PaulAllen

Absolutely phenomenal game, optimises everything good about the souls series in one game, and removes most of the negatives, the closest to a perfect game in my opinion. Does every aspect of being a game as well as I have seen. KBAM support is very poor so essentially requires a controller but is a non issue in terms of its actual merits as a game. 10/10 as it is the closest thing to perfect a game can get

Grime is to put it simply a game that is just 'quite decent', not really awful in any aspect but also, not extremely outstanding in any way either. To start, the combat. The combat is functional but not ground breaking by any means. As with most games considered 'souls like' it basically features the 2 key parts of the combat, a dodge and a parry. Nothing is really wrong with this, the parry is extremely easy to hit on most enemies but this is offset by enemies having health bars split into fractions, some parts can be full parried to delete the whole segment and some are armoured and because of that the attack they throw out is just deflected and not fully parried, an upgrade is required for it to deal damage, but still wont hurt as much as a full parry. The combat is solid if in a situation where you are fighting just one enemy, but later in the game you get bombarded with enemies, and sometimes even have ranged enemies beyond the bounds of your screen hurling things at you, which is just annoying. It seems in development of the combat system it wasnt really considered that you may not just be in a perpetual one versus one situation, and due to that the combat when overwhelmed is quite poor. As for bossfights they are generally okay, some a bit too simple, with only 4-5 moves, some so extremely complex you could convince me they just randomly generate moves. However exploiting parries and the 'burst lantern' weapon trivialise all but the last bosses. Considering it appears combat is the main focus of the game, mediocre combat is a real big downside. The story of the game is absolutely miserable, i tried my very hardest to actually focus on what was going on, but it all felt so unengaging and generic. It seems like the developers tried to go for the dark souls/bloodborne story telling route of a more ambiguous story, however unlike those games there aren't item descriptions in abundance to fill in the blanks, and because the world of the game is uninspired and drab looking, it makes the player far less interested in the areas they are exploring, at least in my experience. The platforming in the game is simplistic, but fun. The use of momentum from a moving platform to jump higher or further was a novel idea, when it functioned, and was the most innovative idea in the game from my perspective. Every other part of the platforming was exactly what is expected of a metroidvania. Do big jump, do long dash, grapple thing. Getting to the 'when it functioned' part, this game has glitches, not cyberpunk 2077 esque, but still a bit more frequent than you'd hope to see from a mostly linear 2d game. Sometimes you'd fall through the world, sometimes the game would reposition you after a fall into your instant death. Just more minor bugs overall but quite disruptive in gameplay. Most of the glitches were to do with platforming though so didn't ruin any boss fights for me. A final note is about the item stat requirements. In this game you can level health, force (stamina), strength, dexterity, and opulence (magic stat). You level with 'mass' which is basically souls. by the end of the game it is likely your character will be around level 55 ish. The issue with item level requirements is a lot of the weapons will literally require you to have 30-35 of your stat points invested in purely combat stats, and to make it worse you cant respec levels, and so you'll be stuck with whatever build you go for permanently. i feel like being forced to have low health and stamina just to experience new weapons is a downside because it discourages any experimentation. I personally finished the game with 20 dex, 18 opulence, 10 strength and 8 force. Some of these high stat requirement weapons can be found earlier on in the game too, so you just have an inventory full of unusable weapons. Furthermore it is simply ungratifying to find a new weapon just to know there is a no chance you can use it for at least 15 or more levels, which is an hour or two of game time away. Most of the weapons in the game you find require at least 20 of some stat, and often require more than one stat investment. For example 8 dex 17 opulence. Meaning going for a single stat build is really miserable and you will not be able to use many different weapons through the run. Overall, Grime is a sort of okay game. I've pointed out lots of negatives, but they don't make the game totally unenjoyable. The combat is bareable, platforming fun, story awful. That's why i cant justify giving the game any more than a 5, it is just unexceptional, another 'metroidvania souls like' game, that just isn't anything great.