My Name Is Kaz here, back again with a Vanillaware game: Grim Grimoire (oire).
If Starcraft is the greatest game (to betray something of a personal fact), Grim Grimoire would be its non-union anime equivalent. You build buildings (runes) and towers (symbols), summon worker and fighter units (familiars), gather resource units (mana), and lead the terran command force (witch-in-training) against the forces of the evil zerg (asshole wizards) in space (a big ass tower/wizard college). The parallels run deeper, and were more than enough to sell me on playing through the game. The name 'Vanillaware' was independently also enough to so sell me, as there is something about paper cutout graphics done absurdly well on a modern(ish) console that jives with my inner retro gamer.
The cast of Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. As the game contains major twists regarding identities, motivations and allegiances, beware spoilers, some of which will not be hidden. Revya: (in response to Levin sniffing out an enemy) Woof, woof, doggy. Revya: (when Danette suggests hotpods will fall. 25 images (& sounds) of the GrimGrimoire cast of characters. Pics of the GrimGrimoire voice actors (Game).
Box Art:
Story:
Lillet Blan, a lone girl in a world of wizards named after booze flies a wyvern shuttle to the Tower of Silver Star, ancient headquarters of a one time wizard super-villain re-purposed as a college for professional wizards. Lillet meets strange and motley students, faculty, and staff while she learns the ways and means of becoming a great magician so she can do the best to provide for her brothers back home. What wondrous worlds await Wiwwet within?
Game Structure:
Grim Grimoire is divided into 25 story missions and 25 bonus missions. Before and after each story mission you are treated to a cutscene where extravagant paper dolls yack about the daily goings-on of the school, and pontificate about the platitudes of the virtuous wizard or otherwise expose the sundry plots. Each story mission represents a day of wizard training, and you guide Lillet through the five weeks of five days each. There's an additional cutscene at the beginning of each week, and sometimes the characters interrupt missions to spout something important (or, more often, something inane).
In addition, the 25 bonus missions are available to challenge you and provide a range of scenarios with limitations and special goals.
In This LP:
What's the format?
Gameplay videos with post commentary. K1wi will be joining me. (She owns the game, so I'll basically be doing whatever she asks :shh:)
What missions are you playing?
I'm covering all 25 story missions, and recording all the pre and post mission cutscenes. I'm not doing all the bonus missions.
Hey, why not do the bonus missions?
Basically because I'd rather not spend those hours again. I've played through all 50 missions on both normal and hard (which unlocks after you complete normal), and the bonus missions don't add enough to the viewing experience to make me want to go through them again. I will, however, present a list of the missions and you may vote on which five you would like to see. I'm willing to do that many.
How do I vote on bonus missions?
Once I've done the first week or week-and-a-half of story missions, anyone watching will have enough of an idea about what the game is like to form an opinion about the bonus missions. At that time, I'll post a list of five of the bonus missions with difficulty ratings and descriptions. Make a post with the mission number you'd most like to see played.
We'll do that five times throughout the thread, so you get five bonus missions out of me in addition to the whole story.
How often will you be posting videos?
As often as I can. I've been frankly trying to get this out of the way for some time. By now I have about half the story recorded and will try to keep the pace of releasing a new video every few days.
Will you be cutting and editing the gameplay?
Because each mission involves gradually more and more time to secure resources and raise an army, sometimes running upwards of 45 minutes, I'll be cutting out large parts of any given mission. The videos should end up 20 minutes at the very longest, averaging 13 minutes. That's including the pre and post mission cutscenes.
My guiding theory for the edits is to show as much of the gameplay as I can, while repeating the gameplay as little as I can get away with. If you've seen me gather my first 200 mana and build a new rune once, you've seen it 25 times. This means I'll be making more cuts as we go along.
It also means that I'll be mixing up my builds to show off all the units in many strategies, even though the optimal approach is usually only one of three or so things.
On with the show.
Week 1, Day 1: You're a Wizard, Harry Lillet! | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 1, Day 2: What You Call Sin | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 1, Day 3 and Day 4: Of Symbol and Spirit | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 1, Day 5: Rights to Dead | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 2, Day 1: Trial by Hellfire | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 2, Day 2: DRAGONS! | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 2, Day 3: Created Lives | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 2, Day 4: The Stolen Star | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 2, Day 5: Double Devil | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 3, Day 1: Thinking Cap | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 3, Day 2: Led Into Temptation | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 3, Day 3: Crossfire | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 3, Day 4: The Ghost in The Box | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 3, Day 5: Summoning Ban | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 4, Day 1: Courting Devils | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 4, Day 2: Ghost Trap | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 4, Day 3: Blinded by Souls | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 4, Day 4: Solomon's Lemegeton | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 4, Day 5: The Cost of Doing Business | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 5, Day 1: A Woman Scorned | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 5, Day 2: Giving the Devil His Duel | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 5, Day 3: Battle Toad | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 5, Day 4: Soul Exchange | Viddler | blip.tv |
Week 5, Day 5: The Philosopher's Legacy | Viddler | blip.tv |
Epilogue: Lillet Grande | Viddler | blip.tv |
First Bonus Mission: Waltz of Spirits and Ghosts | Viddler | blip.tv |
Second Bonus Mission: Shy Dragon | Viddler | blip.tv |
Third Bonus Mission: Queen and the Red Hood | Viddler | blip.tv |
Fourth Bonus Mission: Badger | Viddler | blip.tv |
Bonus Bonus Mission: Holy Road | Viddler | blip.tv |
Final Bonus Mission: Goddam Calvaros | Viddler | blip.tv |
A taste of the cast:
She's named for Lillet Blanc, a French aperitif wine. The French would barely pronounce the c at all, so Lillet's name reads nearly exactly like the wine. I'll leave it to http://www.lillet.com to tell you about the citrus notes or whathaveyou. I'm a forums poster, not a sommelier.
The character, though, is entirely too sweet, and so refined tongues my pass it off to children, perhaps cutting it a bit with water. Lillet manages to contrast sharply with all the other flavors of the game, probably because of her generic manner and lack of definition or refinement. She's awkward, curious, happy, and good-natured to a fault. She vanguards the anime cliche of wanting to save everyone: she doesn't wish harm on her worst enemy and wants most sorely for everyone to get along.
At her best, she's obstreperous and clever. At her worst, she's callow and bland. Lillet Bland.
__________
He's named after a Danish bitter that's meant to be drunk by a fireplace and poured for you by a manservant while you puff on a pipe. It apparently has more ingredients than all of Secret of Evermore, and each one has a folk story about how people used to use it as an aphrodisiac, or to ward off ghosts.
Gammel himself has warm, rich overtones that excite the taste buds with the promise of amazing knowledge and splendid magical acts to follow. The finish, however chafes with a bit of a smokiness as Gammel sometimes struggles to remember where he is or his relative role in that situation. When he isn't sneaking a bite from a sandwich he keeps hidden in his beard (away from all those mischievous elves), he's busy with his roles as headmaster and head Nature magic instructor. He's tastiest when chased with another, simpler flavor, but never fails to add something unique to any mix he's a part of. Somewhere behind the dementia of an old naturalist and the addled episodes of a professor trying to himself remember the basics of wizardry is an old hand, seasoned and smiling, waiting just like you may have imagined to tell you all those amazing things you first got a taste of.
__________
Opelneria Rain derives her name from Opel Nera, an anise flavored black licorice liqueur, which its makers claim is 'damn tasty.' The black love comes from elderberry rind.
Opelneria has a shallow but very full bodied flavor, which leaves the palette guessing whether or not you just swallowed ambrosia or helped clean up an oil slick with your mouth. Further evidence in favor of the oil slick theory will certainly come the morning after a long night with her: you'll feel like the waking dead. Her personality starts with an aggressive and most bitter initial push, warding off would be admirers, yet she can't hide her own complex sweetness, and does nothing at all to keep her attractive container corked. It takes endurance to build up a taste for her, but one who does may enjoy the layered innocence and maturity of a gentile and passionate poly-centenarian witch.
Opelneria spends entirely too much of her time cavorting with the dead, which makes her callous and uncaring toward the living. The living, after all, are not subject to the rules she knows best, and are therefore untrustworthy. She only became bitter after being scorned time and again, however; and that only could have happened because of her gentle, loving spirit.
Although, she does keep that loving spirit under careful guard locked away in a phylactery on her shelf next to her emergency supply of purple body paint. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.
__________
He's named for Advocaat, a dutch custard that moonlights as moonshine.
Advocat has a tiered profile like a rich layered cake, where each layer is a different shelf of your cupboard, or perhaps the next ring of hell. On the surface, he's superciliously overbearing and unflappably bold. Despite this, he is still smooth from top to bottom, and if you can get to the bottom, you may delight in the rich wealth of complexity that led you there, where you are certainly now trapped; doomed to spend all eternity in the frothy residue on the side of the glass you just enjoyed. A level of sophistication is needed to be able to choke down this amoral old choke-artist, who can be charmingly sweet, and most tempting of bouquet.
The only thing Advocat loves more than abiding the rules is exploiting them. He's bound by client-devil confidentiality from telling you anything he doesn't want you to know and wields his station the way he wields his hellish sorcery. Crank it all to eleven and don't hold back until you've swallowed the load.
__________
Dr. Chartreuse is named for Chartreuse Grande, a greenish-yellow liqueur as old as the prayers of the alpine French monks who make it.
Chartreuse has a rough exterior and a small sip or a quick sniff hints that one is about to suffer a chemical burn rather than take a pleasant swig. Beyond the approach of rubbing alcohol, a good hearty dose reveals a sweet, light, dry air that welcomes one into magnificently and meticulously arrayed chambers of flavor. Each of them dryer and more academic than the last. Only the most sophisticated tastes will be satisfied with Chartreuse, otherwise the extreme dryness he presents may be confused with a strong floor cleaner aged in a disused chamber pot, left to dry in the desert sun; abandoned by the chinchillas who lived there because it was simply too dry.
His thirst for knowledge knows no bounds. Alchemy is the fastest growing research magic, and he wishes to leave his mark on the runes every mage must craft to create Alchemy's many artificial beings. At his best, Chartreuse is ascetic and focused. At his worst, he is amoral and mistaken.
__________
We've had some pretty obscure tastes so far, but if you don't know Margarita Surprise's namesake already, you don't have enough lime in your life.
Margarita has a cloying acidic sweetness pretty much from bottom to top; a small sample reveals just as much as a hearty swig. If you don't like her right away, you probably never will, much like a classy overcoat or popular music icon. Tastes differ, though, and Margarita's better half and garnish, Shirley, adds some much needed complexity and zest to an otherwise childishly sweet character, to the point where one may simply wish to snack on the garnish and ignore everything else entirely, much like a martini, or perhaps bouquet garni. As with those, Shirley is also a necessary source of nutrition in Margarita's otherwise anemic profile, a not inconsiderable addition.
Margarita is skittish, gossipy, fragile and feckless. Her only advantage is her opportunism, which she presses without fail. Like any particular particle, however, identify her advantage and it atomizes immediately.
__________
Bartido Ballentyne is named for Ballantine's scotch whiskey, which is apparently so popular that two bottles of it are sold every second.
The first rush of smooth smoke from the first taste of Bartido is enough to charm housewives who long for an escape from the ordinary, or thirteen year old girls who should know better than to sneak about the liquor cabinet. To others, the overall bold smokiness could resemble panic, like sitting too close to a campfire, or being caught in a burning chemical plant. Bartido's strong overtones belie a softer, creamy naivety. The smoke screen is almost thus a defensive mechanism to getting too familiar, though hearty drinkers are more likely to get bored with the underbelly and stick to small sips as to maximize the taste of dangerous passionate fire to be had there.
Bartido is a bare-elbow boxer first and an alchemist second. He never learned to pick his fights, and therefore picks all of them all the time. At his best, he is courageous and vigilant, at his worst, he is foolhardy and clumsy.
__________
She's named for Amaretto, an Italian almond liquor invented by Leonardo Di Vinci while he painted Madonna.
Amoretta Virgine was brewed in an alchemic distiller and put in a flask to age, and for all the world should have just as well been left in. Only 106 days old, with a tangy bouquet of unripe almond flowers and barely-dissolved sugars, Amoretta puts forth an overwhelming vanilla that even a child raised by alligators would say lacks sophistication. Where the taste buds anticipate further notes, hints, flavors, smells, or inklings, Amoretta just ends. Put this one back in the bottle and leave it in the cellar until the Gideon's trumpet sounds. Maybe then Amoretta would be more interesting.
__________
Hiram Menthe is named for crème de menthe, which is French for 'half of a grasshopper.'
Hiram Menthe waxes sweet, but has aggressive pungent tones reminiscent of chewing on mothballs, or cleaning the floor with a powerful generic product and forgetting one's mask. Dry does not begin to describe the arid parchness of Hiram's full body, paradoxically offering up no long list of flavors to while away the hours in the desert of history lessons and rules litanies Hiram has at the ready in the scroll he is never without. The potent mint is best cut with other spirits, serving otherwise only masochists or drinkers robbed of their sense of taste by a farming accident involving a silo of Altoids.
Hiram wants to be a professor so badly he can taste it past the curiously strong mint flavor. He expresses this by alerting the professors to anything at all that's going on for any reason, and sassing anyone who isn't a professor, also for any reason.
I'm pleased with this little guy, and want to keep him somewhere I can find him.
The story feels like some J.K. Rowling Harry Potter recyclables with a few characters swapped out for more stylized counterparts. Lillet Blan is a new student at the Silver Star tower, a place where magicians teach children who show promise in the magical arts. Five days after Lillet’s arrival, all of the staff and students are killed, and just as she is next on the list, she wakes to find herself back at the night she arrived, with all her memories intact.
It’s a fairly dark story with lots of twists and turns as Lillet tries to find out the answers to the mysteries of the tower. It’s all told through cut-scenes that look amazing and have some of the best art I have ever seen on the PS2. All of the characters move with an eerie liveliness that really has to be seen in motion. Once you get underway and start learning the ins and outs of magic you’ll see that this game is highly detailed and yet it manages to hold solid and doesn’t get bogged down with a ton of sprites on screen. Some of these sprites are really large and detailed too. When you’ve got demons or golems on screen, take a second to look at them in motion and just watch them breathe.
It’s quite a work of art and is something people who want to make 2-D games in the future should take a look at. As I’ve said before the character’s themselves are fairly animated during the cut-scenes that take place between battles. This is a nice change of pace when compared to other RPGs that use static character art when trying to convey emotion and progress the story. For a 2-D game there is only going to be one to rival Grim Grimoire in the looks department for a long time, and that’s going to be Odin Sphere.
So until someone like Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi comes along and says, “The next 2-D Castlevania must look better than this!” don’t hold your breath for something better. Musically I’m very particular about who handles a Japanese title these days, if it’s not someone like Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy series) or Yasunori Matsuda (Chrono Cross and Xenosaga) I tend not to make a note of it. But I would be doing a disservice to Hitoshi Sakimoto if I did not say that he did a superb job on the music for Grim Grimoire. It fits the game very well, and despite using a lot of the same music in battle it holds up very well and is probably worth importing. The voice acting in Grim Grimoire is also a standout and is one of the best dubs in recent memory. This game shares a lot in common with the recent Atlus release Odin Sphere, both games have a soundtrack by Hitoshi Sakimoto and both have amazing voice acting. The PS2 controller does not lend itself well towards the control schematics that one would be used to in a Real Time Strategy game, no, this is something you would expect to play with a mouse and keyboard.
But somewhere along the way the developers took a look at the PS2 controller, determined it would be a pain in the ass and still came up with a stellar control scheme. Kudos to whoever thought up this brilliant control scheme. Selecting units can be done by highlighting them and pressing square. Or you can hold square and move the targeting cursor over the same type of units to highlight all of them and issue commands. If the screen is looking a bit crowded, use the left or right on the directional pad to select an individual unit.
Scrolling through menus is done with the L1 and R1 buttons and the camera can be moved with the analog stick. It has a very short learning curve and you should have the hang of it after just one or two stages, well before the action gets out of hand and tougher to manage. Progressing through the game will place more Grimoires into Lillet’s command and will allow her to cast higher level magic, which is divided in to four disciplines. The first discipline you’ll learn is called Glamour magic. This is composed of elves and fairies. This type of discipline is strong against Necromancy. Necromancy is strong against Sorcery, and Sorcery is strong against Alchemy.
To round out the circle, Alchemy is strong against Glamour. Even with the obvious advantages you can never count out an opponent who is using a discipline that you may be strong against. There is a good balance that comes with each discipline. While Sorcery is weak to Necromancy you will gain units who can damage the ghosts that Necromancy commands. The game will also slowly ramp up your power and then challenge your new abilities by throwing combinations at you that may not seem to immediately work. The game will clock in just shy of twenty hours or so, and that’s just going through the main levels. There are also bonus stages that can be unlocked over the course of the game.
However once the game is fully completed that’s about it. This is a title that could have used some one on one online play, though I’m just being picky, truth be told I would much rather play through the story again because it’s a really good story. The only other small complaint I have is that the game was a little too easy.
Granted there were a few levels where I was at a bit of a loss on what to do, but once I figured it out then the stage was a breeze. Even on “Normal” difficulty this game wasn’t horribly challenging. Unfortunately the game also seems to be like a race for large units like dragons or chimeras or morning star units. Once you get them they are difficult to stop. If there were a harder difficulty setting where the computer knew to use morning star units against dragons and chimeras I think I would have been a little happier.
Grim Grimoire does so many things right that it’s hard to be critical of it. It has a great balance though is a little too easy at times and could have received a huge benefit by having a multiplayer option, though the single player experience is great for what it is. The game looks and sounds amazing with superb voice acting and highly detailed character sprites that prove that the PS2 is no where near ready to step back and let the PS3 take the lead in graphics and sound. This is going to be another one of those sleeper hits that squeak out just before a consoles life comes to an end. A true gem that should be picked up before it becomes one of those sought after titles long past its short shelf life.