Grimoire Thread

[Abu Antar]

Does the game allow saving at any time? Or is it checkpointed somehow?

Save anywhere.

 

[flinar]

Another update.

This game is brutal at the start. Just about every enemy is capable of one-shot killing a level-one party member, and the adventurers don't have enough skills or items to strategies in any significant way. I generally don't like save scumming, but it seems necessary in this case. After a few evenings of starting over, I managed to push through to level 3 and 4 by saving before each combat encounter and rest action.

Things are going a bit more smoothly now. Party members have additional spells, they hit more often, and the have enough inventory items that everyone generally gets to do something useful.

Last night I managed to slay the main boss of Aquavia. This may be the intended first adventure, and is a good introduction to the game. I like how the map is laid out logically rather than it feeling like a maze. The map included a simple story, a mini-boss, and a few puzzles. It also introduced the concept of using items to

...

find hidden areas and to help defeat the boss

.

 

[Lady Error]

I don't know if I should say this, but unarmed attacks of some races are much more effective in the beginning than the stick weapons you start with.

Makes the beginning much less brutal.

 

[flinar]

I don't know if I should say this, but unarmed attacks of some races are much more effective in the beginning than the stick weapons you start with.

Makes the beginning much less brutal.

I read that in the start guide you posted for me. Having stronger attacks at the start would have helped somewhat. Character effectiveness seems to double after attaining the first level up, so its only an issue for the first hour or so.

 

[flinar]

I've may have wandered into a Twilight Zone episode.

 

[Dorateen]

This game is brutal at the start. Just about every enemy is capable of one-shot killing a level-one party member

Thus, making your forum avatar highly appropriate.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Game might gets easier with more level-up, but there might still be some surprises like some weird mosquitos that suddenly wiped out my team.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Hate to set off another round of whining by the butt-hurt, but as of today Grimoire has sold over 40,000 copies all venues. About 20,000 of those are heavily discounted but sales nonetheless. That's a substantial success for an indie title.

The only reason that Grimoire does not have an overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam is that a cult of the woke has made it their job to study the page religiously for almost 6 years on rotating 24/7 shifts and whenever the rating has gone over 70% they have poured in to add negative reviews to drive the rating back down. Some of the reviewers have bought the game under multiple accounts and then refunded it after letting it run for 20 minutes. This is what they call a life and as you can imagine, these people were not on the verge of solving the cold fusion problem when Grimoire was released. Most of them are asthmatic autists who live in a trailer park and spend their whole day on the taxpayer's largesse making a career out of tracking down any positive mention of the game and seizing upon it as an opportunity to tell people I am the next Hitler and also Jeffrey Dahmer. Their moms are usually in the front of the trailer all day performing for their OnlyFans subscribers and feeding the cages of gerbils and hamsters stacked to the ceiling they keep handy to complement their streaming services.

Grimoire continues to earn a respectable daily on GOG and Steam long after other RPGs have trickled to an average of zero sales a month. This may be due to the fact it is one of the best blobbers ever written, right up there with CDS 7, Lands of Lore, EOB, Might & Magic and Wiz 6. The game is driven entirely by word-of-mouth and has scarcely even had any publicity done for it since it was released. It continues to simply be a game that one connoisseur tells another monacle-wearer about and they purchase a copy based on that recommendation. With promotional publicity in advance as a real enterprise support function, I have no doubt that Grimoire could have sold 100,000 copies easily.

I don't know about my other blobbers, it's uncertain how well they will do, but I predict over a quarter million sales of Grimoire II : Stones of Arnhem when it is released, probably in the first three months.

 

[Viata]

This may be due to the fact it is one of the best blobbers ever written, right up there with CDS 7, Lands of Lore, EOB, Might & Magic and Wiz 6.

 

[Skinwalker]

Grimoire II : Stones of Arnhem

Did you make sure to include all the penis and anus monsters?

 

[Lady Error]

The Grimoire Wiki is online again:

https://grimoirewiki.neocities.org

 

[unseeingeye]

Thank you very much for keeping that information accessible, Lady Error.

And Cleveland Mark Blakemore I am just today determined to see the game through, and to post my review of the game on Steam. I almost never leave reviews on Steam but then the majority of the games I play are from the 80s and early 90s and so there really isn't much of a point, but I also don't like to leave reviews until after I finish a game, which is why I've held off on posting one for Grimoire. The last time I was geared up to immerse myself fully into this game and attempt to explore it mechanically and conceptually as comprehensively as possible I ended up getting sidetracked with some stressful situations and I once again fell off entirely from gaming and devoted whatever free time I could secure between my immediate family and work to my history studies. Lately I've been trying to come back and most certainly feel enthusiastic all over again; I've been updating my emulation library and setting up configurations to run some games I have in mind to play in the near future, but as I was going through my physical game boxes to gather up manuals, maps, clue books &c for my upcoming games I came across my boxes for Wizardry 6 and 7 and once again became overwhelmed with the divine fervor of a religious enthousiasmos. I've got my Gold Box games all set up with the Gold Box Companion including custom launchers for both Buck Rogers games (with the appropriately retitled pdf copies of the Log books, Rule books and Clue books in the requisite folder for GBC instant access), I've got my Eye of the Beholder remake for Commodore 64 configured as a custom launcher for Vice emulating the C128 for the dual monitor display with automap support, and I've got the Wizardry 6 remake by dforatae in the Wizardry 7 engine ready to go with the most recent update.

But then I remembered about Grimoire, and everything is taking a back seat for now. See I've never actually beaten Wizardry 7, and it has been a goal of mine for so many years that I've continually pushed off as the stresses of life accumulate. And my feeling has been that I would be doing myself a disservice were I to finish Grimoire prior to finishing Wizardry 7, a game I love and know very well, just have not cleared entirely yet. But I've changed my mind and am going to just go for it, because from the several hours I've previously put into Grimoire I absolutely love this game. If it were only 10 hours long and I'd already seen everything it had to offer, the combat mechanics, character creation system, gorgeous viewport animations and artwork, awesome character portraits, remarkably appealing music with joyful melodic phrases that get pleasantly stuck in my mind, immaculate HUD design and party members layout, reactive text parser with interesting lore details to explore and engaging NPCs to encounter, and the many other aspects of it too numerous to detail thoroughly here, would have already justified the purchase an untold amount of times. Perhaps endlessly so, because the astonishing fact that a successor to Wizardry 7 even exists at all is a marvel so ponderous in this era of catastrophic spiritual and cultural decay that to those of us for whom this game is intended it is absolutely invaluable, an inestimable gift that I am exceedingly grateful for having an opportunity to experience. Unfortunately I only found out the game was even finished and available after the price had dropped significantly and so I believe I only paid about $10 for it, though I did buy it on GOG first and then again on Steam. I would have gladly paid $50 for it and would similarly have paid the same amount yet again to own it on both major platforms, a mere trivial sum when measured against the content of the vast majority of other games released across the past two decades that have the audacity to charge obscene amounts of money for a fraction of the content. I feel that I grossly underpaid for the game and hope to right that wrong by purchasing your next game the very moment it is released.

Suffice to say that I am supremely fond of your game Cleve, a huge fan of your work, and on another level I think your game and those you are working on are of critical importance for the preservation of a legacy of game design that has almost been entirely erased, along with so much else that has been lost beyond a point of saving. Let me just say that I probably will not even play very much more before I leave a review, because I don't think I have the patience to await actually finishing the whole game before I share my review of it on Steam, it could take me weeks if not months to work through and especially so as I tend to treat video games that are genuine works of art as I would any other such artwork, in that I immerse myself as fully into it as I possibly can, allowing myself time to reflect on it while experiencing it thoroughly rather than charging through it as fast as possible so that I can drop it and move on to the next thing. I don't want to forget or to get caught up with bullshit so I'll likely leave my review soon and then take my time to progress beyond the parts I've already seen. I already began rolling 7 new characters for a brand new party and look forward to starting a new adventure. The complex mechanics and elegant combat and leveling systems are not lost on me, I do appreciate these aspects of great CRPGs very much, but for me it is at the conceptual level, the artistic, spiritual and linguistic levels of games that elevate and fascinate me, and everything I have seen of Grimoire just nails precisely what attracts me to video games most. I'll leave off here because as usual I've gone on far too long, thank you for the game Cleve and I eagerly await whatever you do next.

 

[The_Mask]

God bless you, Cleve! Good job.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

God bless you, Cleve! Good job.

Not being sarcastic when I say I would forego every penny I have made off Grimoire (all 3 of them) just to hear some praise of it like this.

The complex mechanics and elegant combat and leveling systems are not lost on me, I do appreciate these aspects of great CRPGs very much, but for me it is at the conceptual level, the artistic, spiritual and linguistic levels of games that elevate and fascinate me, and everything I have seen of Grimoire just nails precisely what attracts me to video games most. I'll leave off here because as usual I've gone on far too long, thank you for the game Cleve and I eagerly await whatever you do next.

Thanks. It is good to know there are still people who loved the same games I did and embrace the same goals for games that I expect would engage me.

I was just looking at "EOB : Darkmoon" and thinking how utterly awesome it was and how utterly awesome it remains to this day. The first ten minutes are so evocative that once you hit the gameplay you're totally charged for what happens and in less than a minute you realize this game has seized your imagination. I own this tool Panoply from the Unity Asset Store and I bought it solely to create Darkmoon-style introductory scenes in these blobbers I am working on. It's not a high priority until the main engine is fully running but the EOB games showed me you have to create the suspension of disbelief and prep the player to believe in the world before you launch them into it. That's particularly important for a game with a lot of narrative and story like this Lovecraft blobber I am working on.

If you look at the Darkmoon trailer on the Steam site you can see at once that the games industry and "RPGs" is mainly 90% decline posing as incline when it's not. I wish Westwood had simply continued making stuff of this quality but I found everything after Lands of Lore to be extremely sad and demented - you almost feel sorry for them playing Lands of Lore II and thinking this was the best they could make after that ... it's like a high school project made by people grabbed off the street.

Lands of Lore ... Maximum Win leveraged off the original EOB ...

Lands of Lore II ... Maximum fail for infinity ... you can see the soyboys taking over Westwood at that exact moment ...

Lands of Lore II game box features a mad lunatic neckbeard soyboy gloating now that they own the franchise ... they have triumphed in the name of the decline ... mouth yawning wide in the uncontrollable impulse of the soyboy to stretch his jaws for dick on his first day in prison ...

because muh badly rendered CGI 2D is so much better than Frank Frazetta style hand drawn artwork ...

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

If you go here and look at the Ravenloft series ... compare the unearthly beauty of the 2D graphics with the primitive raytracer environment and ask yourself which would have been better to do the blobber viewport environment with. (Compare with "Black Crypt" here) This game with EOB style graphics would have been amazing.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1904560/Dungeons__Dragons_Ravenloft_Series/

Black Crypt :

 

[unseeingeye]

I am in full agreement with you Cleve, and it is astonishing to me how relatively few people involved with video games at any level appreciate the sort of game we're describing here and that you revived with Grimoire. I was just yesterday posting in the Lands of Lore thread about how I've never actually played either of the sequels because of the major changes to the presentation, and yet I consider Lands of Lore to be easily one of the greatest video games ever made, for sure within my top 10. And I also mentioned how repulsive I found that sort of FMV and early 3D graphics to be even when it was new as a child (I was born in 1985 so I can remember when this became the norm). I can remember how disappointed I was when the Bioware version of Neverwinter Nights was announced, and saw that not only was the D&D series I'd come to love becoming a multiplayer online game and moving out of 2nd edition, but that the days of environments represented by beautiful hand painted backgrounds and sprite-based characters the images of whom manifested within the theater of the mind in a manner similar to using miniatures were similarly finished. It is a different kind of style of game to the first-person party grid-based CRPGs we're talking about but the same thing happened to every kind of CRPG, and all around the same time.

To me these sorts of games offer a unique experience that is distinct from both tabletop gaming and most other computer games made to emulate the former, they are somewhere in between and it is such a shame that the few games that have been made over the past two decades in an attempt at recreating that style are lacking in some fundamental sense, almost invariably in the visual. Every game now shares the same generic 'realistic' presentation, to a point where if you put screenshots of them side by side without reference to the title it would be difficult to tell them apart. When I play a game like Wizardry and such, the visual features function as inspiration for a internal imagery that accompanies the narrative sequences, in a manner similar to that of text in a novel. Having your party represented on screen in low quality polygonal 3D models with moveable camera angles and such makes the experience more like watching a movie. The art of providing just enough visual detail to stimulate the imagination while being pleasant to look at is one that seems to have been mostly lost, and you encounter the same thing with books today as well. The vast majority of books printed these days forgo unique cover art and binding, and are printed with the same handful of ugly fonts, and don't even think about the art of the footnote, Gibbon must be rolling in his grave. What became of Westwood is very sad, where seeing their name on a box was once a guarantee of an excellent game, it later became a deterrent, just like what happened with Bethesda, Interplay, Obsidian, and so many others. Even Ubisoft used to have awesome pixel graphics adventure games, and a WAY better looking logo. Normally you could attribute most of this to the loss of motivation and creativity as people age, like what happens with a band where the genius of the music relies on the collaborative spirit of multiple people, but the replacement generations coming in have each successively gotten worse and worse with no end in sight. A game like Grimoire, or Swords and Sorcery Underworld, Legends of Amberland are extraordinarily rare glimmers of hope within a vast wasteland of garbage that makes me ashamed to be a human. By the way speaking of Eye of the Beholder and Black Crypt, I shared this photo of one of my cats in another thread here with those games haha:

 

[Lady Error]

When I play a game like Wizardry and such, the visual features function as inspiration for a internal imagery that accompanies the narrative sequences, in a manner similar to that of text in a novel.

Exactly, you nailed it.

 

[luj1]

Grimoire is among the very few truly exceptional titles of the post-Renaissance era. Grimoire, Underrail, KotC I-II, Kenshi, Brigand, Escape from the Pit and LoG.

 

[luj1]

When I play a game like Wizardry and such, the visual features function as inspiration for a internal imagery that accompanies the narrative sequences, in a manner similar to that of text in a novel.

Exactly, you nailed it.

It's called abstraction over simulation. I prefer that approach as well.

Most modern games use the opposite approach, simulation over abstraction. Voice acting, cutscenes, etc.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

When I play a game like Wizardry and such, the visual features function as inspiration for a internal imagery that accompanies the narrative sequences, in a manner similar to that of text in a novel.

Exactly, you nailed it.

It's called abstraction over simulation. I prefer that approach as well.

Most modern games use the opposite approach, simulation over abstraction. Voice acting, cutscenes, etc.

Too much realism and no abstraction, the player accepts that the game is going to replace his imagination and dream state with their own graphics and atmosphere. Turns out, computer games are decades away if ever from doing that as well as great RPGs have been doing it for years. The CGI is no replacement for your own internal dream state.

The most desirable result of immersion in the game is not the adrenalin of a casual game but the low theta wave stimulation which is identical to dreaming but with your eyes open. This won't happen in multiplayer modes and it won't happen for games that do too much to the visuals themselves. What is best is suggestion and the best feeling is hypnotic. When I play Wiz 7 or EOB 2 I lose track of time and become so engaged I forget to go to the bathroom. The world begins to seem realer to me than the real world while playing it. I don't think VR can beat this ... yet.

 

[unseeingeye]

Yea, you guys get it, and it's the main reason I come back to these forums so frequently. I registered an account here back in the early 00's but don't think I ever posted, I just lurked to read about games I hadn't heard of. I stopped being active online around 2006 and didn't return until just a few years ago, and the only reason I came back was because I somehow learned about Grimoire and at the time I just happened to be getting back into Wizardry 7. Seeing that other people feel similarly about these games made me want to engage in the conversations.

I like RPGs well enough and totally loved them as a kid, but anymore there are only a few very specific kinds of CRPGs that I truly care about, and increasingly this is being restricted to grid movement dungeon crawlers. I still very much like isometric games and love classics like the Gold Box games, but there hasn't been a single one made since Icewind Dale 2 that I truly loved. Fortunately there are so many games from the Amiga / C64 / DOS era that I missed growing up that I have no shortage of games to try, but eventually I realized no matter how deeply I search that there was only ever one single game like Wizardry 7, and until Grimoire that game was Wizardry 7, lol. Sitting down to play Grimoire and looking out through the viewport to the gorgeous world before you and hearing that mesmerizing melody that plays outdoors, checking up on your guys to make sure everyone is in good condition and equipped optimally, and preparing to venture forth into the unknown brings me a feeling of pure bliss that is practically narcotic. I've enjoyed a few games that have been made during the past several years, but Grimoire is the only game that in my adult life has inspired that sense of consciousness-expanding wonder that is otherwise only felt in childhood. The game is so evidently made in a spirit of love as an offering to the rest of us, strangers similarly suffering in a hostile world nobody asks to be born into, yet the majority of us will die having only lived in a state of perpetual consumption offering nothing in return to help others the way we've been helped. Jaded and misanthropic as I am, I still find instances of such artistic expression a cause for celebration.

My party that I'm playing with currently is my favorite so far and I think this could be the one that I go all the way with. Perhaps it isn't optimal; in fact that is almost certain, considering how complex the dynamics and racial and class variables are, but I really like them. I have a Human Berserker, a Giant Warrior, a Wolfin Ranger, a Barrower Cleric, a Drow Assassin, a Drow Mage, an Aeorb Sage, and a Human Bard. I agonized over the choices because I wanted to keep the 8th spot open to rotate for NPCs but I read online that you can recover removed party members from the Shrine of the Raptor? Also I know that my choices are not all racially optimal, I don't mind that much though. I did want very much to bring a Drake Metalsmith and a Feyfolk Necromancer that I rolled with high bonus points and hit points but I couldn't stand to part with any of the others. So many awesome choices makes it very difficult to settle even with 8 spots to fill! I love how my Drow Assassin started with a poison dagger too, that thing is amazing.. I only hope it doesn't run out of poison though, or maybe can I reapply it somehow? Either way it is a great help at the beginning, and the combat is so enjoyable. Man, when a game is this great, it hurts to realize how awful the gaming industry is considering how wonderful it could be if most people had any integrity. To quote the great Romanian aphorist Emil Cioran, or rather to restate what he would have said were he to have lived to see it, “Bach's music (and Grimoire) is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. Without Bach (and Cleve), God would be a complete second-rate figure.”

 

[jakkis]

Hey Cleve, just wanted to drop by and say I bought this on GOG, my first game purchase this decade. Props for your dedication, many a lesser man has left their magnum opus incomplete, great to see you not only managed to pull through but have kept up support over the years it's been out.

Now, anyone have any 3.0 tips? I've read a bit of this thread, manual, version logs and apparently everything cool got nerfed .

Is strength important for bashing in skulls or should I leave the giant home and pick a faster race for more attacks?

Anyone played with vamphyrs? Is it annoying to lose stats, or is it easy to get around the daytime limitations?

 

[straightedge85]

Hey Cleve, just wanted to drop by and say I bought this on GOG, my first game purchase this decade. Props for your dedication, many a lesser man has left their magnum opus incomplete, great to see you not only managed to pull through but have kept up support over the years it's been out.

Now, anyone have any 3.0 tips? I've read a bit of this thread, manual, version logs and apparently everything cool got nerfed .

Is strength important for bashing in skulls or should I leave the giant home and pick a faster race for more attacks?

Anyone played with vamphyrs? Is it annoying to lose stats, or is it easy to get around the daytime limitation

The limitation is annoying, but If you use bite attack, it will occasionally give you a permanent CON and hit point bonus. You will easily hit 150+ hp early on without multi classing Which makes starting as Vamphyr Assassin one of the best tank in the game(Not bad resistance even in day light thanks to 1.8x bonus).

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Hey Cleve, just wanted to drop by and say I bought this on GOG, my first game purchase this decade. Props for your dedication, many a lesser man has left their magnum opus incomplete, great to see you not only managed to pull through but have kept up support over the years it's been out.

Now, anyone have any 3.0 tips? I've read a bit of this thread, manual, version logs and apparently everything cool got nerfed .

Is strength important for bashing in skulls or should I leave the giant home and pick a faster race for more attacks?

Anyone played with vamphyrs? Is it annoying to lose stats, or is it easy to get around the daytime limitation

The limitation is annoying, but If you use bite attack, it will occasionally give you a permanent CON and hit point bonus. You will easily hit 150+ hp early on without multi classing Which makes starting as Vamphyr Assassin one of the best tank in the game(Not bad resistance even in day light thanks to 1.8x bonus).

I'm amazed that more people don't discover this exploit. You can build Vamphyrs up to incredible levels very rapidly - the daylight penalty is hardly noticeable since the party spends most of their time underground in the game anyway. With some successful bite attacks and then pouring skill points into stealth you can start backstabbing for triple damage in no time.

 

[jakkis]

Thanks, was wondering about adventuring in dark places, nice to get confirmation from THE MAN.

For my "serious" attempt at a party, was thinking of an assassin already, maybe Naga, but will switch to Vamphyr. Then might stick the Naga into a back row slot, maybe sage, not many +% races for sage. Only aeörb, but heard they're annoyingly slow.