Grand Chase

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Grand Chase was an MMOG created by KOG Studios, which was released worldwide with several different versions. It's similar to that of Maple Story in being a 2D side scroller. The difference is that the game was room based, had 3D graphics, and produced an almost more distinctive gameplay than most other MMOs. Instead of normal character creation, players were given preset character classes, the first three being all female: Sword Knight (Elesis), which is a close-ranged character; Archer (Lire), which is pretty obvious, and a Mage (Arme), also very obvious. Other characters/classes could be unlocked. Each class starts with unlocking a specific character first, then working towards unlocking others (be warned, some of these character unlocking quests are hard - unless you buy your way through them. Same for job changes, except much more hellish).

The game played more like a console action platform game more than a traditional MMO. It was room based, meaning you join in player-created rooms and enter dungeons which play out more like stages. The objective is to defeat enemy swarms and move on to the next room, until you defeat the boss at the end. Afterward, you are awarded experience points and GP (in-game currency). Then it's off to the next place. The game also had a PVP for all those competitive players. This game pretty much broke the mold for most MMOs.

The game shut down its North American server in April 15, 2016; it was its last remaining server.

Tropes used in Grand Chase include:
  • Action Command: Rama / Deva Jin's stances and Burning Destroyer of Heaven extensions and Prime Knight Sieghart.
    • Dio, Mari, and Zero as well.
    • A special case applies for Rin: though she does have action commands, they only apply to her MP skills, and they cost one of her prayer symbols.
  • An Axe to Grind: Unlock Ryan the Elven Druid and see for yourself.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Some players insist that Samsara / Zen is actually easier than Vanessa.
  • Ascended Glitch: The many types of "stepping" techniques and the "OTTO"[1] trick are orignally glitches, but have been left in the game as they are Difficult but Awesome tricks. Stepping is allowed in tournament play, but OTTO is not.
    • A future balance patch even adds stepping to some characters that couldn't do it before! Yes, they developers are deliberately "adding a bug" on characters for Competitive Balance!
  • Attack Drone: Mari's WDW system.
  • Automatic Crossbows: Lire's second job has her dual wielding these
  • Awesome but Impractical: Level 3 special moves - you will usually get Counter Attacked and/or grabbed in between charging it up unless you run a lot.
    • The new MP capsule system, which adds items to be assigned to emote slots which allow you to quickfire skills, however, seems to have fixed this problem.
  • Awesome Yet Practical: Many new characters are seen as this. Dio, with powerful combos and some one-hit skills, all with the touch of a button!
    • Also Zero, with his "Bleeding Gash". One button, and spikes says the rest.
    • And don't forget Ley.
    • Lupus/Rufus, too. Press a button, watch things get annihilated in a hail of bullets, knife slashes, shotgun blasts, gatling gun fire, or all of them at once!
  • Badass Longcoat: Sieghart wears one as a cape in his 1st job. His 3rd job also appears to have one.
    • Until the release of her first job skill tree, Elesis is usually shown wearing one in her fourth job.
    • The Caribbean Corsair sets allow anyone to wear this.
  • Batter Up: Ryan's Skill Tree allows him to charge a powerful attack to send the opponent flying.
  • BFS: Become a Sword Master and see for yourself.
    • Sieghart's 4th Class, Prime Knight, too.
    • And now Zero has the Grandark. He can make it smaller so he can carry it on this back, though.
  • Bifurcated Weapon: Xenocider/Vanquisher/Avenger Ryan's weapon.
    • Sieghart's Fourth Job, Prime Knight, has a BFS that splits into a big sword and a smaller sword for combos.
    • Zero's improved Grandark can change form to do a lot more damage.
  • Bishonen: The guys appear as this due to the art style, but Fan Art tends to hit Ronan and Lass with this a lot.
  • Black and White Magic: Arme's main abilities.
  • Blade on a Stick: Spearman Elesis, Dragon Knight Ronan, plus Viken and Vanquisher Ryan (Xenocider/Vanquisher/Avenger Ryan has two blades on a stick), and Warlord Sieghart.
  • Blessed with Suck: Sieghart the immortal.
  • Blind Idiot Translation: The start of a Gorge of Oath dungeon stage has a particularly bad one.
  • Bloodless Carnage: Lots of weapons are sharp and some look big enough to cut a man in half, yet the game is 100% gore free, most likely to keep the age rating low.
  • Blown Across the Room: Some attacks do this, but Rune Caster Mari's Buster special does this with style.
  • Boom! Headshot!: Archer Lire's Skill Tree allows her to have this as a special move.
  • Bottomless Pits: Jump quests, anyone?
  • Bragging Rights Reward: PVP wins
  • Breather Level: The Wyrm's Maw / Ignis Mountains. In between the annoyance that is Ashtaroth and the evil that is the Altar of (im)Balance, Ignis looks positively easy in comparison.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: The Cash Shop
    • "I win, You Win"
      • Dual boxing too.
  • Cap: That 999,999 GP (and 600 items) limit can get rather annoying sometimes.
    • Some servers increased it to 2,999,999 GP (and 900 items).
    • The GP cap was increased even further with the come of the new Season. 10,000,000 GP is kinda high.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Arme can sacrifice her health for mana if you decide to unlock the skill. How useful it is depends if you're in a dungeon or in PVP mode.
    • HP potions recover more than MP potions, so it's a semi-viable quick MP gain in dungeons if you pop one after the ability.
  • Charged Attack: The skills in the game.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: Each playable character is assigned a different color, usually their hair color. Pretty much everything they wear will be that color. With some equipment sets, the only way to tell which character it is (besides looking at the weapon) is by color; this gets pretty annoying with Jin and Ryan, since the colors of many of their items are so similar (compare Jin's fiery red to Ryan's darker orange).
    • The only exceptions to the "hair-color" rule are the white-haired Lass, the blonde Lire, and the sandy-blonde Zero (their color codes are light blue, verdant green, and meadow-green respectively).
    • With 15 playable characters, similar shades are bound to happen.
  • Combo Breaker: Getting hit while charging up a spell will cause your character to lose MP and immediately hit the ground. You can use this deliberately to escape most attacks.
  • Critical Failure: Try to get a Wind Necklace or Guard Anklet from + 6 to + 9.
    • Also Runes beyond + 9.
  • Critical Existence Failure: Averted for players, as reaching 0 Hit Points puts you in Fatal and only an attack that knocks them down kills them. Played straight for mooks and bosses though.
  • Curtains Match the Window: Almost every playable character.
    • The exceptions are Lass, with white/black hair and blue eyes, Amy, with pink hair and brown eyes, Mari, who has blue and red Mismatched Eyes to go with her blue hair. Ley has pink hair with teal-green eyes, and Rin has white hair with blue eyes.
  • Degraded Boss: Orc Warrior, (Dark) Gorgos, Troll, Lich, etc.
  • Demonic Possession: You face a Brainwashed and Crazy Lass before Kaze'Aaze's true form.
    • And almost every boss in Xenia for that matter.
      • Silver Land, as well.
  • Did Not Do the Research: While people argue back and forth about character nerfing, they still haven't gotten to the fact that Athena's Sword gives you a 100 PER CENT increase in damage. The move is currently illegal in tournaments.
    • Also KoG referring to Arme's polygon-within-a-circle attack as a Magic Square. Don't know how that works.
    • And now, Duelist has two rapiers... Rapiers do not work like that, damn it!
      • If we're talking about IRL fencing, sure.
      • Rapiers don't look like that, either.
    • GCPH's naming scheme for Sieghart's weapons.
      • Also confusing "shuriken" with "kunai" in the Thief Skill Tree. And let's not start on Dio's first job name...
  • Difficult but Awesome: Combat Alchemist Arme, Prime Knight Sieghart, and Rune Caster / Ether Tech Mari.
  • Drop the Hammer: Anmon Guards.
  • Dual-Wielding: Every MP character (Arme and Mari being the glaring exceptions) has at least one dual-wielding weapon job.
    • Ronan is a strange case, as his Aegis Knight job has him use a sword and shield set and all his other jobs have him slashing with one hand and casting spells with the other.
    • Among the AP characters, so far only Lupus/Rufus Dual Wields in the normal sense. Dio is something more akin to Ronan in using his weapon in one hand and using his 'Rake Hand' to activate most of his special skills. Time will tell if Ley and Zero get to dual weild at all.
  • Elemental Powers: Arme as Warlock.
    • You can count pretty much half of the special moves the characters use.
  • Everything in the Music Room and the Piano for Last On Head: Muse's Performance Mode Level 3 special move.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Lass even lampshades it: "Besides, monsters follow us everywhere."
    • Also Elesis before facing Setesh: "Why do I have the feeling everyone here wants to kill us?"
  • Everything's Better with Penguins: The cute pet Peng Peng.
  • Fake Difficulty: Basilisk, the boss of the Temple of Fire.
    • Also some jump quests in dungeons that have them (Battle for Bermesiah / Bermesiah's Last Stand has two particularly difficult ones). Season 4 may have lowered the difficulty somewhat, but BfB/BLS is still one difficult jump quest to do.
    • Not to mention PVP's bugs prevent you from winning most of the time.
  • Fake Longevity: Back in seasons 2 and 3, Character/Job Quests required an absurd amount of time and patience. 2nd jobs required you to collect 300 WHOPPING FRAGMENTS and 10 seals with low drop rates. 3rd jobs required 50 PVP wins (it's not easy considering the conditions listed below) and other collectibles with incredibly low drop rates, such as items that can only be collected via defeating a certain boss. And if it doesn't drop, you have to go through the dungeon AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN until you can get 3/10 of those items. (At least you can sell off the items you pick up.)
    • And then there are the 3-part 4th job missions...
    • Let's not forget Elena and those low upgrade rates for necklaces and anklets; you may end up burning over a thousand gems and still not get a +9 Necklace or Anklet. There's a reason dungeon players tend to wail on Elena/ Kamiki.
    • Season 3 now features Item Crafting, which requires loads and loads of grinding. How much? One good piece of armor requires up to 420 of several types of rare drops.
    • Many quests, item drops and crafting recipes have gotten modified with the newest season. Including character and job change quests.
      • While the job quests have been made easier, the last step of the 4th Job Change quest is the real doozy - beat the Shrine of Ruin four times, exacerbated by the fact that you can only enter it twice a day - during specific times. (The 3rd job quest, meanwhile, only requires you to enter Hell's Furnace twice.)
  • Forced Level Grinding: Duh
    • Kinda subverted now. The new season made leveling up easier.
  • Fragile Speedster: Amy. Lass, especially as a Striper / Striker / Slasher (less emphasis on the "Fragile" and more on the "Speedster").
  • Game Breaking Bug: Most of these are directly caused by lag and patch errors.
    • Battle Mage's Infinite Grab
    • Blink Space
    • Sometimes your allies will appear to petrify themselves instead of doing attacks, usually due to skill tree abilities. Turned Up To Eleven with Jin's first job, where if he's not the room's host he can often be unable to deal damage with anything other than his basic combo.
  • Geometric Magic: Arme's magic circle.
  • Gender Blender Name: Lass.
  • Generic Cuteness: The characters appear mostly like this, but not to absurd levels. Arme and Amy seem to try though.
  • Giant Mook: The Mongban and variants thereof.
    • Hammermons included as well.
  • Gimmick Matches: 6 players, survival mode, Christmas Babel map.
    • "Tennis" matches, too. One variant has Warlocks batting fireballs with Sylvan Mirror, the other variant has 2 Ryan players batting a third target around and seeing how long they can keep the poor sod in the air.
  • Goomba Springboard: Sieghart's skill tree includes an ability that lets him do this to friend and foe alike. Though it's harmless on friends (while making an annoyed emoticon appear next to them) and the damage to foes is minimal, it lets him reach absurd heights, improving his overall mobility and making some jump stages more a joke than Lass, Lire or Amy does!
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: Two of Sistina Amy's special moves.
  • Guns Akimbo: Or rather, Crossbows Akimbo. Lire wields her 2nd job weapon this way.
  • The Gunslinger: Mari's second job.
    • Crossbowman Lire moves in this manner.
  • Handicapped Badass: Zero, apparently.
  • Holiday Mode: for Christmas and Halloween.
  • HP to One: Kamiki's ice attack. You will not break out of it before you're out of HP, but it can't kill you. You can actually escape this move with some HP remaining, you just have to be at a really high level to do so.
    • Fatal Fury Tempest / Evil Attack - one of Lass' Thief skills - has a 50/50 chance of causing this in PVP (or no damage), or just taking a huge chunk of your opponent's health in PVM (or just a little). That is, if you manage to actually freaking hit with it.
      • The move's Fatal effect chance has been confirmed to become 100% if the attack hits during any of the enemy's attack animations. That said, there still is the matter of actually hitting with it...
    • How can anyone forget Headshot?! And even if it doesn't fatal, you still get damage.
    • Thanatos' habit of immobilizing you and then pulling you into this black sphere, will more often than not wipe out your HP as well.
      • His Immolation also will get your HP reduced to Fatal unless you have some good status, even so that attack deals an insane amount of damage.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Sistina Amy's weapon.
    • Also Dio's weaponry.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Amy and her violins, mic stands and 'Chu-Chu' bags.
    • Not to mention Arme and her pots and lamps.
  • Instrument of Murder: Amy has this option for both 2nd and 3rd class. In one form she will play the instrument, in the other she beats up the target with it
  • I Shall Taunt You: Taunting in this game can either draw enemy attention towards you (in PVE) or reduce your opponent's MP (in PVP).
    • Amy in Dancing Mode replenishes the MP of allies close by whenever she taunts, aside from the benefits above.
    • Elesis' taunt actually has an in-game effect, lowering enemy defenses and increasing their damage.
  • Item Crafting: A new feature in Season 3.
  • It Got Worse: One of the missions for the dungeon Underpass of Lost Hope is called "It gets worse".
  • The Jimmy Hart Version: Listen to THIS and tell us that it doesn't sound like "The Raising Fighting Spirit" from Naruto.
  • Joke Character: not the usable characters themselves, but while all pets are cute, some pets tends to be subpar compared to other pets.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: Jin's FIST OF TEN THOUSAND HELLS!.
    • Among others, with his skill tree. "Dragon Squall!"
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Lass' 4th job weapon.
  • Kawaiiko: Arme (her taunt emphasizes this).
    • Aren't I cuuuuuute?
  • Large Ham: Ronan Erudon (the Magic Knight). Periodically munches on the scenery after a big boss fight. See Narm.
  • Laser Blade: BLADE SPIRIT!
    • Spearman Elesis and Warlord Sieghart's 3rd MP skill has them throwing Laser SPEAR(S) (both versions for Sieghart). Abyss Knight Ronan rapid-fires several when using Tornado Stinger, and Magic Knight Ronan's Skill Tree give him several moves that do this.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Elesis (at least in the story).
  • Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: In team mode PvP, many players ask demand for a "1v1" when their team is down to only themselves, which means their team can win if they beat the rest of the opposing team one-on-one. Reactions and thoughts vary if this is common courtesy or just people whining that their team is losing. Often results in raging and false threats of getting banned if you decide to not comply to the request, reinforcing the latter image and the view on the Fan Dumb.
  • Lickspittle: The forum's suggestion page and/or anything that seems to criticize Ntreev's performance is usually shot down by what people describe as "Hey GM, look at me!" types.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Three out of four of Elesis' jobs, if you can get the dashes correctly. (This is required for Sword Masters to overcome their speed handicap, by the way.)
    • Jin's first job is likewise extremely fast and beefy, even without using the advanced dashing techniques.
      • Sieghart's fourth job is pretty speedy and hits like a cinderblock fired out of a cannon. And this is even WITHOUT getting the timing down on on the Just Frame (think False Romantic Cancel difficult) finisher extensions on basically every one of his normal attacks AND MP Skills (normal and rage versions).
  • Living Weapon: Zero's Grandark sword is described this and even has an animated eye on it.
  • Loads and Loads of Loading: Justified in the case.
    • Almost completely eliminated since the third season.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Every character/class change quest in the game.
    • A good part of the 3rd Job quests require PVP wins.
    • All of the 4th job quests do.
    • With the Chaos update, PVP missions have been removed completely and percentage drops are limited to a single dungeon, but are still irritating.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Aegis Knight can nullify a lot of attack complete with a well timed block. At close range, it even staggers the enemy which gives you a very nice opening.
    • Ironically, Aegis Knight's shield often comes across as useless due to the strict timing and very possible latency issues. And trying to get a block with Button Mashing often ends up with you getting hit in the face. However, using the "dash guard" technique is less tricky, but much more situational and only works if a foe is charging your way.
  • Magic Knight: Ronan Erudon, AKA the job classes from the Spell Knight up to the Abyss Knight.
  • Megaton Punch: The Nephilim's Level 1 special move.
    • Xenocider / Avenger's Power Strike while in Storm Blade mode and several of Jin's moves.
    • Amy's Level 3 Fighting Mode special for both Dancer and Muse is a Megaton Kick.
    • Jin, with his Skill Tree, got a Megaton Punch/Palm on his 2nd Cash Skill. I mean, it can send the opponent to the other side of the Forgotten City PVP map!
  • Mirror Match: Some of the later bosses (and mini-bosses) use attacks from your characters. Ashtaroth from Valstrath / Mana Valley has a violet version of Ronan's Kanavan Strike, for example.
    • Taking a Lass to Kaze'aze's castle can have this against possessed Lass, although possessed Lass has hyper mobility.
  • Money for Nothing: GP items are nearly worthless if you do quests early on. They give you BETTER weapons anyway, though timed.
    • Averted now, there is currently a "Casino/Magical Forge" system, where you can get Rare/Epic parts of the set you want, by paying the double of what it costs originally.
    • Averted since Chaos. Trying your luck at Rare or Epic items in the shop costs a pretty penny and forging items past Level 60 is really costly!
  • Mons: the Pets
  • More Dakka: Crossbowman Lire.
    • Nova Lire's level 3 MP attack also qualifies.
    • As does Sistina Amy's machine gun special moves.
  • Mr. Fanservice / Ms. Fanservice: Who the Mr. or Ms. Fanservice is depends on your preferences.
  • Mutually Exclusive Powerups: Just about every ring, necklace and accessory in the game.
  • My Hero Zero: Zero.
  • Nature Hero: Ryan. Most of his quotes revolve around this.
  • Nerf: Pretty much every class in NA (after the ottofix).
  • Not Completely Useless: The Druid's Wolf Transformation is quite capable of destroying Lire players. Then there's the ability to lock a foe down by jump attacking between platforms, and you now have a Lethal Joke Character on your hands. The Skill Tree also gives the wolf form special moves.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Lass sounds Australian sometimes.
    • His 4th job has him sounding like Austin Powers with a little Aussie accent.
    • Mari slips into this from time to time. ("Nothing but fools hi-yah.")
  • Precision F-Strike: Back in Seasons 2 and 3, Elesis and Lire when they see Amy for the first time in the Temple of Cuatal / Origins.
  • Rain of Arrows: Archer (and Nova) Lire's level 2 MP attack. Arch Ranger's level 3 MP attack also qualifies.
  • Randomly Drops: Notorious for having very low drop rates for items that you need just to unlock characters. It doesn't help when the one your supposed to hunt is the Boss. Well, considering who the unlockable characters are, it's somewhat justified.
  • Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Dancer Amy's Shy Shy Punch; Sistina Amy's grab (complete with Kiai)
    • Jin's skill tree also adds the Crumbling Mountain Strike.
  • The Red Mage: Arme and Ronan.
  • Reverse Grip: Lass, as a Thief (his 1st job), wields his knives in this manner.
    • Sieghart seems to be a fan of this, too. His 1st job has him wielding a sword this way, too. Though he spins it around a lot, going from normal grip to reverse grip a lot.
  • Sequential Boss: Some of them, but the most notable is Thanatos. He houses 3 forms and with every of them his power grows, his life gets bigger, he calls help, making him a decent challenge.
  • Shout-Out: Par for the course for a game that covers most MMO, side-scrolling and adventuring game tropes.
  • Smug Snake: Lass. And he's on YOUR side.
    • His in-game taunts and win quotes have him saying things like "C'mon, newbie!" and "You're one hundred Years Too Early to fight me.". Basically, just about EVERY VOICED LINE Lass has outside of his skills make him sound very smug.
    • Lire is not so cute and innocent either. Many of her lines are smug, but her 2nd job is the worst offender. Her taunt is "You are so weak", and her victory line is "Oh no, I won."
  • Some Dexterity Required: For the more complex manouvers, such as the previously mentioned "stepping" trick, good timing and simultanious key presses are required. It can take time to get them right, but it greatly improves your maneuverbility.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Is it Renasien, Lenasien, Lenacien, or Lenasian?
  • Squishy Wizard: Arme. Amy is also one, if you don't count her defense-buffing "Metal Idol" dance.
  • Standard Status Effects: Freeze and petrify are common, poison is rarely given to enemies and only one player character has an attack that actually poisons the target, while the other is an area effect cloud that stops affecting once victims leave it.
    • Curse is a very common status effect attack given to enemies and you lose health every time you press the attack button.
    • There's the player-only affecting status that severely slows down not just movement, but all animations, making attacks super sluggish too. For some odd reason, this is called "Haste."
      • Actually, if you turn Item mode on where the status originally comes from, the effect slows down every character except for the user, giving the backwards effect that the user is moving faster than the other players (since it would obviously be harder if the player sped up in a game that requires precision)
    • Finally are attacks that completely Stun. Even Super Armored enemies who normally don't flinch from attacks. The duration tends to be extremely short.
  • Stripperiffic: Ley. So very much. Amy also qualifies in some of her official art, but she seems to be meant as more "cute" than "sexy."
    • Any character (yes, even the men) with the right choice of armor can easily be made into this.
  • Summon Magic: Arc Breath and Lord of Valhalla; some jobs' skill trees allow you to do this too.
    • Warlock Arme revolves around this with three spirits in her lamp.
    • Ronan has at least one by default in every job from his second job onward.
    • Mari can summon exploding crates, cannons, mana-restoring machines, portals, Attack Drones and a Robot Buddy.
    • And now we have Ley, the Summoner.
  • Supernatural Martial Arts: Jin's specialty.
  • Theme Naming: Ronan's four job names.
  • Trick Arrow: Lire's Skill Tree, as elements, traps and circle fields.
  • White-Haired Pretty Boy: Lass by default, all the other guys with special headgear that comes around once in a blue moon. However, they're not evil.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl: Official art of Arch Ranger makes Lire into one, and as with the above example, there are head gear available that can make any of the girls into one.
  • Wolf Man: Technically, Ryan the Druid.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: Elesis does a body slam, Lire uses a suplex, Arme uses a hurracanrana and Lass does an enzuiguri as their first job grabs.
  • You Wanna Get Sued?: Mari is probably the one who's going to get hit the most with this, if you look at her concept art.
  • Zettai Ryouiki: Some armor sets allow female characters to acquire this ratio. Amy is perhaps the closest to Grade S, as she wears her hair in Girlish Pigtails, while Mari's default outfit is a very perfect Grade A.
  1. ↑ Over The Top Offense
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