Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar (V2) Reviews

I've completed this game twice. It can be so frustrating at times, and at other times so very enjoyable. I think the reason for this is - that the game is like a book with seven chapters, which you must read, before you can open the eight chapter, BUT - no matter where you choose to start the game, you have no information about anything -- and when you meet NPC's. who can give you information, you have to guess about said information, because of the games old school text based non-choice dialogue system. This system and the amount of frustration it can give, when first encountered is one of the reasons, imo, that the game is not all the way up there with it's inspirations, and one of the reasons new players might have a hard time getting to the games enjoyable parts. To help new players, I decided to make a mini guide, which should help getting into the game a little more comfy. In the following, which I try to make as breif as possible, I will point out the, imo, least frustrating way to start out and I will name some of the game play things which can frustrate. If you want to play the game without, don't continue reading after this.... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Your "quest" in the game, is to complete seven different "levels", which will make it possible to gain access to the games eight "level", which is the end game. These "levels" are the different parts of the world, you enter when you start the game. The only fixed thing is, that you must complete the first "level", before you gain access to the other levels. From there - where you wanna go is up to you, and which part of the world, you want to visit is also up to you. Recommended preparations and good to know things before starting out: To ease the frustrations of the games old school text based non-choice dialogue system, I highly recommend to find a walkthrough. This way, which may seem odd, you'll not end up wasting game time and get so frustrated you throw the game out the window. When you create, your party - make room for one or two NPC'S. When you create your party - take time to study the manual, and plan ahead, so you can multi-class accordingly. When you create your party - I strongly advise to keep an eye on which characters has lethal blow and which characters has music. These are skills, you'll want as early as possible. Keep an eye on when your characters are about to hit level 9 or 10, and just before that change profession. That way, you don't need to grind like half a million xp. The open chest or locked door system is complicated and one of a kind. If you like puzzles - create a thief. If you don't like puzzles, don't make a thief, but use the spell "knock-knock" instead. In game - hold down ENTER to speed up combat. In game - BLESS restores lost "spirit". In game - "breadcrumps" (F7), are extreemly usefull. You drop them, and once you are far far away on a map, you just hit (F8), and can check your phone, while your party autowalks back to where you dropped them. In game - BEWARE that some encounters has skills which can 1) Kill you in one hit. 2) Make your armor or weapon dissolve. 3) Eat away you characters strength. If you find yourself the victim of 1 & 2, don't hessitate to use "endgame" and re-load, until you are either strong enough or have found a way to protect yourself. If you find yourself in a place where the encounters have 3 -- keep a backup save always. You can't see your characters strength beeing eaten in combat, so don't risk a lot of battles and then suddenly notice, your tank can't wear his armor anymore, because his/hers strength has been eaten away. Finally - make sure you have a main save and a backup save, and that you save your game often. Belive me you'll need it!!!

Grimoire is really fun. You can ignore all the reviews saying it's unbalanced or too hard (it is unbalanced and it is pretty hard but you should ignore those reviews anyway). This is definitely a demanding game but it's really rewarding if you stick with it and has many deeper layers. Like an onion. Or an ogre. I played the demo of this on release and found it pretty rough but it's been smoothed out considerably with several patches since then. It's the only real successor to Wizardry 7 that manages to capture that game's weirdness, and its a helluva lot better than Bard's Tale 4. How many modern blobbers even are there? Just play Grimoire, it's great.

While I can't attest to the gripes of those with more hours, so far I'm enjoying it. I had to read the manual, which is something I haven't had to do in decades. It's an interesting game with a unique vibe, feels like a deep ocean of content so far. I've finally managed to not lose immediately, from a party I made myself no less. Feels good :) I'll attempt to update this when I have more hours.

Interesting game with lots of fun systems, but ultimately ends up feeling like an exercise in tedium and save-scumming. Even at level four/five, random encounters one shot your weaker characters, so you end up save-scumming to keep them alive and not lose a permanent 10 CON from their attribute scores. It just becomes more tedium than fun at that point. This can be overcome by dumping your bonus points at char creation into hit points, but I am not in favor of having my choices restricted for viability.

While it has oldschool charm, it is incredibly clunky. Combat is slow and repetitive. Your mouse accelerates and decelerates when hovering it around which is annoying. There are still a few of these blobbers from the old days that actually play well in modern times, like [b]Lands of Lore 1[/b], [b]Eye of the Beholder series[/b], [b]Stone Keep[/b], [b]Might & Magic 3-5[/b]. Those particular examples are also more straightforward, whereas here you have a bigger party which perhaps brings series like [b]Wizardry[/b] to mind. Some modern games like [b]The Quest[/b], [b]Legends of Amberland[/b] series, [b]A Quest That Became Legend[/b] (this ones not a grid-based blobber, it's more like [b]Might & Magic 6-9[/b]), [b]Legend of Grimrock 1&2[/b], [b]Fall of the Dungeon Guardians[/b], [b]Bards Tale IV[/b], [b]Might & Magic X[/b] are better examples of modern oldschool RPGS.