The game is surprisingly deep in terms of ways to improve your character, once you figure out all the nuances.

It's very WoW'ish (even has reputation grinds), but it manages to take many of the good features from WoW that other wow clones lack. People regularly group up for dungeons, it has an auction house (which is very active), diverse skill selections for each character, enhancement of gear (in several different ways), and other positives from WoW.

You have several starting areas you can pick from, and the various smaller towns scattered throughout the world acting as quest hubs and buy/sell points.

Various quests are all over the place providing cash/exp/rewards, standard stuff.

If you choose to grind, there are repeatable quests that give a good amount of gold/exp and possibly reputation (fame in GF) with a faction.   Unlike standard quests from other games where the drops are quest specific drops you don't get after you've gotten your 8 out of 8 boar tusks or something, in GF they are standard drops you can continue to harvest.   If a quest wants 8 boar tusks, you can stay in the same spot and farm 40 of them if you want...go back, then complete the quest 5 times immediately which is nice.

Leveling comes quite quickly for a f2p game.   This isn't like Perfect World or something where you just grind all day to hopefully get your one level that doesn't really matter much.   The pace is more akin to vanilla wow, perhaps 20% slower or so (which is ultra fast for a f2p).   You could actually make an alt in this game and progress with more than one character in a satisfying way, without locking yourself in the basement for a year.

The main way it differs is the sprite system. Instead of having to go hunt down mats to craft with, the vast majority of mats are gained by simply givig your sprite money and then they go out and get mats for you. A minute or so later they come back and say "I got x mats" or "I failed". Ditto for crafting, you don't have to go make some side trip to an anvil or something, you just tell them to make something. If they have the materials, they get to it. Some high quality crafted items require a drop from bosses, so the dungeons are regularly run to get them.

A sprite can also "salvage" magical items (Just like WoW disenchanting). Instead of the salvaged materials being used for enhancements on gear though (like disenchanting), the materials in general are used to actually make some new gears.

Sprites can also be equipped with gear for bonuses to either themselves, or to the player. If summoned, they do not fight, but stand there and provide the combat bonuses they have equipped to the player if any. This drains them of their stamina and relationship (needed for crafting) so they are mainly summoned temporarily for hard fights.

You have your main sprite, which you choose at character creation that stays with you permanently and you level it through the various activities above. It will have two different gathering abilities, and one crafting ability (i.e priest armor, warrior armor, hammer crafting etc). You pick one useful to your class of course. "wild" sprites appear as monster drops, and can be used to fill in what you are missing. If you are a warrior and your main sprite is say...warrior armor crafting, you will want to find a wild sprite that can craft a weapon type too so you can keep your weapons up to date.

Unlike WoW where the majority of gear is found as boss drops, in Grand FAntasia the majority comes from the sprite crafting system.   High quality gear DOES drop, both as rare world drops (they're even blue, like WoW =P) or from bosses, but at least while leveling so far my stuff is mainly crafted through the sprite.

As for classes, you pick from the usual Priest, Warrior, Ranger, Mage archetypes.    

Priests can become Clerics (Standard healers with buffs, direct heals etc) or Sages (They're like WoW Druids, can tank, heal, or dps via changing forms)

Warriors become Paladins (Sword and board tanks with some heals and general tanking tools) or Berserkers (Standard Warrior DPS)

I forget the proper names for the Ranger types, but one becomes a long ranged attacker (Think Hunter), or stealthy melee type (Think Rogue)

Mages become Wizards, standard magical dps stuff...or necromancers which are the pet users.

I've been playing for a few days and would definitely recommend it. When you look at the screenshots, it at first appears to be just another cutesy looking MMO. Once you get going for a while though, you realize the game really has a great deal to it for long term play.

It manages to take a lot of positives from WoW without appearing second rate while doing so, while also adding quite a few nuances of its own.   Easily the most well done fantasy mmorpg from aeriagames.
 

 I would totally agree with this review i just downloaded the game a few days ago. Im loving the game so far and i think it has surprising depth for an under hyped free to play mmo. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is looking from an mmo with a very worth while crafting system.

Excellent review!

 I finally played the game it was pretty good but...... kinda confusing aswell. They lost me with all the spirit talk, but I'm sure it may just take awhile to get used to.  Great review for a good game. 

Great review and excellent explanation:)

10/10 haha:) Grand Fantasia is one beautiful game!!

Greetz

This game is amazing. I just started playing for it a second time and it blow's me away. I first played this game in open beta and i loved it back than. I played it for about 6 months and than i quit and came back about a week ago! haha

This game has so much depth to it it's out of control. Just on the sprites alone you'll get hours and hours of gameplay. You can actually make money off the AH in this game which is very suprising in a F2P MMo. You can find a party if you really need it or if your good enough to make some money and gear your character you can solo a lot of it. I have a 39 pally and a 35 sin and i'm loving it. The game has so much to offer if your willing to go find it. I think they did the enviroments beautifully. I play on a 28'' wide screen 1080p HDMI monitor so it looks pretty awesome on my side. For anime style graphics they did a very good job. The animations are so smooth, it makes the grinding very fun. They have a good balance of quest and the PvP seems pretty solid. You don't have pay to win. Everything you need to be pro can be bought with ingame money! When you can still find a game like that is rare these days so i'm glad that GF is keeping that up. They also don't recycle mobs too much. There's new mobs every zone's that's refreshing(when PW first came out they were all the same XD)to see.

This game has a lot to offer someone who is into mmo's but can't put in that die hard time that they would like to. I would suggest this game to any mmo fan out there. You have to try it at least once!

-Fakie

Too bad the publisher is a known money hungry figure in the gaming industry, you cannot craft anything without paying cash. Not as bad as FlyFF though . . .