Bernhardt
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Bernhardt's Grim Grimoire Review
(Ahem) Would you like to know what REALLY makes this game awexome? CAT MAGES!! But, I digress.
Finally, an RTS on the PS2, and not half-bad, either, especially for a first effort by an up-and-coming software developer!
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AESTHETICS
As far as the whole Magic Academy, Magic Students, and Magic Instructors thing is all concerned, you're probably ready to write this off as a rip-off of Harry Potter.
Rest assured, however, that while that may be true, or at least the inspiration for this game, it's much better than Harry Potter.
Each of the characters is memorable and has their own quirks, another staple of the Harry Potter series (not that I'd know!) Fortunately for us, unlike Harry Potter, you can also rest assured that none of the characters are complete morons.
How aesthetically pleasing...
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PLOT
You take the role of Lillet Blan, a beginning magician, who goes to the Silver Star Tower Magic Academy to take up the craft so she can support her family.
The catch? The Silver Star Tower used to be the home and castle of the evil Archmage Calvaros, who once threatened to take over the world, but was fortunately sealed away but the present-day Headmaster, Gammel Dore.
Now, someone seeks to break the seal of the Archmage, and set him free. And they do. The next catch being, once the seal is finally undone, time rewinds back to five days before the Archmage's awakening, and Lillet is the only one with knowledge of this, and thus the means to prevent it. But who broke the seal, how, and why? One of the instructors? One of the students? Some combination of both? Can we even tell who actually wants to break the seal, or why?!
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GAMEPLAY
Objectives are simple: destroy the enemy's Rune Circles; at times, you may also have to protect your own Rune Circles from getting destroyed, and sometimes, you may only need to survive the battle for a certain time limit.
Rune Circles are used to summon your troops, or more properly identified in this case as "Familiars," magical Summons, if you will.
Furthermore, before you can cast Rune Circles or summon Familiars, you must gather Mana from Crystal reservoires.
Therefore, you have the expected combat units, resource-gathering units, and then you have stationary artillery units which attack targets that come in range.
There are four different classifications of Familiars: Glamour (Nature: Elves, Fairies, Unicorns), Alchemy (Artificial, Man-Made lifeforms: Homunculi, Golems, Chimera), Sorcery (the Devil's Dark Arts: Demons, Dragons), and Necromancy (Spirits: Ghosts, Phantoms, etc.)
There's a weakness/resistance relationship between these different fields of magic.
Glamour (the natural, that which is as it should be) overpowers Necromancy (the supernatural, that which isn't supposed to be there), Necromancy (the bodiless) overpowers Sorcery, as the Devil's Arts can only tempt or threaten the body with pain or pleasure; Sorcery overpowers Alchemy, as the man-made is subject to temptation by the Devil, and Alchemy (the industrial/man-made) overpowers Glamour (again, Nature).
Commands are issued by highlighting (dragging the cursor over) one or more Familiars, then the particular command is specified by highlighting the option, and then finally given by selecting said command.
There's a mix of having to issue orders to your Familiars, and them actually acting autonomously, and attacking nearby enemies automatically, or searching out new enemies to slay. Thus, you must micro-manage and make sure everyone's doing what you want them to be doing.
Battlefields tend to be vast, but you can bring up the map, and highlight the portion of the map you'd like to jump to.
As far as difficulty is concerned, there's enough to keep you on your toes.
The game can be repetitive; though earning new Rune Circles and Familiars at first expands gameplay, you're pretty free to fight as you please once you have all of them, but there isn't much else that expands the experience.
Furthermore, the battlefield graphics never really change from one battlefield to the next.
Small gripes, those last two, but perhaps that's something they can improve on in a prospective sequel?
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Other than that, I finished this game over the course of two days, in 15 hours. Short, maybe, but no game has ever kept me hitting it as hard as this one has! All that’s left after the main story, if you’ve gone through the game on the toughest difficulty mode, is to try the bonus levels.
Lastly, I'd just like to say, remember: CAT MAGES!!
Last edited by Bernhardt, 7/31/2007, 8:39 pm
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6/28/2007, 10:16 pm
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Styxdivine
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Re: Bernhardt's Grim Grimoire Review
"Finally"
I believe Rasetsu Alternative, a NIS collab, was an RTS made in 2005. That's my only gripe with this review.
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7/7/2007, 5:01 pm
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Bernhardt
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Re: Bernhardt's Grim Grimoire Review
quote:
Styxdivine wrote:
"Finally"
I believe Rasetsu Alternative, a NIS collab, was an RTS made in 2005. That's my only gripe with this review.
Never heard of it; I don't really pay attention to Japan-only stuff
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7/8/2007, 7:04 pm
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Marionette
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Re: Bernhardt's Grim Grimoire Review
I really enjoyed this game. It was a lot better than I expected, I played it entirely in English (not knowing there was a Japanese mode at first lol) and I LOVED it. It was funny, whimsical, and you really wanted Lillet to accomplish her goal.
The ending made me a little sad and empty, but I hope Lillet is happy. It's hard to tell.
--- The world is not beautiful,
therefore it is.
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7/23/2007, 9:49 am
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Bernhardt
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Re: Bernhardt's Grim Grimoire Review
At the end, what I wanted to see was this new, supposedly young Ms. Opalneria. She's goth hot...
Another interesting thing is how characters' views change between subsequent time travel episodes.
At first, Bartido thinks Hiram's taste in women is strange, but later, he too thinks Opalneria is rather attractive.
Last edited by Bernhardt, 9/4/2007, 7:03 pm
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9/4/2007, 7:01 pm
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Bernhardt
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Re: Bernhardt's Grim Grimoire Review
Y'know something, I'm only disappointed with the game for one reason, and not even with the game itself, but the packaging: they didn't make the instruction booklet/manual look like a leather-bound cover grimoire! I mean, they didn't to actually make it a leather-bound covered book, just make it look like one. Ach, the wasted potential...!
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9/11/2007, 2:16 pm
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RedCoKid
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Re: Bernhardt's Grim Grimoire Review
quote:
Bernhardt wrote:
Y'know something, I'm only disappointed with the game for one reason, and not even with the game itself, but the packaging: they didn't make the instruction booklet/manual look like a leather-bound cover grimoire! I mean, they didn't to actually make it a leather-bound covered book, just make it look like one. Ach, the wasted potential...!
The .pdf strategy guide by doublejump has that cover. I printed mine out at kinkos, spiral-bound with full-color double-sided pages. <3
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1/4/2008, 8:34 am
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He was so sleazy.