GRIME Reviews

eat rock yummy

excellent metroidvania game

Ok I don't like giving bad reviews especially to passion projects, but even an hour within this game I can already tell the vibes are just "anti quality of life". Stamina bar is tiny and regens so damn slow, after the first boss i just started dumping into the stamina stat and it still felt miserable. Jumping and movement in general feels like the worst kind of snappy, like you just teleport into a ledge grab and the animations feel so rigid (and not like in an aesthetic way, the animations just feel clunky). To use items you have to assign them to the d-pad menu and cant just use from the pause screen. Im also gonna guess sprinting is an unlocked skill later on that will likely cost more stamina than its worth. The cutesy little hidden area gimmick gets old fast since you just have to walk into every wall you see, and the hidden rooms don't even have the decency to stay revealed once you leave. Im ok with hidden areas but when half the tutorial is so dense with them that you accidentally find them because you held right a bit longer than normal is a tad much. I won't hold this against the game since maybe it calms down past the early game but jeez. My last straw was in the area after the first boss, theres this drop down to encounter a "nervepass" (apparently the fast travel system) and idk if i was meant to find an earlier one but interacting with it had zero options (just "close menu"). Cool, whatever, except the room was apparently one way. After a few minutes of fumbling around i decided to look it up and sure enough the top results are just use the darksign button or the homeword bone item. I also encountered a few bugs, including one where my body was physically logged into an enemy ragdoll (had to darksign). Oh and BTW the rag dolls have collision for some fucking reason I guess you get "mass" from breaking them but just. why??? you can have breakable corpses without needing them to physically restrict movement until hit,... Your healing is also fully restricted to the parry mechanic, which im neutral on. I feel like in any other game that would be a fun core mechanic, but when you have the stamina of the average 200X horror game protag its really, really annoying. At least parrying feels forgiving enough. Another cool mechanic is the hunt gimmick but since I tapped out pretty early i feel like i shouldnt comment on it, unless something changes it feels mostly slapped on to further encourage parrying enemies in an unnatural way. One positive is that death (seems to be) less punishing, since all you lose is a percentage increase you get by just parrying people, and even outside of the first area I was able to max it out with little issue and (so far) it only increases "mass" gain. So death doesnt punish your currency but the rate of your currency gain, which is neat and I kinda dig it.... wish it was in a more fun game. TL'DR great graphic and world design, gameplay feels slower than fat-rolling in dark souls 1, I got pseudo soft locked twice and had to darksign both times, if the game had the stamina regen delay shortened and a tad faster animations id be fine with it. I cannot recommend unless your favorite souls-like of all time is demon souls.

Fun game with good atmosphere but gets old quick. Exploration is overly tedious because of this certain fog of war system and you must travel far to find each map crystal. Makes entering a new area less of a good thing. Cant fast travel between save points. nervepass locations (fast travel) are few and far between. weapons require specific stats to use. So if you dont build your stats right you cant use half of them. re-spec requires tough to find objects. combat can be a bit clunky at times. Also your often wondering "why did i take damage there? ... I like occasional souls games but some of the bosses require ALOT of tries and farming for upgrades . fun game but progression is too slow.

Really great Metroidvania game, awesome gameplay with a slight sluggish movement. Upgrade system and stats system. very good game would recommend to other players to play if they enjoy platformers, boss fights, and map exploration.

+Interesting and hard combat +Not overly punishing level design +Interesting movement -A little slow 8/10 for now as i am not yet finished

Genuinely one of the best games I have ever played. The atmosphere is amazing. The OST is amazing, The combat is amazing. The world design and traversal is amazing. Platforming puzzles can be a bit challenging but they feel wonderful to complete. If you are on the fence about picking this game up I highly recommend you give it a try.

[b]“Am I the bad guy?”[/b] [i]-Grimes[/i] [hr][/hr] With many, MANY games of this genre coming out these years [b]Grime[/b] carves (heh) itself a sport among the best known titles using its “chiseled from stone” looks and parry-centric gameplay. [h1]Story[/h1] In a strange world where life isn’t made equal and is breath into stone you take control of a mysterious and silent blackhole-headed entity with a quest that’ll become clearer as you progress meeting characters that become better and better versed about how this whole strange world works. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] Explore, get blocked by the environment, explore some more, find an upgrade that expands your movement repertoire, explore some more with new moves. Combat is slow, weapons have a little combo string to do damage but the star here lays in the parry mechanic. More generous than in other games, parrying both damages an enemy and opens them up for more damage. Also parrying instantly defeats some enemies, and on most it also unlock special abilities if you use it as a finishing blow. Improvement is donr through the aforementioned parry-absorb, minibosses dropping “hunt points” to activate these abilities, and the classic use of experience at rest sites to level up different stats. [h1]X-Factor[/h1] The metroidvania genre you know and hopefully love since you’re not on this steam page by mistake, now wrapped in stonelikeahestetic, and lots of content. [h1]Downsides[/h1] Weapon balance is broken, with fast striking weapons dealing more overall damage than heavier ones mean that combined with having more windows to attack with the former will make the latter comparatively useless. Animations are often stiff and janky; this wouldn’t normally mean much but they are crucial to engage with the core parry mechanic. Exploration isn’t exactly rewarding, a lot of places have dead ends in their branching paths, an experience reward that often amounts to less of what you get from the enemies just before it, or a single piece of an armor set where you need all 3 before even activating its effects. Even worse is the fact that these dead ends don’t reward with unique vistas or give you a feeling for the world or that you’re mapping it out, instead it’s often a corridor ending in a flat wall with nothing going on in the background. The game actively discourages experimentation as stats, weapon upgrades, and abilities cannot be switched around and there0s a limited annount of upgrade materials each game. There’s one way to respect stats but the items needed are so rare you’ll be able to do it just once in the game and only if you’re really thorough with your exploration. [hr][/hr] Still a competently made metroidvania with some fun slower-paced combat that asks you to really figure out what the enemies are doing and how to best respond to their attacks, unique looks and lots of content is what makes me give this a thumbs up even at 20$.

If you can stomach a bit of a slower pace in a metroidvania, and a stamina system that makes it so that sometimes the correct action to take is none at all whilst you wait for regen, I think it's really special. Combat is weighty and rewarding when properly balancing your stamina, positioning and what attacks to parry and dodge. Parrying things with your head is as cool as it is gratifying, pulling limbs off of bosses and swallowing smaller enemies wholesale in your ever-gaping maw. Exploration is a treat with the art direction on display and I very much enjoyed the vibe of the world, though tile-sets can be a bit samey and so keeping your bearing is sometimes not the easiest. Doesn't crop up too often, but it's there. Similarly, the path to progression can be a little obtuse. But we have guides for that.

I hope whoever came up with NG+ gets glassed by a pack of rabid kangaroos. Very sad game otherwise.