Yeah, it was a pity that GKH didn't come out here. XSeed was about to launch it over here IIRC, but then VanillaWare has to focus too much attention to Dragon Crown so XSeed didn't have all of the necessary components, which was why the game's western release got cancelled.
Yeah it's a good game overall, a bit repetitive after a while. Played a few hours with the patched Japanese version, and I think I made my second party after the first one leveled too much. But the experience would have been much better if it was fully translated.
There's a similar game, from the guy who directed GHK, called Grand Kingdom
It looks a lot like GHK, and at least this one is going to be released outside of Japan.
I also heard that Vanillaware are trying to release their games for PC, on Steam. That would be pretty neat.