GrimGrimoire OnceMore Review (PS5)

GrimGrimoire is a game I have not heard about in years. So, when NIS America announced it would be remastering the game and releasing it as GrimGrimoire OnceMore, I was excited to see more about what all the buzz was about.

Game Name: GrimGrimoire OnceMore
Platform(s): PS4,PS5 (Reviewed), Nintendo Switch
Publisher(s): NIS America
Developer(s): Vanillaware
Release Date: April 4th, 2023
Price: $49.99

Vanillaware is known as a unique developer with great stories that adds to its unique gameplay mechanics. GrimGrimoire OnceMore is another title that fits that bill under the Vanillaware umbrella, and it is something truly unique in the library. The game takes place mostly in a tower in a magical world where you are in the shoes of Lillet Blan, a new Witch in training who wants to become a full-fledged Witch. After five days, the Archmage wakes up and destroys the tower and all the teachers and students inside. Right before she is about to get killed, she wakes up on her first day and has to put the pieces together on how the Archmage wakes up and tries to thwart it.

Learning Your Grimoire

The gameplay loop of GrimGrimoire OnceMore is easy to understand. You have a lesson per day with dramatic scenes before and after the lesson. The lessons take place as levels and help expand on learning more and more about using specific grimoires. The gameplay of GrimGrimoire is akin to a console RTS. You have small units that gather resources, which allow you to summon more units or runes. Runes allow you to upgrade units, and unlock more things you can summon or summon more units. Each grimoire has access to a variety of units. There are four main specialties in these grimoires. Glamour summons fairies and more mystical creatures, Necromancy allows you to use undead units, Sorcery lets you use more demonic units, or Alchemy allows you to summon alchemical creations. They all have strengths and weaknesses. Each level has a clear objective, though some can be quite difficult without proper preparations. They range from destroying all enemy runes on the map, surviving a limited amount of time, or destroying specific runes or units on the map.

All resources you have available is Mana and summon limit. You can use your specialized units, like elves, to gather mana from mana crystals. To gain more usage from specific grimoires requires upgrading them with points you get after every level. Upgrades include new units, more stats on units, or more skills for the units you can already summon. You can usually use all four branches of grimoires in the levels, but to get the most use of them, try to spread out your units outside of just one area. Each specialty of grimoire comes with a specific unit that gathers mana, and they can not gather mana from a crystal being used by a different branch of grimoire units. One of the best things about winning levels is getting an official artwork in the game to pop up.

Beautiful World All in One Tower

For a game that was initially a PlayStation 2 title, GrimGrimoire OnceMore, looks stunning. They crafted this game with a lot of love, if the art and the art direction are anything to go by. The art of this game is what prompted NIS in Japan to do publishing for studios that were outside their in-house development studios, and I honestly don’t blame them for that. It is all 2D hand-drawn art with a lot of style and ambiance in every character and background.

Remastering the Magic

GrimGrimoire OnceMore adds a bit to the original PS2 entry that brings it to the modern era. The first part you will notice is the resolution bump. I played the game on PS5 with a 4K tv, and it was mystifying. I loved how the screen looks with a new screen resolution that fits the more modern aspect ratio. If there was a game that should be an example of why remastering should exist in an era populated with many modern emulators on modern devices, it is this one. It seems like they put a lot of love into recreating this game.

Another improvement is that there is a brand new set of voiceovers included in the story of the game, and it sounds superb. A big change that is noticed by veterans of the game is that there is a speed-up button during combat. This button is a godsend as you can pause the game, look at the map, initiate the orders to the units you want, and then un-pause and speed up the gameplay. It speeds up some of the more lengthy levels. Some without the speed-up would take hours by themselves, but with it, they won’t take even an hour to finish.

That does have some bad news associated with it, though. If you are a veteran and know what you need to do to finish a level and speed up the game this way, you can finish the game in a matter of hours… in my case, it was five hours to complete the story. Luckily they also added a higher difficulty setting to help accommodate this change. There are trial stages outside the story you can do to gain more points and give yourself a challenge. This adds a lot of replayability. Doing the trial stages gives you more artwork, that’s a reason to finish them in themselves.

Overall

Overall if you are a big fan of GrimGrimoire on the PS2 and wanted a more definitive experience, then you found it. It is also a great way to try out the game if you haven’t played or even heard of it before. Though, if you are someone who only wants to play for the story, you might want to wait for a discount, as the new features of this version make it a much shorter experience. The experience of playing GrimGrimoire OnceMore is a positive and satisfying one with lots of things you can unlock and a variety of ways you can play the game based on how much you like to customize your base layouts. I would recommend trying out the demo if you like the console RTS approach to gameplay.

GrimGrimoire OnceMore releases on April 4th, 2023, for the PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch. (Pity there is no PC version, as this game screams mouse and keyboard)

Review Disclosure Statement: GrimGrimoire OnceMore was provided to us by NIS America for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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