Grimoire - The Campaign is Over. Time For a New one

Tried it on my work PC - and it ran just fine. That's not a bad start :)

It looks pretty much like advertised - but I only spent a few minutes. The "turn" animation is awful (I actually prefer pure step-by-step) - but otherwise it looks pretty much like a game from 20 years ago.

I see the potential for lots of depth - but considering his track record, I also expect an insane amount of bugs or poorly implemented features.

That said, he actually released the demo - and that's something.
 
Tried it for about 20 minutes. It's definitely not for me.

He seriously needs to implement some type of auto-battle system for weaker enemies or at least have the option to repeat your orders from the previous round. I found it annoying to have to manually click through all 8 characters every round just to kill some worms.

Art style isn't bad though, and I actually quite like the music in a nostalgic way. This might have been a hit in the 90s.
 
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From a quick look this seems like a meaty spiritual successor to Wizardry 7, potentially.
The "turn" animation is awful (I actually prefer pure step-by-step)
Not sure if redundant, but you can switch to step-by-step in the configuration menu.
He seriously needs to implement some type of auto-battle system for weaker enemies or at least have the option to repeat your orders from the previous round. I found it annoying to have to manually click through all 8 characters every round just to kill some worms.
If you hold enter after starting each round it goes much faster. Clicking on "battle" while holding enter will result in a glitch though. Speaking of which, I suspect the demo (and obviously the whole game) will need a lot of bugfixing/beta testing.
 
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Not sure if redundant, but you can switch to step-by-step in the configuration menu.

Oh, ok.

Didn't check much - to be honest.

I don't think the game is for me, really, but it's nice to know I can play it the way I'd prefer.
 
Speaking of which, I suspect the demo (and obviously the whole game) will need a lot of bugfixing/beta testing.

Can't take more than another decade or two, right? ;)

I know, I know - obvious joke is obvious. :)
I'll give it a spin tonight probably.
 
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He seriously needs to implement some type of auto-battle system for weaker enemies or at least have the option to repeat your orders from the previous round. I found it annoying to have to manually click through all 8 characters every round just to kill some worms.
In addition to the enter key speedup thing DeepO mentioned, I'm pretty sure it repeats the same orders automatically, unless you change them or if an order becomes not possible (lack of mana, item, etc). You do have to hit the Battle button to start each fight though. If you hit the Review button you'll see the current list of orders. Only those who are blank need to be re-assigned.

Before I figured that out, my reaction was like yours - it seemed way too tedious. But even knowing how it works, I wish the command buttons for each character were clustered together - moving the mouse all over the screen to assign actions is not efficient UI design.
 
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Aside from some UI inefficiencies (addressed directly above - thanks for the tips, Myrkel), this is right up my alley. I think it looks great, and aside from some clunkiness, plays well. I've only played for about 20 minutes, so I can't make a judgement about much else.

I've probably missed something somewhere, but anyone know the likely size of the demo in terms of time?
 
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I'm looking forward to some more detailed impressions. If the game mechanics actually work and, indeed, if the game as a whole "works" - I just might give it a real go.
 
Their appears to be a huge amount of clunkiness in the UI in general, although sometimes it's hard to know if I'm just doing something inefficiently due to the complete lack of documentation about how anything works. For example it does not appear that you can look at the stats of an already identified items without going through a several click process, where you scroll through a character's list of abilities, click on assay, then open up inventory, find the item, and click on it. It doesn't appear that there is anything as simple as just right clicking to see stats or anything like that. But then maybe there is a simpler way hidden somewhere, took me awhile to even figure that method out.
 
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Anyone else having problems with the download link?

It looks like the download page comes up, then a split second later I get a "whoops!" screen with a Bing prompt.

Tried it in Firefox and IE.
 
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Eh, never mind. I assume it was pulled because of the massive bug count.
 
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You can automate many things in the game, but it takes time to figure out how. Have you discovered 'fastwalking' yet, for example? The icon menu pivots and there are shortcuts available for most things unless Cleve has really changed a lot since the original beta. He's obviously disabled what little docs there used to be, but they were unfinished in the beta. I'm sure the final release will have docs. If the demo is what used to be considered the 'shareware' free section, then it will be a LONG demo.
 
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It is a bit unclear to me just how different this demo really is from the ancient bare bones demo that was released over a decade ago. It's been so long since I played that old thing that it's hard for me to make comparisons, but they do seem pretty similar. I remember that the ancient demo only fleshed out the forest, town, and maybe 1 or 2 small dungeons. Other then that it was just empty space filled with random monsters.
 
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Before you reach the first town, there are at least 2 large starter dungeons and each has several secret areas which you have to discover. Having someone with the skills to do that is essential in the game as are climbing and swimming which everyone needs. However, like Wizardry, using skills increases/improves them!!
 
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Yeah I think the two starter dungeons from the ancient beta. There was one really early on, and another with some kind of a....turtle(?) that you had to ride over the water. I think I remember some hidden areas, but I don't remember if you needed skills to access them or not.
 
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The current buzz is that the game appears to work for the most part on XP with just a few random problems, but that it is crashing frequently on Win7 64. This happens replicably on my setup when the game freezes at the start of the second combat encounter. The new demo release, 1.2, this morning, hasn't made any difference to the problem on my machine.
 
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It was replaced by this one:

http://www.filedropper.com/grimdemoinstallerv11

Way fewer crashes, but still some being reported. Another version due out tomorrow with work on folder permissions (suspected of being the cause of most if not all remaining bugs).

I get the issue with that one too. I get the Filedropper screen for a split second, then it jumps to the Bling page.

Very strange why I seem to be the only one ...
 
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