The story in Grim Grimoire is reminiscent of Harry Potter. Lilet Blan is a young apprentice wizard who has just arrived at the Magic Academy. After meeting a number of odd characters, she begins her lessons, learning the basics of grimoires, magic runes and familiars.
But a few days later something very strange happens and destruction of the academy and those within is imminent. And while Lilet thinks it could all have been just a dream, the fact is she has just had a good look at the near future and the grim events to come, so she tries to change the future.
Grim Grimoire is a real-time strategy game, much like Warcraft, if you will. You harvest resources, you build up troops and workers, you explore the map and move troops to attack your enemies… the major difference is that this all takes place in a 2D setting.
But don’t think because I say 2D that the game doesn’t look appealing. In fact, the artwork and backgrounds are beautifully drawn, and the characters have a subtle breathing motion as they speak.
The game mixes bits of storyline with the actual fighting portions. It all starts with a tutorial, so you can get acquainted with your first runes and different grimoires, crystals, units and how to use them.
Lilet will eventually gather different grimoires, each with a particular power: Glamour, Alchemy, Sorcery and Necromancy. Obviously, and a bit like elemental magic, some are more effective against others, so this adds another element of strategy to the game.
The first thing you do is start gathering mana, since that is your only resource for everything. For each type of grimoire your units will vary, but there is always one gatherer (elves for Glamour and ghosts for Necromancy). You select your gatherer units and order them to the nearest crystal. They will turn it into a Sanctuary and start gathering mana from it and taking it to the Rune. You can build additional Runes (of the same kind or or different kinds) and harvest other crystals as well.
The Rune summons your familiars, which can be gatherers or battle units (for example, fairies, imps or ghost knights). Each unit costs a certain amount of mana, and you also have a population limit for each type of Rune, so you must balance your mana gathering with a fighting force. Once you have some units, you can send them out exploring the map to find enemy troops and Runes, and destroy them. You win when all of the enemies’ Runes have been defeated.
Runes can also level up by selecting the appropriate command manually. A Rune of a higher level can summon stronger familiars and give the existing ones new abilities.
The screen can get a little crowded and make it harder for you to select the units you want, but there is an easy process for doing so. You can select units individually by pressing square when the cursor is on it, and move it away to anywhere on the map with X. To select all of the same kind of a certain unit in a particular spot, you press square and up. There is also a click and drag feature to select several units that are a bit spread apart.
Yes, it takes a while to get used to, I was constantly clicking the wrong buttons in my first hour of play, but eventually, it will all come to you naturally and you will be moving your units and owning the enemy like a pro. And the more you level up your Runes, the more grimoires you possess and the more diversified units you build, the better! Units belonging to different types of magic can complement each other with certain special abilities, so there is even more micro-management involved if you want all of your troops to work together.
The downside of Grim Grimoire is the size and look of the battle maps. They are considerably large and make it tough to control all the unit groups at once, which is why I prefer to place those handy auto-attack Talismans in strategic spots all over the map. The maps all look the same too, a series of floors with archways, pillars and staircases that become repetitive way too soon.
The music is fantastic and pleasant to listen to, while the voice acting varies according to the character’s personalities.
The best points of Grim Grimoire are the story, the artwork and its originality. All the bizarre characters have charming mysterious personalities, the artwork is fantastic and could have belonged to any Japanese-style RPG, and the dialogs are very well written. It’s a beautiful game to watch, be it during the story or the battle sequences.
Sure, it’s not a next-gen title, neither does it push the PS2’s capabilities to their limits. But this quirky fairytale-like adventure and its characters grows on you. Grim Grimoire is a fun, original game, and it has all that RTS goodness packed in to keep you going for hours and hours at a time.
Special thanks to Jack Niida and NIS America for providing a copy of this title.