You can easily be playing this for hours and hours non-stop.
Grimoire tells a tale around a boy named Luso, spending his last day of school before summer and ends up cleaning up the Library. While he is cleaning up he finds an ancient text book with no pages that magically transports him to the world of Ivalice. You are sort of thinking you've seen this before in other films and games where the charcter gets sucked into anathor and finding your way home. When Luso enters the world of Ivalice you'll meet a clan leader called Cid who becomes your mentor and helps you out on your quest. During the game your in a team is called Gully which you command and control, you'll also meet some reconizable charcters like Vaan and Penelo from Final Fantasy 12 who help you out later on in the game.
Gameplay= Through out the game all of your quests you apply are in pubs and pay a small fee before setting out on your quest. During the game you are selecting members to join your clan and you can also switch jobs that have different abilities from other jobs. There are different races like Hume, Viera, Moogles or Bangaas and many more which are not part of the story but eqiuping then with the right can get battles done nice and quick. You are sort of thinking of a chess-strategy game where you can only move one or more steps and attacking your enemies. There is weak stylus controls on the touch scren you'll be using the directional buttons more then the sytlus. Tactics can be abit frustrationing with its law which you'll have to put up with through out the whole game, if you break the law the upper screen will change to the screen pictured jail and if your charcters get KO'd you can't bring them back. At the end of each battle you'll be rewarded with new items if your charcters do not break the law or all your members are alive. You can easily be on this game for hours and not caring about anything esle around. You can also buy and sell items, there is one called Bazaar where can mix items togethor and make new items which could come in handy for when ever.
Graphics and Sound= Grimoire has clear 2D graphics on both screens that affects your unit's grid-based movement area. On the top screen your seeing your charcters seeing who turn is it next to move and viewing enemies strenghs and weakness. The bottom screenis your main view of the screen deciding on where your charcters are going to move or to attack from the front or behind enemies. For most Tactic fans the graphics are abit brighter and improved abit from the GBA version if you have played it. There is not much of CGI cutscenes like you would see in other RPG games but has alot of text and dialog which you'll probably read or skip the texted scenes and get the game done, but don't rush it has a great story.
Good line of music through out the game some you would reconize from Final Fantasy 12 but remixed in a different way. The composer Hitoshi Sakimoto who worked on other games in the series and recycled several themes from previous Ivalice games. Not much on voicing mostly hearing charcters who get KO'd or attack moves from your charcters or enemies attacks.
Overall= Quite simply a game really worth playing Square Enix has putten a few surprises including a min game where can bid on lands like an auction selling itmes to the highest bidder by useing Clan points. There is also Wireless Multi-Card play where you can trade items with other players who have got a copy of Grimoire and playing this game on a higher difficulty setting. You can easily play through this game more then 75 hours and completing 400 quests on normal. But the first 10 or 20 hours you'll master the basic abilities and unlocking new jobs and hiring more members to your clan. For most fans will enjoy Grimoire alot but for other people it may not be your cup of tea.