A real time strategy on a console with all new twists. A great storyline with fun characters make this game lots of fun.
As you start the game you Lillet Blan is joining a school that teaches the mysteries and wonders of magic. The head of the school Gammel Dore is a wise old mage who wishes only to help other but he seems to have secrets of his own. When you first arrive he welcomes you to the school and begins to teach you the basics of magic and the use of Grimoires which are magical tomes. As you venture through your new and strange school you meet many strange teachers including a demon who by mysterious circumstances teaches at the school also a professor who is cursed in the shape of a lion. As you progress with your training you learn of a evil magician who once used this school as his tower and that he is still sealed inside somewhere deep within it. Early on while you are still training and not to aware of everything that goes on in the school someone releases this evil mage and he wreaks havoc on the tower killing all but you.
Although right before he is going to do you in as well the bell tower rings and you wake up in your bed and everything seemed to have restarted back to the first day you arrived. Living in this mysterious loop of time you try to further find out why time is looping and what is going on in the school and further get intertwined into the art of using Grimoires and you learn more of the students and teachers showing bit by bit the mysteries of the school you were unaware of.
The storyline of GrimGrimoire is very well thought out and although it happens over a small amount of time the game is 12-15 hours long. The real great things about the story of this game is the fact that all of the characters are very well made and each have many mysteries to learn about them. The character development makes you become much more attached to the storyline and curious to what will happen next in the school. Graphically it isn’t very impressive now that I have stated this I will tell you that I like it’s graphics. Now if you are confused and aren’t familiar with NIS they use a lot of hand drawn sprites and very old school graphics on purpose to give the game a different feel that the average game of the next-gen graphics era we have arrived in.
In GrimGrimoire there are four different types of magic you can use sorcery, necromancy, alchemy, and glamour all have a strength and a weakness amoung the four. You do battle with books called Grimoires which allow you to summon magical runes, to do this you much have a sufficient amount of mana. When you begin a battle you either start with or must create runes, doing so will allow you to make units, upgrade your runes giving your units new abilities, and also runes act as a point where your mana gatherers can dump off the mana they have gathered.
There are many different types of creatures but there is one massive difference between them, which is if they are astral or normal. Dependent on which type a foe is can be extremely important different units do large damage against normal units but little to no damage against astrals as well as the other way around. Due to this you must plan ahead with assaults otherwise if you are countered with your opposite you may be destroyed without putting up any fight. One big difference between GrimGrimoire and most RTSs is the fact that the map is 2D you must climb ladders to go up higher in the map, which makes most maps fairly small and due to the slow movement of some units is helpful. There are basically 4 types on units when you get down to basics units that hurt astrals a lot, units that hurt normals a lot, mage units used for there magic, and large units that cost more mana to create but are far more useful in most situations. Using these different types of units to give yourself the advantage in battle is the strategy to winning in GrimGrimoire.
The music of the game is great, a very complimenting soundtrack can add a lot to a game especially an RTS where you spend a lot of time on missions at times. I began cautious when I first wanted to play GrimGrimoire due to it first of all being a console RTS which never works well and also because it is a RTS made by a great RPG company who has never made one before yet playing it turned me around. Now that I have played through the game and played through the storyline I am very impressed and almost astounded that NIS was able to change an RTS into such a different game. I would rate GrimGrimoire a 8.8 out of 10 for being very innovative and giving a new twist to the genre of RTSs. Anyone interested in this game I would suggest to at least try it out, although it may look odd at first glace it is tons of fun and it doesn’t take long for you to like the characters and cast.
This review will show up as a 9 due to Gamespot unfortunately not allowing a 8.8 to be selected.