Call for Grime Responses!
Added 2021-11-11 23:42:46 +0000 UTCHey there, we want to hear your thoughts on Grime for the upcoming Bonfireside Chat Appendix. Please respond in the form of a comment on this post if you've played the game and have thoughts to share. The deadline is Monday, November 15.
As a reminder we're looking for brief and specific responses. Limit them to about two paragraphs, and avoid reviewing the entire game if you can.
Comments
Grime is great fun, I play a lot of these 2D Soulslikes and it might be my favorite one since Hollow Knight, with an S-tier aesthetic and gameplay to back it up. Unfortunately, I also can't help shaking the feeling that I'm playing an early access game at times, since Grime has to be the buggiest 2D Soulslike I've ever played, with huge performance problems that keep getting in the way. The most frustrating part of the game has been the Shapely Fidus boss fight, which, at least on my system (which is plenty powerful to run all modern games), the game would drop to a framerate in the teens, or even single digits. It made what should have been a fun boss fight into one of the most frustrating fights I've played in a 2D Soulslike. I've also had the game hang for 20+ seconds, seemingly at random, had terrain fail to load in, die to late game platforming challenges because my guy would lose all momentum in midair to try to climb a platform that didn't exist... I hope Grime irons out these issues, because the content is superb, but the problems keep getting in its way, especially in the later areas. Still a really fun game I'm glad I checked out though.
Benjamin
2021-11-12 17:46:56 +0000 UTCThank you for bringing Grime into the spotlight. I had never heard of it but it's easily become one of the best Souls-A-Vania-Likes to me, up there with Hollow Knight. Every boss battle is an absolute banger, with my favorite easily being Shapely Fidus. My only complaint would have been the way you seem to magnetize to ladders but as it turns out the game was recently patched to address exactly that. It's probably a coincidence but I like to believe that your efforts threw a light into the future.
Alex Shaw
2021-11-12 12:32:23 +0000 UTCI adored Grime from beginning to end. I was constantly impressed by their design decisions, especially with extra phases of bosses. I had severe flashbacks to Hollow Knight's Radiance boss when Shidra's extra phases began, but I was pleasantly surprised with the execution. At the end I had a feeling of calm satisfaction, like the decision I made was cosmically right. The only other issue I had was when I made it to Cenotaph City. I thought the game's dialogue and themes had telegraphed a decision point about whether or not to destroy the residents. They seemed like rich assholes, so I wanted to ruin their fun if possible. I scoured the map looking for an NPC or something that would unveil a new option, but obviously found nothing. It's a minor nitpick. I was just so sure there was a choice to be made at that point.
Autumn M
2021-11-12 03:23:54 +0000 UTCI thoroughly enjoyed Grime in a way that I haven't felt since Dark Souls. The feeling isn't as strong as Dark Souls was, but I still feel compelled to replay Grime and dig into the lore with a curiosity most games simply don't evoke in me. Early on I was keeping a wary eye out for a potential zionist message I feared might run through the narrative. Thankfully I didn't see any such message, so I am instead left to puzzle out what the message is, if anything. My best understanding of the story is that the entire game is set within your own incomplete body, and everyone's sense that they are wrong - that something is incomplete - comes from the black hole of your consciousness not being in place, and your body being a husk of matter imbued with meaning and intention, but no animus to fulfill it. The question is, what's the metaphor? Is it about self discovery and internal conflict, not knowing who you're meant to be? Perhaps some kind of dysphoria analogy in there too? Is it about the unrealised potential of a child before they come online and are a person, making this some weird take on abortion? Is it a long metaphor for trouble guts and asthma? The most compelling but concerning read I have is in fact anti-zionist, and anti-collonial - An unrelenting power decides it has a right to this world, and will devour and destroy the people who were already here to build its ideal. But if that's my read, I have to wonder which ending the developers think is the good one.
Fenreliania
2021-11-12 01:06:42 +0000 UTCI don't know if my mind just works differently than most people's, but I find games like Grime incredibly tedious when their map systems don't take care of you. In a 3D game like Dark Souls, I can look around and use visual landmarks to find my bearings. But my brain just isn't wired to navigate 2D spaces in the same way, and having to locate a beacon before the game would start auto-mapping an area meant that I spent large portions of Grime fumbling around in the dark, lost in a maze with no exit. The map system in Hollow Knight worked similarly, and I was very cool on that one as well. The fact that both of these games are regarded so highly means that this issue is probably unique to me, but I guess that's just another argument for adjustable difficulty options. Both of these games obviously do a lot of things right and I want to enjoy them as much as everyone else does. It's a shame when one simple, easily changeable mechanic can totally flatline an otherwise good experience.
Mike Suskie
2021-11-12 01:01:17 +0000 UTCAfter following you blindly into Ashen, I was a little apprehensive doing it again with Grime but I'm glad I did. The defining difference here was every time the game made me say "Oh come on, this is insane" it then gave me ways to quickly learn and build the skills I needed. Examples of this were Pale Sky where I was sure I'd never get through the platforming but the quick resets and slow ramping of skill had me flying, nailing every jump, laughing and actually enjoying hunting down those story nuggets by the end! The second was the final boss, I learned his moveset but was just not able to perfect it (I only had one breath) so I found all the extra bosses and two whole new areas (Yr Den and most of Gloomnest) powered up and came back swinging, finally making it to the end and loving that the boss got weaker as it went on rather than the usual supercharging for the final phase. I realise this is a little long but I just have to mention the quirky humour. Vanity thy name is Yon... poor little guy had definitely been paying too much attention to his Instagram influencers in search of that perfect look!
Gordon Burnett
2021-11-12 00:20:34 +0000 UTCI bought this after your first episode and blew through it in a couple days. It was great! I played a high resonance build-- I dealt most of my damage with dodges, pulls, and absorbs, which was a ton of fun. I wish the lanterns had felt more powerful. I tried to make each of them work, but they always fell short of just whacking things with the one high resonance scaling sword.
Coleman Ellis
2021-11-12 00:04:09 +0000 UTC
