Popular mobile game Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross now has a global release. Focusing on the original canon of the series ‘Grand Cross’ features a huge campaign, simple to complex gameplay impressive 3D graphics, and a huge roster of characters from the series to summon for.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross is a 2020 mobile strategy-RPG gacha game, it is developed and published by Netmarble and is currently available on Android and iOS devices.

Editor’s Note: Early reviewer’s access for The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross was provided by Netmarble in support of this review. Potential spoilers for the Seven Deadly Sins anime and manga may be present within this review.

The Seven Deadly Sins enters the gacha world and puts it on notice.

While the Seven Deadly Sins anime and manga series has been out for several years now I must admit I’m only recently getting into it as of Summer 2019. I had heard about the series on and off and only decided to give it a go because it appeared several times on my Netflix feed and I was happily pleased by the first couple of seasons (we won’t talk about season three). If you’re not a fan of manga, but love Seven Deadly Sins content can feel a bit scarce, but ‘Grand Cross’ has you covered if you’re looking to enjoy the franchise with a bit of down time.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross gives an unprecedented level of freedom for series fans with canon character customization and more.

THE GOOD: If you play The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross for about fifteen minutes and you have a history of anime/gacha games then you’ll probably immediately notice that the game isn’t much like its predecessors. In addition to fully animated cutscenes, the game allows customization for characters summoned. If you upgrade your character from SR or SSR to UR they usually change outfits, but in ‘Grand Cross’ if you have a favorite outfit from a previous rarity you’re more than welcome to change back to said outfit at your leisure. Speaking of I should also note that players can instantly upgrade their characters to UR at launch which is something that isn’t quite seen in the gacha genre. If you’ve been wanting to check out the anime I’d advise going against playing the game right now as the storyline mostly follows the canon including with the aforementioned animated scenes that are carbon copies of the panels/scenes from the manga and anime.

Beautiful super attack and cut scene animations puts The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross a few steps ahead of the competition.

Like most anime/manga licensed gacha games ‘Grand Cross’ follows the card battle/collector model and as previously mentioned you can upgrade your characters to the UR rarity out of box citing you have the materials necessary of course. These are usually acquired by completing quests or through daily log-in bonuses. What I love personally about ‘Grand Cross’ is that Netmarble was smart enough to launch the game with a raid and PVP mode. so multiplayer is available as soon as you feel it necessary to join in. Combat is similar to Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories in which you use a deck like battle system with attack, magic, and support type cards. You can also combine cards for much more powerful attacks and support abilities. There’s also cards which allow you to attack all enemies at once. These cards often vary in damage output. Certain areas within the game allow you to free roam the map as Meliodas which I thought was a cool unique feature for a mobile title (though some titles do allow free roaming to a degree). The campaign mode as stated before follows the canon, but it has a ton of hours put into it. I’ve heard the first chapter has about 20 hours alone, but I can’t confirm that myself as of this writing.

Team up or take on your friends in PVP and raids.

THE BAD: If you’re not too keen on in-app purchases then like most mobile games (sadly) The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross may not be for you. But the good news is that many players seem to agree that the game is very F2P (free-to-play) friendly. Of the mobile games I can compare it to in that regard I’d say it’s close to Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle which has been quite generous with gifting its players with the premium currency used for summoning and such.

Explore free roaming in The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross is an innovative licensed mobile title that shows these games can be so much more than cheap cash cows. The cash cowing has thankfully died down quite a bit over the last several years, but ‘Grand Cross’ is a great ultimate first step into the right direction with these types of titles in the future. With a very F2P and consumer friendly environment even if you aren’t particularly a fan of its source I’m sure you could gather some kind of enjoyment from it on and off.