Ear to Ear Grim
GrimGrimoire is the finest real-time strategy game to ever hit consoles. Period.
Published: June 22, 2007
Though the developers managed to corral what is normally an unwieldy, over-burdened set of buttons into a remarkably elegant interface, it's not absolutely perfect. The game will auto-pause for you when you select a unit (or all of a particular unit on the screen), which helps provide a breather when massive armies start to rush your bases, but things like a waypoint system or even the ability to group together units for more coordinated raids would have helped. At it stands the hour-plus long battles are exercises in micro-management, making sure that scouts that have gone out aren't being harassed as they uncover more of the small-ish map, and coordinating attacks with multiple units and their various move speeds. Understandably, some of these more high-level features might have overwhelmed newcomers -- particularly ones that have never really given RTS games a chance -- but I think it's a fair complaint, even if it's a small one.
If there's one thing I have zero complaints about, though, it's in the visuals. The sheer amount of detail that goes into just a simple guard tower firing off a shot (in the Necromancy Grimoire's case, it's a devil girl that shakes her butt while shooting fireballs) scales out to everything else in the game. The screen-filling might of the dragons slowly pounding their way across the map, the way the characters in the game where littered with hand-drawn details like heaving chests (yes, that includes the rather ample assets of some of the female population of the school) just makes it all the more endearing.
The same goes for the audio. The voice acting in the game is pulled off fantastically, ironically fraught with less near-cringe-worthy moments than even Odin Sphere. The characters sound snooty, regal, compassionate and frightened, and the game's music is a fantastic complement to the game's Harry Potter-esque fantasy setting. Effects too are clean and solid, though it's entirely possible some will tire of hearing the same thing over and over again when selecting units. Other than that, though, my ears were treated to almost as sumptuous a feast as my eyes were.
It'd be possible to wax ecstatic about the game's balance and unit variety, but in all honesty I don't feel it's necessary. You'll get it the second you start playing around with the game's mechanics, and the way everything ramps up in pacing and challenge means that there's never really a moment where the game drops the ball in keeping you hooked. Granted, you'll probably have to have some basic predisposition to real-time strategy games in general, but the beauty of the game is that it has the potential to hook those who have never played before and, dare I say it, even PC-only purists because this isn't a PC RTS dumbed-down or retooled to get all those functions on a keyboard down to the dozen or so on the PS2 controller.
It's precisely why GrimGrimoire is a game that I can (and most emphatically do) recommend to anyone. It's just mind-bogglingly gorgeous at times, and feels like the first real honest-to-goodness RTS that's home on a console, and has style, personality and charm in spades. Go buy this game. Buy it now. Oh, but don't be surprised if you blink and your weekend disappeared.
