GrimGrimoire OnceMore (PS5) Review
Release Date: April 4, 2023
Publisher/Developer: NIS America/Vanillaware
Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Price: $49.99
Vanillaware makes some pretty games. Dragon’s Crown, Odin Sphere, and Muramasa: The Demon Blade are all well received games, but their catch comes in their beautiful art style. GrimGrimoire was crafted for the PlayStation 2 back in 2006, GrimGrimoire was an attempt to create a real-time strategy game akin to classics like WarCraft and StarCraft for consoles. While critically accepted as a good game, it was criticized for it’s controls: it’s simply very difficult to mash something so dedicated to fast mouse-movement and multi-key control schemes onto a controller.
Aside from the usual glow-ups a game like this would get like cleaner visuals, the appropriate screen ratio, and the like, GrimGrimoire OnceMore received new audio enhancements as well as new mechanics that make it easier to control your troops.
As apprentice Lillet Blan begins her Potter-esque journey through the Silver Star Tower academy, she finds herself stuck in a time loop with no apparent way out. There is a mysterious evil plaguing the academy, and it’s up to Lillet to Groundhog Day her way through the events in the storyline, discovering mysteries and overcoming the evils. Each class in the school will summon different kinds of units, like fairies, golems, devils, and even dragons. Each class of magic has a rock-paper-scissors style relationship with the other schools, and it’s up to you to figure out how to manage your resources and destroy the enemy. Familiars you summon can be of substance or astral. Astrals are weak to magic but cannot be damaged by physical attacks. If you begin pulling resources from a particular stream, that source can only be accessed by that school of magic. Improvements to the main game include a fast-forward function and the ability to save during battle, which allows you to play at your own pace. While this makes everything more accessible, the hard difficulty has been tweaked to give pros a new challenge.
Outside of the main RTS system, a Skill Tree has been added, giving players a chance to craft and upgrade their units instead of simply levelling them up straight. As you play, you will also unlock plenty of artwork from Vanillaware production staff. It’s a love letter to fans of the original, making the game feel fresh and a new challenge, whilst also making this the overall most accessible way to play.
I personally never played the original on the PlayStation 2, but recognize the improvements that have been put into the controls. Using the directional pad, you can select individual types of characters or drag over groups to grab certain sets. This plus the ability to pause, save, fast forward, and with certain spells even rewind a bit, make the game overall more convenient and fun to play than I can imagine without those perks. The game is a full combination of visual novel and RTS, with plenty of cutscenes. Most characters are beautifully drawn, but do suffer from the one problem inherent in Vanillaware games, in that there are a scant few different poses and facial features, so you will see a lot of the same “papercut” style animations through the entire game. There is the option to have Japanese or English voiceovers, so you can tailor the game to your preferences.
GrimGrimoire OnceMore takes the depth of a computer real-time strategy game and drops it onto consoles rather well. I’d love to see it actually be on PC, where a mouse and keyboard would really benefit, but for what it is it plays very well. The visual novel pieces are colorful and fun, with bright, large sprites and intriguing story with quality voice acting. GrimGrimoire OnceMore is a pleasant return to form for an early Vanillaware title.
Pros:
-Beautiful artwork
-Improved control schemes and new gameplay mechanics
-User friendly mechanics make it easier to squeeze in a game
-A wonderful combination of RTS and visual novel
Cons:
-Still a difficult thing to port an RTS to a controller
-You can struggle getting exactly the units you want to move selected
-One or two wrong moves may effect you further down the road
Special thanks to NIS America and Vanillaware for providing a code for review!