Ear to Ear Grim
GrimGrimoire is the finest real-time strategy game to ever hit consoles. Period.
Published: June 22, 2007
Yummina hummina. After getting an ocular overdose with Odin Sphere, I wasn't sure I could be blown away by 2D art again. Vanillaware's attention to detail in their characters was nothing short of a sprite-based revolution, but then I remembered that we'd actually previewed their other game, GrimGrimoire, a while back and I'd remembered it looking pretty damn good. Well congrats, Vanillaware, in two games, you've spoiled me forever. GrimGrimoire is every bit as beautiful as Odin Sphere, and what's more, it's a completely different style of game, attacking the previously painful realm of a console real-time strategy game with the same kind of visual aplomb and interesting storytelling that made their other release so intoxicating.
At the core of GrimGrimoire's appeal is two things: a storyline and characters that are immediately arresting (who doesn't like a little time travel in their storybook fables?), and a simple rock/paper/scissors approach to every single unit in the game. Given that leading lady Lillet Blan manages to collect twelve whole tomes that let her command a small armada of units, it's impressive that every one of them serves a purpose, trouncing one type of magic but serving as a whipping post to the other schools.
Glamour beats Necromancy beats Sorcery beats Alchemy, and throughout the game's cyclical storyline involving an escaped demonic baddie that literally kills everyone in the magic school where Lillet is matriculating, you're slowly feed in more types of magic, and more units in each discipline. By the end of the game's 20 or so hours of near-constant dueling, you'll have access to an incredibly eclectic group of combatants and resource miners -- and better still you'll know exactly how to use them, what they're weak against and how best to attack a given situation.
This also means that unlike a lot of RTS games, the strategy is in building well-rounded waves of attack. Some of your units can fly, some of them move faster than others, but every single one, right down to the massive dragons that cost an arm and a leg and take ages to coax from their eggs, has a weakness that must be counter-balanced with more units. Dragons can be put to sleep with a single move from black cats, but they in turn can be offed pretty quickly by some of your ranged attackers. Everything from range to movement speed was considered when building units, and with the exception of perhaps the defensive emplacements like turrets and mana (the game's unit currency) miners, there's no real overlap between them. Moreover, even when there IS overlap, each has their particular affinities and weaknesses.
And so, as Lillet goes through her five day journey multiple times and the game purposefully, knowingly messes with your suspicions about who actually loosed the castle-destroying monstrosity on everyone, what was once unfamiliar becomes stocked knowledge and it's an amazingly powerful tool to pull you into the story. Better still, the dialogue that's handled between Lillet's growing stable of information on the people in the castle and their interactions with her as if it's the first time they've met is done wonderfully. Every part of the way Vanillaware and NIS America's localization team introduce you to more of the world is done masterfully.
Unfortunately, if one complaint can be lodged against the game, it's that all that time spent going back to the beginning to piece together the whodunit nature of the storyline also restricts how much of that beautifully constructed world you'll see. Lillet really doesn't deviate too much from the initial tower battles that she's initially introduced to, and though the actual characters are interesting, their inevitable battles (often a "test" to see how much this supposed newcomer knows about the schools of magic) start to blend together into a haze of over-familiarity. Does that mean the game starts to drag out too long by the end? Nope, Vanillaware seemed to know just when to end it all, but that doesn't mean you won't get a little tired of seeing the same corridors and staircases.
At the core of GrimGrimoire's appeal is two things: a storyline and characters that are immediately arresting (who doesn't like a little time travel in their storybook fables?), and a simple rock/paper/scissors approach to every single unit in the game. Given that leading lady Lillet Blan manages to collect twelve whole tomes that let her command a small armada of units, it's impressive that every one of them serves a purpose, trouncing one type of magic but serving as a whipping post to the other schools.
Glamour beats Necromancy beats Sorcery beats Alchemy, and throughout the game's cyclical storyline involving an escaped demonic baddie that literally kills everyone in the magic school where Lillet is matriculating, you're slowly feed in more types of magic, and more units in each discipline. By the end of the game's 20 or so hours of near-constant dueling, you'll have access to an incredibly eclectic group of combatants and resource miners -- and better still you'll know exactly how to use them, what they're weak against and how best to attack a given situation.
This also means that unlike a lot of RTS games, the strategy is in building well-rounded waves of attack. Some of your units can fly, some of them move faster than others, but every single one, right down to the massive dragons that cost an arm and a leg and take ages to coax from their eggs, has a weakness that must be counter-balanced with more units. Dragons can be put to sleep with a single move from black cats, but they in turn can be offed pretty quickly by some of your ranged attackers. Everything from range to movement speed was considered when building units, and with the exception of perhaps the defensive emplacements like turrets and mana (the game's unit currency) miners, there's no real overlap between them. Moreover, even when there IS overlap, each has their particular affinities and weaknesses.
And so, as Lillet goes through her five day journey multiple times and the game purposefully, knowingly messes with your suspicions about who actually loosed the castle-destroying monstrosity on everyone, what was once unfamiliar becomes stocked knowledge and it's an amazingly powerful tool to pull you into the story. Better still, the dialogue that's handled between Lillet's growing stable of information on the people in the castle and their interactions with her as if it's the first time they've met is done wonderfully. Every part of the way Vanillaware and NIS America's localization team introduce you to more of the world is done masterfully.
Unfortunately, if one complaint can be lodged against the game, it's that all that time spent going back to the beginning to piece together the whodunit nature of the storyline also restricts how much of that beautifully constructed world you'll see. Lillet really doesn't deviate too much from the initial tower battles that she's initially introduced to, and though the actual characters are interesting, their inevitable battles (often a "test" to see how much this supposed newcomer knows about the schools of magic) start to blend together into a haze of over-familiarity. Does that mean the game starts to drag out too long by the end? Nope, Vanillaware seemed to know just when to end it all, but that doesn't mean you won't get a little tired of seeing the same corridors and staircases.
