Granado Espada

DaaayyyuummmGranado Espada, named after the famous Korean explorer Ferrucio Espada, is a soul crushing experience that left me questioning the humanity of IMC Entertainment, the game's developers. Surely no normal, fan death fearing Korean would consider creating a game this repulsive.

I kept my eyes open, searching for the tell tale sign that would bring this development studio's house of cards crumbling down. Thanks to marathon sessions of CSI:Miami and my grandmastery in forensic evaluation, the search ended in success.

While typing in information at the account creation step I came across a suspicious field asking for a number. This set off a bunch of bells, whistles, doinks, and violin screeches. The helpful engrish suggested that I enter my passport or social security number; and the final piece of the dastardly Granado puzzle fell into place.

After countless hours in the crime lab chatroom on AOL I have concluded that Granado Espada is revenge. Revenge against all you nerds stealing Korean social security numbers in hopes of getting into Korean only betas of Korean anime MMOs.

After faxing IMC Entertainment a copy of my birth certificate to ensure the highest quality in customer support, I began the task of gathering a crack squad of veteran MMO players. Sadly, almost all of them were turned off on the idea when they reached the dreaded number field during account creation. The few dedicated enough to type in a fake number made it as far as the download phase before telling me to fuck myself.

Granado Espada weighs in at a hefty 3,561.3 MB. Anime art and slutty clothes make up the bulk of it's size, edging out less needed features like quests and game play. Betrayed by my fellow basement dwellers I pushed on, and with an iron resolve I waited for the two hour long download to be complete.There's a male in this picture, can you find him?

Wanting to get the full Granado Espada experience while playing as little as possible I decided to make the most of my time and check out the forums. The horrors of the community surrounding this game became apparent on the first thread I clicked. Unreadable anime signatures stretched off into the distance as year old chat logs of random bullshit took up positions underneath, ensuring I'd wear out me mouse wheel before getting to the second page. Frantically I searched for the three criteria needed to fulfill this games community score.

Although no traces of Harry Potter spoiler whines or terrorist fan art could be found, I did find plenty of examples showcasing the talent of Granado Espada's players. The first wonderful piece of art I stumbled upon was the obligatory comic that every single video game has. No matter how shitty the game, the comic will always manage to be shittier; in the case of Granado Espada this is simply amazing.

I snooped around the art forums some more and found these two great 3D masterpieces. A trio of 17th era whores put up a valiant effort against some giant ants and a troll from Oblivion; yet in the end they are cut down by Sir Jack the Ripper and his two prehistoric horrors.

Ever since I saw the amazing 3D artwork I was itching to get in the action, and could barely hold back the joy when I logged in for the first time. At character creation I knew Granado Espada was well worth the wait. The amount of character customization alone is staggering.

Hair color, eye color, skin color, height, and hair style; I was expecting these choices since most have been standard options in every MMO since Ultima Online. Thus I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Granado Espada took a bold step forward in how players could make their characters, and removed every single option.