GrimGrimoire Review

What we all expected to happen eventually has finally happened. Sony is capitalizing on PS2 software through PSN the same way it capitalizes on PS1 games. The introduction of Only on PSN brings us GRiMgRiMoiRe (their lettering, not mine), a 2D real-time-strategy game from 2007, the later days of the PlayStation 2. It has been four years since this game debuted and if you missed it then, you can now get your grubby little hands on it for just ten dollars. How well does it hold up in this day and age?

As many of you may remember, backwards compatibility for PlayStation 2 software was removed entirely from the PS3’s list of abilities. The new slim models lack that entire ability even though the earlier fat model had partial emulation through software (it still had some special hardware to help). Enter Only on PSN and GrimGrimoire feels just like a PS2 game being emulated on the PS3 except now it will cost you at least a whole orange Hamilton per game. Of course, if you still have a hefty library of PS2 games, those will remain unplayable on the Slim PS3 for the foreseeable future. There is always HD re-releases but that is a whole other topic.

On to GrimGrimoire, it looks fairly clear and sharp in 720p. Its graphics have soft edges but they are not blurry. There are of course black bars on the sides reflecting the 4:3 presentation of the software. You can chose to stretch the image to fill the width of a 16:9 HDTV but that will just make the graphics look comically fat. Upon launching GrimGrimoire, I became mildly nostalgic after seeing the iconic PS2 software boot up logo again. Later in the game I was reminded of how different software for this generation of consoles is compared to the last. The XMB will not be available while playing this game and there is no auto-save. Any notifications such as game invites and messages will not be shown and network downloads will be paused. The lack of auto-save in last gen games means that you need to actively save your progress, constantly. The PS3 controller shuts off every time you launch GrimGrimoire just as it does with all emulated games on PS3. You never know what you will miss until you no longer have it.

One thing I feel is important to mention about this release is that it does come with a digital manual which is of very poor quality. The manual is merely a scan of the printed manual but the quality of the scan is relatively poor. Zooming into the scan is necessary as the default view was difficult to read even though I sit just a couple of feet away from my LCD. Zooming into the scan reveals a low resolution job that resulted in pixelated text which is no easier to read. The digital manual in this case is fairly useless and it is unfortunate that you cannot find a suitable replacement online should you ever need to reference it. What is the point of including a digital manual if it will be of subpar quality?

GrimGrimoire puts players in the shoes of Lillet Blan, an apprentice magician/witch/wizard at a fantastical school for such. The story is a bit like Harry Potter but far wilder and with more flamboyant character design with equally silly names to match. The school, the Tower of Silver Star, is home to a few peculiar characters. Among them is a character similar to the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz but who seems to have graduated from Cambridge. There is a girl with a talking frog on her head, an incestuous devil and several big bosomed babes. The story is a mystery that unfolds as your character Lillet is forced to relive the events of five days over and over. She retains her memories of each reiteration of events along with any new abilities. Your ultimate goal is to prevent the horrible events from happening again. Each reiteration uncovers the dark secrets within the Tower of Silver Star.

Being a fairly standard RTS, many gameplay elements will seem familiar to fans of the genre. Granted, GrimGrimoire employs a more exotic vernacular for your units. It also employs a Rochambeau element to its units. There are four schools of magic represented by Grimoires. Each Grimoire can create a portal (or rune) from which you can summon units of the same magic type. Units in your command are called familiars. Each grimoire has a mana collecting familiar that is tasked with collecting mana from the various mana crystals placed throughout the game maps. Mana harvesting familiars can only collect mana for the rune of its own magic type. Mana is used to summon additional units as well as leveling up runes in order to summon more powerful units.

There are four grimoire types: Glamour, Necromancy, Sorcery, and Alchemy. Each grimoire has five unit types, from mana harvesters to powerful summons. The rock-paper-scissors aspect of the grimoires goes like this: Glamour beats Necromancy but is beat by Alchemy; Necromancy beats Sorcery but is beat by Glamour; Sorcery beats Alchemy but is beat by Necromancy; finally, Alchemy beats Glamour but is beat by Sorcery. Units are limited by the amount of mana that is being harvested for a particular rune.

The gameplay in GrimGrimoire is an easy concept to understand but one that is difficult to use effectively for the simple clumsiness of the controls. Only units of the same type can be grouped together. The only way to group units is to press up on the directional pad to group units that are currently visible on the screen. It can be difficult to select individual units as the graphics tend to overlap often and move fairly quickly. The user interface is somewhat disjointed and counter-intuitive at times. The tutorial is not always easy to read and exotic names are thrown at you left and right.

I give GrimGrimoire’s developer, Vanillaware, credit for being so creative in the design of this game. It can be a visually enjoyable departure from the aesthetic presentation of current-gen games. I for one greatly appreciated the two-dimensional animated characters and units. The voice acting is also some of the best in the industry despite some rather strange dialogue. Musically, GrimGrimoire’s accompaniments are rich and diverse though limited in number. The music employs numerous instruments and is generally exquisite. The overall design of GrimGrimoire is colorful, detailed, and creative. There are a couple of low points in the presentation. There is really only one map in which all of the action takes place and it is a rather dull one. There also doesn’t seem to be a distinction between your units and the opponent’s units, not even a color palette variation.

Only on PSN is supposed to deliver rare PS2 games that perhaps did not get the recognition they deserved. GrimGrimoire is certainly one of those games. I think it is a great departure from the big budget games of today yet of high enough quality to be worth your ten dollars. It is not a perfect game but it definitely has a lot of character and charm. It is a different take on the RTS formula that is perhaps a little simple. There are some control issues that could have easily rendered GrimGrimoire unplayable were it a more complex game. RTS games have been notoriously difficult to pull off on consoles for the same reason. If you were curious about GrimGrimoire back in the PS2 days but for some reason it slipped your fingers, you have another chance at it. However, I do not believe GrimGrimoire is a game for the masses and that is probably why it is somewhat of an obscure title.