I got it couple of years ago - cost me less than a dollar. I managed to launch it once or twice, but I will probably leave this game brew in my GOG library for a while, because first I'd like to remember how it was to play games similar to it - like, I need to revisit Might and Magic titles. I wanted to buy some Wizardry games on GOG as well but they are too expensive...
I'm really glad a lot of people seem to be loving it, though. It feels like a passion project where a lot of heart was put into it, but I honestly don't know anything about the game's creator other than the fact he's kind of a lunatic, LOL.
I need to get into this classic grid RPG mood, recently I've been playing more of those newer titles and I am sick of restarting all the time.
It is definitely worth the attention it demands, and has been as enjoyable to me as Wizardry 7 has, something I never thought I'd be able to say about another game.
I like many different kinds of CRPGs but Wizardry 7 is for me the overall best experience I've ever had, and for another game to deliver the same kind of addictive combat and party leveling mechanics, the same open exploration of a surreal, dreamlike wonderland, it is a precious and rare thing to cherish. Moving through Crowl or the Spirit Caves reminds me very much of the melancholic atmosphere imbued within the environs of Wizardry 7, the mostly deserted streets and empty buildings of what was apparently once a thriving community established by a high civilization, and the strange Gigersque caverns haunted by undead creatures is very reminiscent of the horrors waiting below ground in the former game.
The YouTuber Michael Snow has a video essay on Wizardry 7 that accurately describes the impressions that game have made on me and I assume many others; he describes the actual gameplay as a kind of "archaeological" mode wherein rather than have the player follow a clear narrative the player instead begins totally lost and clueless about what to do and has to explore the world to uncover its history, only having the actual point of the games narrative slowly make itself apparent, but meanwhile the experience of discovery is itself the actual fun. He compares it to the way the Demons and Dark Souls games are explored and I fully agree with this comparison. Grimoire has music going fairly consistently (and it is wonderful!), and is very brightly colored, where Wizardry 7 colors are relatively muted and it is remarkably silent with gusts of wind the only regular sound (that for me helps to elaborate the flowing of my own imaginative recreation of what is only suggested on screen), yet Grimoire still manages to relay very much the same brilliant kind of atmosphere and I really can't say enough good things about it.
No matter how much time seems to go by, I always find myself going back to replay games that have always been masterpieces, the Gold Box games, the Wizardry series, Daggerfall, Might and Magic series, Fallout 1, Baldur's Gate 1, etc. It is ultra rare that a game comes out for many years now that just completely absorbs my attention, and so far a game like Grimoire to have come along during the past decade is unbelievably fortunate. I know there are a few games that are kind of similar that are being made, like The Darkness Below and Mystic Land, and I really enjoy the recent game Islands of the Caliph, it really brings me joy to know that there are capable people out there who care enough about the experience such games offer to go about making new ones.
