Being a fan of the Real Time Strategy genre is tough. Over the last few years we have been presented, or perhaps I should say assaulted, with clone after clone of generic RTS titles. Oh sure, they’re not necessarily bad games, but they aren’t representative of anything new, either, only serving to provide something fresh in the form of a new franchise or storyline continuation from a previously released game. Developer Vanillaware has accomplished what I would have sworn was the impossible; created a new way to play RTS games. Vanillaware is probably known among most in the United States as the developer of Odin Sphere, a game which shares several things in common with, their latest title, GrimGrimoire, which I will now tell you about!

Lilly Potter?

Put simply, GrimGrimoire is a 2-D, sprite-based RTS game. This is significant for two reasons. Firstly, in typical Vanillaware style, the game features absolutely gorgeous artwork, similar in both style and fantasticality [Is that even a word? – ED] to Odin Sphere. Characters are illustrated with luscious color schemes and flowing lines, and environment artwork is similarly well designed. The second reason for the game’s significance is that Vanillaware has managed to preserve the fundamental mechanics of PC RTS titles in a 2-D console game. This is nothing short of a monumental achievement in terms of cross-platform game design, and it warms my heart to see that there are a few developers and publishers in Japan both willing to try something new and publish it in the American market, where originality and innovation aren’t as valued.

As you start playing GrimGrimoire, you may be caught off guard by its rather blatant use of established material from the first book of the Harry Potter series, or at least, its obvious influence from such material. The player takes the role of Lillet Blan, a young student of magic just enrolling in a prestigious magic school, the Tower of the Silver Star. The School’s most powerful professor, Gammel Dore, is charged with defending the powerful Philosopher’s Stone from the forces of evil. While all of this may sound suspiciously similar, the similarities end there.
 

As Lillet proceeds through her first four days of class (basically a tutorial), she’s awoken on the fifth to learn that everyone in the school has been massacred. Before she succumbs to the demonic forces attacking the tower, she is propelled back in time to the night of her arrival at the school, retaining all of the knowledge she attained over the last four days, including her newly acquired magical abilities. The story continues in this fashion, with Lillet being sent back in time every five days, uncovering more mysteries and truths than she’d initially dared hope. If this sounds a lot like Bill Murray’s Ground Hog Day – you’re right – only this is a Japanese RTS – ahem.

GrimGrimouire is played on a single flat plane broken up by two dozen or so floors in descending and ascending planes, with the player usually starting somewhere around the middle. In this manner, Vanillaware was able to create an expansive playfield while maintaining its novel two-dimensional approach to the genre. All of the fundamental gameplay mechanics of RTS games are present; resource nodes to collect mana (the game’s currency), harvester units that both collect mana and have limited build capabilities, fog-of-war to shroud the map, defensive turrets, etc.

Back to School

GrimGrimoire’s tech tree is divided up into four schools of magic in a rock-paper-scissors arrangement, each having inherent strengths and weaknesses to the corresponding magical school. These four schools, Glamour, Necromancy, Sorcery, and Alchemy, have three spell books, or grimoires, each, and learning the contents of them allow for the summoning of more powerful units. Glamour magic is capable of summoning nature-oriented creatures such as elves, fairies, and unicorns. Necromancy magic is capable of summoning astral units, like undead knights and ghosts, which cannot be harmed by physical attacks unless brought into the physical realm with special abilities. Sorcery magic is the stuff of hellfire, enabling the player to summon demons, imps, and powerful dragons into the fray. Finally, Alchemy magic, probably the most powerful of the four, allows the player to summon monstrous creatures with powerful ranged attacks, like homunculi, golems, and fearsome chimera.

Gameplay itself runs pretty much like any other RTS; find resource nodes, build some harvesters, earn some cash, construct some units, and (hopefully) kick some ass. The more mana you collect and enemies you kill, the more upgrades you’ll have available to strengthen your characters during that level.

It’s the rock-paper-scissors design that adds difficulty to the game’s many levels, meaning that even the most powerful units have their weak points, and it’s important to combine units of all four schools of magic to supplement any weaknesses the CPU might try to exploit. Each of the game’s levels provides a different challenge the farther in you go. Unfortunately, it’s the level design which leads to the game’s first disappointing aspect; a general lack of level diversity.

Every single level of the game, every one, features the same cut-away medieval backdrop and art. The only difference between each stage is how the stairs are arranged and how barriers and gaps are placed across each section of floor. Considering the effort Vanillaware went to produce the artwork, elegant control scheme and thoughtful creature concepts, why they felt a lackluster job on level design was required is up to anyone’s guess. The least they could have done is provided different level backdrops. While it’s not a crippling problem, and the game plays fine and looks gorgeous it speaks to either a lack of effort or a forced publishing of the title.
 

On a Brobdingnagian Scale?

GrimGrimoire features a robust assortment of English-speaking voice actors to provide a full dialogue track during the story sequences. However, in classic Vanillaware style, they have thoughtfully included the complete, brilliant Japanese voice track in the game, which earns them points bordering on the brobdingnagian  [look it up! – ED] scale. The player can switch between the dialogue tracks at any point during the course of the game, which is fortunate for those of us that are unable to appreciate the inner-ear damaging “talent” of most American voice actors.

On a straight play-through, the game will probably take you about twenty to twenty five hours to complete. Of course, once you beat a certain mission you can always return to that stage, and there are usually about five bonus missions in every chapter, as well. Considering the length of time some of the bonus missions take to complete, it could theoretically take a player several hours to complete the tutorial section alone. In other words, there’s a lot to do!

The game is rated E for everyone, but it’s seriously doubtful if anyone in their teens or below would have the patience to play through this entire game. GrimGrimoire is quite possibly the most innovative take on the real time strategy genre in years. Not only that, but it’s a fun and sufficiently diverse experience that simply exudes style and creativity, that hopefully everyone, including non RTS fans, can enjoy.