Grimshade Reviews

This game grows on you. At first, it appears that it is going to be somewhat of a dumbed down version of a TBC game, but that is not true at all (so keep playing passed the first 20 minutes!). While your movement is more limited in combat than the typical TBC game, the depth of combat is fairly complex, making battles pretty satisfying. The enemy abilities vary quite a bit and require constant review in order to prepare for battle accordingly. The character abilities are just as nuanced, making for a strategic-heavy combat system. The graphics are really nicely done. The story is interesting, but not terribly rich. Things can get a little repetitive after awhile. I think this is a much better game than the MetaCritic score implies. That said, it's not on par with top games of the genre. I recommend picking it up on sale.

It's a cute setting and kept seeming like something that I should be enjoying, but the combat is simply a drag. I had to keep forcing myself to go back to it, and could never stick with it long.

Great game, great graphics, great gameplay, great artwork, great idea. Poor implementation. The game crashes on cutscenes causing a quest to be incompletable. The English translation is so awful, it's hard to understand what's being said in some conversations. As of right now, the discord, forums, and discussions are dead. Game is dead. Sad.

I liked this game, but it's unfinished. The combat provides a lot of options for characters and abilities, but many of them are not worth using due to how difficult the battles are. There are many bugs that while didn't massively drag down the experience, were bad enough for me to mention. Still, trying to figure out the optimal way to win each battle was entertaining, and the plot kept me interested the whole way though, although there are very few plot threads remaining to be answered in a sequel. The battles are mostly pointless, as the only rewards are loot, which isn't worth much, and removing enemies from your path in the overworld, which you'll only do if you have to. The healing mechanics are very bad as well; you have Healing Supplies which fully heal a character, but you can only hold a limited amount, and if a character dies in battle, you have to use 2 (you get a debuff that's only cured by Healing Supplies, and almost all of them are bad enough that you want to cure it). However, most of the time, you can simply warp to a Haven and fully heal for free, and buy more Healing Supplies. When you can't, bad play can lead to an unwinnable state. Overall, the system sucks, and the only benefit is that it encourages you to avoid damage at all costs, even when the battle is a guaranteed win. Enemies are very dangerous, and often have multiple ways to screw with your party. Slight changes to the enemy composition can completely alter your strategy, and this difficulty is what kept me engaged with the combat. Even though I didn't vary up my party setup a lot (many options are very situational) I still spent plenty of time debating what options to use, and you can restart the battle at any time and change your whole setup. Since the game has no RNG in combat, it's fun to try different tactics and see how effective they are, and to see the ways the enemies react to you countering their primary strategies. Many times, their preferred tactics are easier to deal with than what happens when you counter them! But, I ended up finding the same old setups working the best. The biggest problem is that a lot of your options come too late in the game, your second tank being the worst offender. A big part of this game's strategy is working around which characters your tank will protect, but your limited tanking options lead to using the same setups a lot. It doesn't help that the second tank sucks. There was one ability you get from a late-game sidequest that lets you hit all enemies in a line regardless of tank protection. There were so many battles that the ability would have been useful for, and the game ended before I ever got a chance to use it. One character is mostly a support character, but I never used him because every battle either suited 4 other characters better, or I didn't have the tank protection required to keep him safe. I used the Rogue character as a support in about half of my battles with her, and it's not because her damage is bad, but because keeping her safe was so difficult, it was more worthwhile to debuff enemies while my other characters did the damage. Overall I see the combat as a huge missed opportunity. The first half of the game is a blast, but it doesn't really improve from there, and the second half is where most of the new toys come from. I'll definitely be waiting for the sequel, but I don't see myself playing this one again.

Engaging turn-based combat that requires a good deal of strategy, especially later game when you have many choices for party member and equipment selection. This Indie CRPG has a good story with plenty of humor, although the game 'ends' just when it is starting to get really good (I'm really looking forward to chapter 2 which, apparently, will be released in the near future). My first completed game took just over 20 hours of 'play time' but with learning about my party and my enemies, restarting a few battles here and there, it actually took about three weeks of off and on play. Performance can be improved, the engine seems to need asset loading optimization or something, cause lots of loading screens. Music has a metal-piano-ambient thing going on, bit vanilla, like game music generally is; so far so good. Artwork is spread out all over the place, there is alot of attention to detail here. Development team has been quite active and tuned in, and that is a plus. All-in-all a good CRPG; the combat and equipment systems help it to stand out in the field.

For those who like a story with strat games, you'll enjoy this. There were several fights were you had to have a strat besides the bosses which were fun. The only warning I have is that this game was made with the intention of having a part II so the game abruptly ends. Other than that there are several fights towards the end, in the swamp, where the battle is mostly bright fuchsia making some fights difficult. And the typos killed me -.-

I really wanted to give this game a chance, but after almost 15 hours of game play, i am just bored and frustrated. The game is well done, good graphics, it appears to be bug free. But, it lacks any of the elements of a true RPG. I am not even sure that you can call this an RPG, because it is completely linear, and there is no coustomization or choices to be made. Everything is scripted, including combat. I've seen some other reviews complaining about how hard combat, but if you understand how scripted combat works, all you have to do is replay the same combat scenario over and over again until you memorize the exact order of actions you need to win. It's absolutely tedious, and more than a bit boring. (think of Darkest Dungeon, no RNG, just a script deciding if you will win or lose) I personally am not a fan of scripted combat games, it really takes all the strategy out of a game if there is only one way to defeat an enemy. As for quests, they are just mail man quests, running back and forth talking to people and clicking on things until it completes. Most of the time without a reward. All the best weapons are the starting weapons, they do give you new weapons, but their delays and tension are too high to be usable. With a high delay, many of the enemies will get 2 or 3 turns to your 1 and will have knocked you out or dropped you to zero HP before your second turn. You only have the 4 starting characters who are mostly support roles, and your rogue can only do damage from the front row, and will get dropped in almost every battle. The dialog is poorly translated and verbose, I have become so bored with the extensive and pointless dialog that I just completely skip it. All-in-All it was a good try, but it fails to deliver. After your first 10-15 hours of game play you will have experienced everything the game has to offer and be thoroughly bored and annoyed with it.

I just love the fighting mechanics in this game. Every fight is different and you have various options in your disposal to approach the fights. The character progression and skill development is completely new and I have not come across something like this before and I loved it. Awesome boss fights and you have to figure out the strategy to defeat each of them. Story is very nice and it got me hooked, there was never a point where it felt boring and predictable. A must try game.

Game is Fully Playable, no game-breaking bugs, however it is missing bits and pieces. Poorly optimized mechanics(Fights with more than 10 characters makes the game stuttery). There is no way to avoid 1 of your characters getting damaged when facing 6+ enemies. No advanced tactics. Missing dialogues. Farming and time-consuming but abusable loot rewards for money, which is essentially useless(money). Talk to barkeep for infinite rewards. Healing is laughable(fast travel to haven). Character equipment variety is dismal(1/10 score). No glossary(but indicated in-game there is one already). But that's ok,. at least the backers have their own statues. Rushed release game. Get it in a month or so after the bugs and texts are fixed, if ever. No game replayability.

It doesn't appear to say this anywhere on the store page, but this is only Part 1 of the game. I discovered this upon reaching the end of Part 1, where it says that Part 2 comes in 2020. Had I known, I would've waited to play it. It isn't clear if Part 2 is going to be an update, DLC, or entirely separate game. I enjoy the story, which has some surprising plot twists, as well as the characters, art, lore, and music. For these reasons I'm recommending the game. Although, it can sometimes be hard to understand what's being said because the translation is pretty rough at times, causing you to get a little lost in your quest. If you're all about the battle system, I wouldn't necessarily recommend the game to you. Many character abilities are useless or not explained very well. While enemies tend to get more powerful in their initiative, ability to do AOEs, or ignore avoidance tokens, you really don't. I actually had a boss battle where I had to keep skipping everyone's turn because none of them could do a single useful thing. I restarted the battle and changed the setup, defeating it in a couple turns by spamming one of Alister's abilities. You may get new items, but they do little to increase your power or skill set. In many cases, it's like the same thing but a different element. The only elements that really matter are light and dark, so fire, wind, water--not really useful. And it's not like these items just drop after a battle, you either find them or get them as a quest reward. Like another reviewer wrote, you'll find yourself just avoiding battles because the pay off isn't worth it. I think if the developers take another look at some of the skills & rewards it could improve the battle system.