Grimoire is a dungeon crawling RPG with grid-based movement and phase-based combat. it's not only a love letter to games like Wizardry 7 and Lands of Lore, but also a great game on its own. in Grimoire your party of 8 self-created or premade heroes (consisting of vampires, drakes, giants, saurians, fairies etc.) are on an epic quest to restore peace in the fairtytale-like world of Hyperborea. you'll explore a vast open world made up of lush forests, dangerous dungeons, water areas, mountains and multiple towns and you'll fight tons of challenging enemies. just like in the good old RPGs, which this game draws inspiration from, you also have to solve intricate puzzles. a game like Grimoire hasn't been released since the days of Wizardry 7 and it is a must play for every old school RPG enthusiast. this is an unironically awesome game, which I not only paid the full release price for, but I've also bought it a second time on itch, to support the single developer behind this modern 90s masterpiece. big thumbs up!
... that lacks beauty both in scenery and story. instead of telling a plot, which players can relate to in any way, KRZ constantly bores you with strange conversations and lore-dumps. if the story is neither touching nor interesting, why even bother? the surroundings are almost always grey, dull and too industrial for my taste. I never found myself thinking „man, I'd like to be there!“. the world of KRZ is not an inviting one. it's not pleasant, yet it's not depressing either, it's just sort of there - as boring and as non-magical (in a romantic way) as possible. the characters, conversations and scenery are non-sensical and weird, just for the sake of being weird. if you can't relate to the characters, don't like them and don't find what they're saying or doing interesting, why waste any time on them? at some points KRZ shows a sudden glimpse of beauty, like the scene with Conway and Lysette at the breakfast table, or the other scene in the bar, during which the player can choose the lyrics of the song that is being sung. not only are those moments super rare, they're also over in a hearbeat and the game returns to its usual boring, dull self. I've bought KRZ the same day it was released, but initially I had decided not to play it, until the 5 episodes are available. but after almost 7 years of waiting I've finally had enough and started my first, and most likely only, playthrough two days ago. tbh I'm not even sure if I will bother to play the last episode, if/when it gets released - to me, this game was a waste of time. speaking of time: I've left this game running in the background for a total of 3 hours. sometimes I had to take breaks, this game was literally draining the power from my body. KRZ only saves your progress after scene changes - some of those scenes are way too long and usually it's these long ones, that like to bombard you with endless walls of text, which are often times just confusing and annoying to read.
