A RTS title that works on the PS2...and that's about it
The storyline involves a young witch who comes to a school of magic to begin her studies. The teachers include a half lion-man, a sultry seductress, a devil, and an old Dumbledorish headmaster. Rounding out the cast is a girl with an evil toad on her head, a brash young boy, and an angel in a man made body: a homunculus. The story itself is fairly interesting early on, but then time begins to loop and it becomes a bit unclear.
Each level sees the addition of new pages in your grimoire of spells. There are 4 schools of magic, each of which is more powerful against one and also weaker against another. Each school has a gatherer unit that harvests mana from crystals arrayed on a 2-dimensional game map. Runes are summoned in the place of the typical building and produce units. There are defensive tower units, medium strength units and an ultimate attack unit for each school.
The biggest obstacle to overcome for a console based RTS is the lack of a mouse: Grimgrimoire does a good job of overcoming that. Using the directional pad, you can pause the game; selecting a unit and then pressing up selects all of the given unit on the screen; and pressing the side button pauses the game and cycles through onscreen units and runes. The biggest drawback was the inability to select a group of mixed units and assign them to a button press.
The graphics are obviously hand drawn and very attractive with a mature cartoony or anime theme. It was the appearance of the game that drew me to it. Unfortunately, within the game the images have a very flat, paper appearance with relatively little animation. It was more like a slide show than actual animation in some ways.
Music and voice were a bit below the bar and on the annoying side. I enjoyed the game most as the first new units were added. Towards the end of the storyline, I found the levels to be more difficult and less enjoyable. It felt a bit recycled, as though I had experienced what the game had to offer and was just playing through the same thing with a different spin.
Grimgrimoire isn't a bad game. If you only have access to a PS2 and have never played an RTS on the PC, I might even recommend it. That being said, there are too many other great RTS titles to play for me to recommend this one.