Grimoire

I would happily play this… if it's a good game. Just waiting for more beta testers and guinea piggies paying $40 a pop to test this for Cleve to check in after actually playing and finishing Grimoire. I mean, one of the best damn RPGs I ever played was a blobber (Dragon Wars). Of course that was in 1988, so…

Just need to be a bit patient. The game has never had a beta, so it is hardly surprising that there are bugs. Probably best to think of it as an early access game and not get too excited if it crashes and borks your save games. But underneath that it looks like there is a very good game trying to get out. Cleve is a bit up against the wall right now, since he has to fix the bugs which make the game unplayable - but quick fixes that are not tested will likely add further bugs. It is a tricky process.

Yeah anyone that thinks this game was good to go right out of the box was sadly mistaken. I'll give it a go once the obligatory thirty or so patches have landed.

This game plays like absolute ass. Its garbage. It needs several dozen patches.

Kelefane said:

This game plays like absolute ass. Its garbage. It needs several dozen patches.

Click to expand...

Probably is a scam then. Shame.

So many people defending a bug-ridden game. The hypocrisy is strong.

Yeah, the problem with this industry is the greedy developers who rush a game to market before its finished!

Lucky Day said:

Yeah, the problem with this industry is the greedy developers who rush a game to market before its finished!

Click to expand...

If Grimoire was rushed then we would all be dead for 100 years if he took his time. Anyone that thinks he will have 30 patches for this game is crazy

Roq said:

Just need to be a bit patient. The game has never had a beta, so it is hardly surprising that there are bugs. Probably best to think of it as an early access game and not get too excited if it crashes and borks your save games.

Click to expand...

I was one of those foolish enough to back the original IndieGoGo, having known nothing of Cleve at the time, and the perks were supposed to include beta access to assist while we waited, but we didn't even get the exclusive backer demo. Only a mental giant like Cleve could squander the resources like a pool of backers that already paid and want to assist in debugging. His contempt for the backers became quickly apparent in his interaction and communications that he later scrubbed from the site (e.g. kinda like he does now on Steam). Nope, let's just wait 4.5 years, forego Early Access, and use the full game launch as a beta with daily patches to minor / potentially game breaking bugs…

Once Cleve announced refunds last year, I made the request, immediately was converted to REFUNDED to lock my account and commenting ability, and just four short months and countless support tickets later, I received a 70% refund with the statement that IndieGoGo is for scams and be happy with what I got… Oh and his charming PayPal comment "Die in a Fire!". Still waiting on my FULL refund or a backer key… I sure its still coming from an honest *neanderthal* like Cleve…

Glazunov over in the GOG forums supposedly had access to the original pre-release code he sent out years ago and mentioned that the release he is playing is little changed except some art assets and support for newer OSes… I guess. You gotta love the fanboys defending issues like the scaling / mouse lag with solutions like just set your desktop resolution to 1024x768, then launch in fullscreen mode… In other news, Q: How do you bring and object into close focus? A: Just move your head closer to the object…

If the part about little being changed is true, one has to wonder if Cleve is actually capable of altering the code at this point. Then you have to wonder if any work was done on the game ever. Then as a 3rd wandering point, I wonder if the game really was a prototype stolen/whatever from Sir-tech.

At least all this speculation and nonsense is kind of entertaining and fun. I'll go back to playing real games by real developers.

Although before the game finally came out places like the GOG forum were rife with speculation that "there's only the superdemo, the rest of the game doesn't exist". So goalposts do seem to have shifted a bit for Cleve's many critics.

Mercutio said:

Although before the game finally came out places like the GOG forum were rife with speculation that "there's only the superdemo, the rest of the game doesn't exist". So goalposts do seem to have shifted a bit for Cleve's many critics.

Click to expand...

There were at least two on RPGCodex that Cleve acknowledged had played the pre-release code from the early 2000s, but it got rougher the further in they went. In fact I think they had to use debug features to even complete the game, so I don't think the full game is in question just how polished / actually completable without XX patches…

Hastar said:

Anyone that thinks he will have 30 patches for this game is crazy

Click to expand...

He will have plenty more patches in no time. Already released a dozen of them.

Saw someone on the Codex has finished the game. So it's doable.

Myrthos said:

There are three positive reviews of people playing it for less than an hour…

Click to expand...

There are far more Grimoire-related threads opened here than positive reviews

Mostly Positive on Steam right now. Some of the reviews actually sound promising. Crazy. Still waiting for someone who plays for a lot of hours to let me know it's a finished game first.

I haven't actually played it (and I'm not planning to anytime soon), but I've read enough on the Steam forums to be pretty sure that there are people who have finished it. People are saying it took them about 80 hours for 100% completion, which it quite a bit of play time even if it's nowhere close to Cleve's 600 hour claim. It also sounds like as well as bards, there are a few other abilities that are wildly overpowered, and which make most fights trivial. I think that would annoy me a lot, but I know some other people might not care so much.

But ultimately it sounds like it's a complete game. You might run into a lot of bugs and other issues in the process of finishing it, but you can still finish it.

I'm about 21hrs in and still in the opening area. Given the number of maps in the game it's safe to say it's going to take me a lot longer than 80hrs to beat. I'm a slow gamer though, and I don't claim to be any good at blobbers!

There are definitely balance issues. He's nerfed a bard exploit but their music still seem to work on 95% of creatures 100% of the time (with 5% seemingly immune). I'm now also finding my Beserker to be a bit OP - he's now outdamaging other party members by a mile. Recruitable NPCs have insanely high stats. AoE spells can do crazy damage as well.

He says he's going to fix this stuff. I'm having fun with it anyway - the map design and puzzles are really well done, and I'm still struggling with some battles so even a couple of OP characters haven't solved everything for me. Like I said though, I don't claim to be great at blobbers!

Basically, if balance is an issue for you it's worth waiting for patches. They do seem to be happening - Steam downloads Grimoire updates on occasion, and he's already nerfed some stuff. How long it will take to completely balance is anyone's guess of course!

Fluent said:

Mostly Positive on Steam right now. Some of the reviews actually sound promising. Crazy. Still waiting for someone who plays for a lot of hours to let me know it's a finished game first.

Click to expand...

Cleve claims the game is 600 hour long. Assuming he's correct, then you (we) shall look for reviews whose reviewers played the game an amount of hours sitting between Superdemo's length and 600 hours.

Any amount of game time played below Superdemo's number of hours and you (we) can't surely tell if the game is really really complete.

As with most games of this type, people have different playstyles. Saw one person who has spent over 100hrs on 10% of the game (no use of exploits, no asking for help with puzzles) and someone else who spent 90 hours to finish the game (but missed a few areas and made use of OP exploits most of which have since been closed).

Number of hours doesn't really bother me once something gets above 40 or 50 hours, as it's a substantial game at that point. I see some people publish games on Steam which are only 4/5 hours long which is a joke.