Game of the Month - July 2007
GrimGrimoire
If J.K. Rowling made a real-time strategy game, there’s a good chance it’d turn out something like GrimGrimoire. NIS America’s new RTS eschews the sci-fi trappings of strategy mainstays like StarCraft and Command & Conquer for a witch-and-wizard academy that bears a striking resemblance to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts.
You play as Lillet Blan, a new inductee into the school. She walks into a veritable web of intrigue and deceit, with students and professors alike covertly trying to accomplish their own secret, possibly nefarious ends. By the fifth night one of them apparently succeeds, as an evil from the past breaks out of its prison and completely massacres the entire school. Lillet is only barely saved by a lucky bout of time travel, sending her back to the beginning of the week with the knowledge that she has five days to unravel the mystery and prevent tragedy. It’s a great storyline, skillfully mining the fine line between juvenile whimsy and supernatural horror...sound familiar?
Each day of her stay at the academy, Lillet will have to emerge victorious in one or more RTS-style battles. At first, these take the form of tutorials from the various professors, but soon enough she’s fighting for her life against malevolent forces. The tutorials last just long enough to get you acquainted with the basic gameplay, making for a smooth transition into the real stuff.
GrimGrimoire has most of the elements of a typical RTS. You’ll need to explore a large map, gather mana resources from discovered crystals and lay down magic runes to summon your allies. The action takes place from an unusual side-view perspective, giving you a cutaway view of many floors of the academy at once. The cursor-based interface works almost flawlessly.
What truly sets GrimGrimoire’s gameplay apart is its carefully balanced selection of units. Four schools of magic exist, with each having a good, neutral and bad match-up à la rock-paper-scissors. Though there are only four or five different units per school, every one remains useful throughout the game. There are no unbeatable super-units to activate late in a match; you’ll always have the same basic troops, and victory will only come through a solid understanding of how every battle unit matches up. Fighting Demons? Bring out Spectral Knights. Dragon on the loose? Sleep it with a cute little Grimalkin. Despite the simple rules, the gameplay should have enough depth and challenge to keep you interested for the entire campaign—and after that, you’ve got some screwy bonus missions to conquer.
GrimGrimoire’s artwork is extremely detailed and beautifully stylized, making use of advanced 2D animation techniques the likes of which have never been seen on consoles. It’s simply gorgeous, with only Odin Sphere (also from developer Vanillaware) being remotely in the same league. Excellent music and solid voice acting complete the audio-visual feast.
It’s not often that an original RTS game hits the consoles, and rarer still that it’s actually good. GrimGrimoire is both, and it’s a looker to boot. Fun gameplay, an engaging storyline and beautiful graphics make it an easy recommendation for strategy buffs, Potter fans and graphics snobs alike.
—Benjamin Turner
- Available: July 2007
- System: PlayStation 2
- Publisher: NIS America
- Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10 and up)