Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

[Prime Junta]

Excellent review. The ability to invoke Butthurt Roguey is a nice bonus.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

Mentioned by others probably

food can be used as a cheap vitality boost during combat, so useless, no

Selecting a spell or other action is actually easy with the dropdown list. I see this in yt playthroughs too, players continously clicking on the arrows....that is 25 hours of your 600 right there. And if you want to cast after that only 1 click will lead you to the spell arsenal. Amazing. (Admittedly the ui can use some enhanced ergonomics)

 

[Iznaliu]

Really got to me after a while.

"There's" also functions as a contraction of "there are" in all but the most formal and stuffy settings.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Review does not confirm or deny presence of ride-able turtles. FAIL.

There are two ride-able turtles.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'll read the rest of it today but I'll just repost two things I highlighted in the content forum which I think are very silly to complain about in the way this revioo does:

first

More than just the numbers that pop up during combat, the enemies make little sense. Each area has an encounter table from which it draws enemies, and those can vary A LOT - in the same area you might get a large squad of fairies that will kill half your party before you can even act; OR you can get a dumb monk that will die in the first hit. Over 60 hours in I would still get to fight weak enemies from the first areas of the game! It got to the point that sometimes I had to save-scum encounters until they gave me a reasonable enemy.

All of this is a Wizardry staple. Running into mobs of casters that murderise you in one turn with spellspam is part of the package. Being just as likely to run into said casters as into giant rats is part of the package as well.

Take Wiz 7 and the "greater wilds"/"brombadian bay" area in the southwest corner of the map - the encounter table for that one includes starter-zone-tier glow moths and vampire rooks, a little tougher glow/luna mothras and zoids, still a bit tougher vampire vultures and bantari, much tougher thraxes, and finally stuff like 5 mobs of 8 turbothraxes that all spit aoe acid or godzylli and rexx that stomp your balls for 400 damage and breathe fireballs.

In a single turn they killed three party members, charmed two, blinded two and summoned Dragonflies that kill with one attack.

lol this is just munkharama but with added dragonfly summons


second

However, here another big problem appears. During my journey I explored a massive network of 183 maps, which sounds awesome - until you have to backtrack through them. And you'll have to do that often. I never found a teleport spell or equivalent, and the game's quick travel system is nothing but six "Moongates" that connect to each other - which are optional and very difficult to activate. I once saw a puzzle which I knew the solution was somewhere else, and to reach it I had to cross twenty maps one by one. Luckily there's an "auto-walk" system, where you point to a location on the current map and your party goes there, but I still had to do that twenty times.

i had to click the map 20 times which was a big problem, really

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

*shots fired*

 

[aratuk]

Hmm, to me this comes off as a positive review. To summarize it in a sentence I might say, "Game is enjoyable & very promising, though still needs a lot of work."

The condensed version of Felipe's thoughts, as posted to Steam, sounded much more hyperbolic. He's being evenhanded here. Encouraging, even.

Cleve seems intensely bothered if anyone other than himself points out that the game still isn't finished. But this is the helpful kind of scrutiny, and hopefully he can put it to good use.

 

[Excidium II]

Cleve seems intensely bothered if anyone other than himself points out that the game still isn't finished.

Uuuh it wasn't the content of this review that got Cleve riled up was it.

 

[aratuk]

Cleve seems intensely bothered if anyone other than himself points out that the game still isn't finished.

Uuuh it wasn't the content of this review that got Cleve riled up was it.

No, what I'm saying is that I hope his response to this review isn't similar to the massive butthurt that was his response to Felipe's earlier statement.

 

[Zeriel]

We now judge games based on how "balanced" they are. That's it. It's over. Codex is dead.

 

[Excidium II]

We now judge games based on how "balanced" they are. That's it. It's over. Codex is dead.

Are you dumb or just pretending.

 

[Zeriel]

I guess I'm dumb, since the alternative seems to be complaining about staples of dungeon crawler gameplay.

 

[Excidium II]

Nigger do you even know what balance is.

 

[Excidium II]

the review feels too short for a reportedly 80-90h long game more than two decades in development and I don't really understand why was it posted so soon instead of later this year

Yeah it's p. strange. RPG Codex content generally has a long space between submission and publishing.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Possibly this one didn't have to go through the extra step of having Infinitron crying that it's not fair to Obsidian.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

That was a good and fair review that mostly dealt with the game rather than the drama until the very end. I think the conclusion is basically 'promising, but not finished' so whether it's recommended depends on whether you believe Cleve will actually finish it. Clearly FP doesn't, which given the time in development is probably a fair judgement. I also think that it's this belief that has prompted a review now as a finished game rather than a work in progress, and that's the only issue I have with the review. While Cleve is still working on it (and he clearly is) it should have been a first look not a final review, no matter whether the game is available to buy or not. But never mind, I'm sure we'll get more reviews in time, and this is a good snapshot of the current state of the game.

I'm still waiting for a while before I play it properly. So far only 3 or so hours into it but I have some holiday next week. Personally I think it should have been early access three years ago, but this is what we've got.

 

[felipepepe]

I also think that it's this belief that has prompted a review now as a finished game rather than a work in progress, and that's the only issue I have with the review. While Cleve is still working on it (and he clearly is) it should have been a first look not a final review, no matter whether the game is available to buy or not.

Why? No other developer had this treatment. No one looked at Mass Effect: Andromeda and went "the game have several bugs and animation issues, so we'll hold our review".

All of this is a Wizardry staple. Running into mobs of casters that murderise you in one turn with spellspam is part of the package. Being just as likely to run into said casters as into giant rats is part of the package as well.

Take Wiz 7 and the "greater wilds"/"brombadian bay" area in the southwest corner of the map - the encounter table for that one includes starter-zone-tier glow moths and vampire rooks, a little tougher glow/luna mothras and zoids, still a bit tougher vampire vultures and bantari, much tougher thraxes, and finally stuff like 5 mobs of 8 turbothraxes that all spit aoe acid or godzylli and rexx that stomp your balls for 400 damage and breathe fireballs.

It's a question of scale. You're mentioning a specific area - I'm talking about the entire world after you leave the super demo area.

From that point on I barely used my Cleric to heal during combat because it was useless - either the monster were so harmless that the damage wasn't deadly and I could just attack OR the monster was so deadly that it killed in one hit, making healing useless - better to attack and be sure I would kill it quickly.

Moreover, unlike Wizardry, these weren't actually powerful monsters we're talking about - many will die with a single melee attack. But they always kill with one hit. Look:

That's Olaf, a Lv 9 giant berserk you can recruit later in the game. He has a huge HP pool, very high stats and was wearing my best armor. But there wasn't even a damage roll - the attack just killed him instantly. Not a critical, not a special skill - that's the basic attack of Trog Warriors. That's the insta-kill crap I'm talking about, that SEVERAL enemies have.

In Wizardry there's a real sense of progression as you level up, you can go back and faceroll all those encounters that gave you trouble earlier on. That's one of the joys of games with no level scalling. But in Grimoire my party 30hs in was dying to flowers just like my party was after 80hs.

 

[cvv]

All of this is a Wizardry staple. Running into mobs of casters that murderise you in one turn with spellspam is part of the package. Being just as likely to run into said casters as into giant rats is part of the package as well.

I've played through Wizardry 7 about 6 times during the last 20 years. All that you say is true with one giant proviso - all fights in all areas are always doable and fun on the appropriate level. Meaning even if you run into a mob of superthraxes you can reasonably deal with them with a properly leveled party. And if you wander into an area that's too tough you just go somewhere else. There's always somewhere to go, always something appropriate for your group. Plus you never have to grind, your progress in Wiz7 feels natural. In all of that Sir-Tech nailed the balance beautifully.

Problem is if you can run into a completely mismatched fights even in starter areas in Grimoire. That is absolutely not a thing in Wiz7. You can't run into Godzilly in the Starter Dungeon or in the New City for instance. Seems to me Felipe, Viata and others are saying the encounter tables for most areas are just to large, the range of monsters you can run into too wide so even your party is level 3 and you're in a roughly "level 3 area" you can get monsters appropriate for level 10. Yes, in Wiz 7 you can get relatively weak enemies in generally tough areas but not the other way around.

 

[Darth Roxor]

But there wasn't even a damage roll - the attack just killed him instantly. Not a critical, not a special skill - that's the basic attack of Trog Warriors.

lol

 

[cvv]

As for the review, I liked it, very balanced. Most problems Felipe points out have been raised by other people in the main thread, like the problem with limited loot tables or bosses being vulnerable to CC and even instakills, which is not a thing in Wizardry 7, or the OPness of CC spells in general. What's missing is a more explicit mention that Cleve acknowledged all of the discussed problems and promised to fix them asap.

Anyway thanks for the writeup felipepepe.

 

[felipepepe]

But there wasn't even a damage roll - the attack just killed him instantly. Not a critical, not a special skill - that's the basic attack of Trog Warriors.

lol

BTW, they can throw that spear and impale at range. Before killing Olaf, they killed Miopia, my Aeorb that can't be resurrected by normal magic - even though he was all the way in the back.

11/10 GOTY

 

[Fowyr]

Review is full of inaccuracies and moments.

To cast a spell with your caster, for example, you have to scroll through the icons next to his portrait until you get to the spellbook icon

As others said, RMB works too.

I never figured out what I should've said to her.

Show her the tablet, damn. She even says that tablets are evil and should be destroyed inside Wicker.

Treasure chests always gave them same kind of loot,

Nope, there is same kind of loot, but better chests produce better spellbooks and reagents and other thingies and stuffies. Some chests have fixed content.

I was swimming in cash, but there was nothing to buy, as stores have very limited inventory and never restock.

Only they restock. Steal everything or buy - instant restock. Deplete most of the store and wait - restock. I remember Someone restocked just by waiting too.

Lock-picking grew increasingly difficult, making unlocking everything with magic or just brute-forcing them much simpler.

Save/load, damn. It's a staple of Wizardry.

There's a lot wrong here - there's no clue whatsoever for most of these actions, especially regarding the machine at the Museum of Magic. The machine is called the "Chronoworks of Kroondergraf" - its description says that no one knows what it does, and it's placed alongside other curiosities such as singing flowers. In a game full with Easter Eggs, such as bones of Indiegogo backers in the catacombs and even an RPG Codex troll, I quickly dismissed it as just another joke.

It works similar to the machine from Wizardry 5, goddamn! How it could be just a useless thing?

By this point I was already upset by how some spells like Charm, Sleep or Paralysis were too powerful and worked on everyone

Lol no. Undeads are immune to mesmerizing effects like Charm, for example.

That felt cheap, but I dismissed my Bard again and kept playing.

:D
I killed it with one casting of Cosmic Gate. Scroll with it could be bought in ACME machine upstairs. On the other hand, training Incantation up to 20 to effectively use it was pain in the ass.

Enemies never drop anything except a few keys for chests

I thought as well, but then found that some Vanguard have pole forks and thrown gauches and stilettos are pickable after battle.
On the other hand, Grimoire's chests are much more densely packed and often than chests of Wiz6/7.

By the end-game my characters needed around 200,000xp to reach the next level, but enemies there gave only like 500xp - and the game's final quest gave me only 9,000xp!

Heu!
Looks like typical Wizardry for me. Dunno like some people had 30 level party for Beast of the Thousand Eyes.

To make things weirder, Grimoire employs some controversial death mechanics: each time you resurrect a character, his constitution goes down. And some races can only be resurrected by rare spells. In games like Wizardry VII this was already a challenge but, in an unbalanced mess where character death is basically inevitable, this meant ALL my original party members eventually reached the lowest constitution possible. Since they had stopped leveling up due to poor XP, I was effectively growing weaker the more I played.

Completely
I never ressurected my characters in any Wizardry. Or almost never. Brombadian was a fucking beast.

This means that all the food you keep finding in containers and stores is useless

As others said, it's useful.

 

[Zeriel]

Nigger do you even know what balance is.

No one does, that's why pursuing it as a priority is such a dumb idea. It's an opinion. One person's "this is grossly imbalanced" is another person's "this is just right".

 

[Mynon]

Surprisingly brutal review.

 

[taxalot]

Surprisingly brutal review.

This is the Codex. They don't even like great games like Pillars of Eternity. Why should a shit game be given a pass ?