alive. While support outside of the console's homeland has dwindled to almost nothing, Japanese developers continue to ship major titles on the Vita, either alongside shinier PS4 versions or as Vita exclusives. Unsurprisingly, this means that some of the biggest Vita titles coming out recently have been JRPGs, and the latest one, Grand Kingdom, is no exception.

As a tactical RPG, Grand Kingdom breaks away from the norm and blends in a bunch of unique ideas together, mashing up bits of Valkyria Chronicles with pieces of Radiant Historia, bits of tabletop RPGs, a sprinkle of XCOM and even a dash of Planetside 2. While a few factors seem to be forgotten or fumbled, Grand Kingdom manages to create not just a fresh new gaming experience, but one of the most satisfying portable experiences I've had on the Vita, while also releasing on PS4.

In terms of setting, it's a basic Japanese high fantasy tale; there's dragons, mages, thieves, castles and kingdoms. While the game's story is advanced through scenes featuring numerous characters, the player themselves is a voiceless entity witnessing it all, similar to the commander from recent XCOM games. You're the boss of a rag-tag group of mercenaries trying to make a name for themselves, working with a local kingdom and rising in the ranks to take on bigger and better jobs.

Thankfully, as part of Grand Kingdom's localization, all of the DLC content released for the game in Japan is included in the Western release, which adds a whopping 36 additional chapters of story that delve into the backgrounds of the four great kingdoms present in the games online features. It's a hefty amount of extra content that makes the overall package feel a lot more complete.

Jumping into the actual game is a bit overwhelming at first. Each mission takes places on a large gameboard of tiles that you, as well as enemies, move around, one turn at a time. It's a system similar to how you navigate a dungeon RPG like Etrian Odyssey, but the board game aesthetic that it's presented in, complete with chess pieces to represent the player and the enemies, gives it a fun twist.

If you step onto the same space as an enemy, you'll engage in combat. Characters and backgrounds are rendered in a beautiful and crisp 2D art style reminiscent of Dragon's Crown, and this attention to artistic detail also carries over to cut-scenes. The combat space is a side-on view with three rows for characters to stand on and move around in, your squad being on the left while the enemy appears on the right. This is where a lot of the Valkyria Chronicles influence comes into play. Each character moves one by one, and has a movement gauge that, until emptied, allows you to move across the field anywhere you wish. Once you're in place, you can activate attacks and skills, with a staggering amount of depth.

Melee characters operate on a system where multiple skills and attacks are assigned to the circle button, with additional ones mapped to square and triangle, allowing you to chain attacks together to create combos. Don't like the way your attacks play out? Go into the party menu and you can select a character and manually change every skill assignment, and hop into a training mode to test out your new setup. I took a character that was delivering weak 3-hit combos and turned her into a 6 hit-combo beast that was killing almost everything in her path.

After a brief series of tutorial missions, you're given the ability to hire and customize your own squad of units. The game features 17 different character classes - another aspect of the game expanded by the included DLC - and characters can be given custom names, hairstyles, voices, colors, and starting stats. Later into the game, you begin getting accessories that, on top of changing stats, change a character's in-game appearance, offering even more customization. You're given a cap of 50 recruits, as well as six squads of four that you can place them in and customize as you see fit.

Each class plays in truly different ways, making you really think about the type of team composition you want. Many of the classes seemed like nothing more than gender swaps at first, though. There's the female bow-wielding Archer and the male bow-wielding Hunter, for example. Once you bring them into battle, though, you quickly learn that their skill differences make them all unique.

The only hindrances here are minor faults that lead to annoying battle errors. Healers throw potions at a strange angle that, if you're too close, will simply land on the character directly in front of you, but the angle is never accurately displayed, which can lead to plenty of mishaps in the heat of the moment. The fact that skills are mapped to a variety of buttons also means that there isn't necessarily one universal accept or cancel button in battle, which means there have been plenty of times where I tap circle to cancel, only to accidentally use up an attack.

As I said earlier, mission variety is enormous; you'll rarely do the same type of mission twice in a row. One of the most unique ones, stealth missions, require you to navigate the world-map in a puzzle-like fashion to avoid encountering any enemies at all. Another has you weaving between spots on the map that you need to defend from incoming enemy assaults. You're bound to find some missions you love and some you hate, but the amount of variety means you'll never be stuck doing something you don't enjoy.

It's impressive that the game has something like this included, but there are so many moving parts, so many menus and timers and pieces of info, that even if you thoroughly read and re-read the in-game tutorials on the mode, you're going to be wandering blindly through it for a while. If you manage to grasp the mode and it's systems, though, it's a truly bottomless part of the game that is sure to offer endless hours of gameplay.

1. Unique gameplay
2. Insane amount of customization
3. Beautiful art style

1. Overly ambitious multiplayer mode
2. So-so story
3. Minor gameplay fumbles

Grand Kingdom is one of the most interesting things I've ever had on my Vita, combining so many ideas together and somehow making them all work. Like a weird looking dish at a foreign restaurant your cousin recommended, you might doubt it can be anything other than a huge mess, but once you get a taste of it, you'll realize just how wrong you were.