GRIME

Fun game with good atmosphere but gets old quick.

Exploration is overly tedious because of this certain fog of war system and you must travel far to find each map crystal. Makes entering a new area less of a good thing. Cant fast travel between save points. nervepass locations (fast travel) are few and far between.

weapons require specific stats to use. So if you dont build your stats right you cant use half of them. re-spec requires tough to find objects.

combat can be a bit clunky at times. Also your often wondering "why did i take damage there? ... I like occasional souls games but some of the bosses require ALOT of tries and farming for upgrades .

fun game but progression is too slow.

+Interesting and hard combat
+Not overly punishing level design
+Interesting movement
-A little slow
8/10 for now as i am not yet finished

Really great Metroidvania game, awesome gameplay with a slight sluggish movement. Upgrade system and stats system. very good game would recommend to other players to play if they enjoy platformers, boss fights, and map exploration.

eat rock yummy

i like it

Very good and underrated

awful game for two reasons:

1. often randomly disconnects from controller, requires game restart to fix
2. I spend more time waiting for my stamina bar to regenerate than I spend attacking

nice

Loved this game! Once you get over the mechanical learning curve, it really is a solid metroidvania with some good puzzles and a really nice boss soundtrack.

A breath of fresh air.

Underrated
8.5/10

I would put this game in the same position as Blasphemous I.
Wouldn't recommend it in its initial state; after many patches and 4 (free!!) expansions it is just a great game!

A must play if you like metroidvania genre

100% the game at least 3 times, not counting the NG+ mode. I liked it

i mclove it 10/10

If there was one word to describe this game, it would be 'frustrating', but not in a challenging, difficulty kind of way, in an annoying kind of way. I did enjoy a lot of the game and sunk around 27 hours into it, but I just really can't bring myself to recommend it to others.

Firstly the positives. I loved the boss fights. They're the best part of the game (once you get past the comments below). They all felt unique and were a nice challenge to overcome, each having their own mechanics to learn and master and made great use of the game's abilities. I loved the music, especially during the boss fights. It added to the epic feel that it was really life or death. I also loved the atmosphere of the game. It was visually cool and I thought the dark and bleak world was great. Finally I did like the 'upgrades' you unlocked in the game, from the talents, to the weapon upgrades, to the 'hunt point' upgrades. Felt like there was a nice progression curve.

Now, let's talk about that frustration...

My main negative is the fact that everything seems to take forever, and I assume that's what the devs were going for, but it really wasn't fun for me. You need to have some serious patience to complete this game.

The force bar (energy bar) - I think this is worst part of the game for me. It's a little frustrating how much everything revolves around the force bar. Everything has a force cost - jumping, dashing, attacking... everything except moving side-to-side - and it really makes the game slow to play. You're constantly waiting for your force bar to recover. Not only that, but it doesn't even START to recover until you've stopped performing any resource-consuming actions for 1 second, which may not seem like a lot, but during combat you really feel it. You pretty much have to stop doing anything except moving side-to-side in order for to recover force, as any action pauses the recovery and you need to wait the 1 second again for it to start regenerating again.

It also takes time to refill the bar to full, so that drags out the time even more. You attack a few times - better wait 5 seconds as your force bar is now empty so you can't do anything. What's that - you dashed a few times to dodge some essential mechanics - better wait 5 seconds as your force bar is now empty so you can't do anything. Combat feels sluggish and slow because of this. Your force is used as soon as you press the attack button too, so then if you need to interrupt your attack to dash, your force is still lost, and sometimes because of the attack, you can't even dash because you have no force left. Very frustrating. The majority of the game's general combat complexity is based around resource management, and that just wasn't fun to me.

The game has several items. They're cool and interesting to use, however not only is there not really enough of them, but some of them also take an eternity to use. You're in a pinch and want to use an item to recover force or health - well that takes about 2 seconds to use, so better just stand there vulnerable, doing nothing.

The game's limited heal is also a little annoying. It costs another resource, the breath bar, to use. The only way to get breath is to use a very niche and well-timed ability on an enemy - so it's very risky with the more challenging enemies, leading to a lot of frustrating deaths. It also takes what feels like an age to actually heal. You can choose between a minor, slow, heal-over-time or stand there for 2 seconds channelling a big heal. Just needless frustration when you're in a pinch and low on health.

The 'respawn' points are few and far between in some areas. It gets annoying, fast. You're low on health and no way to heal because you are out of breath - better be careful - ah you just came across a new enemy or trap and it one-shot you - now you have to spend 5-10 minutes running back to where you died because you respawn so far away. Not fun. Some areas of the game have challenging enemies or mini bosses, which is great, but dying and having to spend longer running back to where you died than the combat length multiple times is really infuriating.

Unlike most metroidvanias, you don't simply unlock the map as you explore, instead you have to reach "beacons", which THEN allows you to unlock the maps as you explore. This would be fine if they were right at the start of an area, but often they are not, and are either half-way through or near the end of an area, making navigating the world long-winded and very frustrating. There's also a bit of misdirection on where to go. You'll have an objective set on your map, but to get there you actually may need to backtrack to another part of the world and pick up a new ability, which can get very confusing when there's no kind of quest log/dialogue box. There's definitely some aimless wandering around.

Finally to briefly mention performance - most of the time it was perfect, but there were times where I suddenly dropped to about 10-15 FPS for no reason and it made the game near unplayable. There was no reason for it either - sometimes it would go after a few seconds, sometimes tabbing out and in fixed it, sometimes I had to restart the game to fix it. More time used. Frustrating.

So that's my opinions. I know loads of people enjoyed this game, which is great, but to me it was great, but *just* frustrating enough that I really can't recommend it.

The game is awesome 😎

I adore this game. The world building, the story, the art direction and the designs all absolutely sing. For a game called Grime it really shines and stands out from the rest. Gotta love that the devs obviously poured a lot of love into it, with multiple updates over the game's life and free expansions.

It could lean a little too hard into the Soulslike aspects for my tastes at times, but the art direction and story kept me going. As others mentioned, runbacks could be frustrating and more than a few platforming puzzles annoyed me with 'you died because you couldn't see ahead of you' shenanigans. Thankfully, the only thing affected by death is your damage / currency multiplier, so the progress was the only real setback.

The game runs incredible on the Steam Deck but put this on the biggest screen you can. Some of the set pieces are really awe inspiring.

Can't wait for the sequel.

This game is brilliant. The action, the story, the metroidvanius of it; chef's kiss. And the art; just beautiful.

Great Metroidvania! Some of the strangest art style I've encountered in a video game.

Voltei pra re-jogar depois de alguns anos, zerei de novo e saí satisfeito mais uma vez. É um jogo bem gordinho de conteúdo, cheio de chefes maneiros, tem um visual INCRÍVEL e uma direção de arte impecável. As músicas orquestradas dão uma última salpicada de gostosura pra completar o pacote.

O gameplay é bem sólido, o combate tem peso e a barra de stamina te faz ser mais consciente de como você se movimenta e ataca, trazendo um elemento de estratégia que não te deixa só esmagar os botões. Os chefes são o ponto mais alto pra mim, pois são verdadeiras coreografias (até literalmente) em que você dança de um lado pro outro, desvia, dá parry, ataca nas aberturas... gostoso demais.

A exploração dele é bem interessante, apesar de que senti falta de alguma coisa pra marcar as porcentagens. Mas isso é nitpick meu, que sou maluco de querer achar tudo nos jogos.

As partes de plataforma são bem agridoces pra mim, porque eu gosto da movimentação mas eu sinto que algumas mecânicas são um pouco imprecisas demais (em especial a que usa o analógico direito) pra precisão que é cobrada delas. E muitas vezes eu sinto que o jogo perde alguns inputs direcionais e de botões para redirecionar alguns pulos e dashes. Mas tá bom, no fim do dia é bem satisfatório completar essas partes.

E a lore? Ou, não sei. Não tenho certeza. Mas tem algumas pequenas histórias durante o jogo que são divertidas e tristes de se acompanhar, personagens interessantes e recorrentes, diálogos crípticos e bastante flavor pra experiência toda. Muitas localizações mudam depois que você passa por elas também, o que te dá a sensação de que as suas ações tem consequências sérias no mundo. Além dos personagens que são afetados que aparecem em áreas novas e tem diálogos relacionados ao que aconteceu. Mas fica o aviso: não é uma história muito linear nem muito clara.

Gosto *muito* de Grime, é um dos meus search action favoritos. Envelheceu bem e é uma delícia de jogar.

Nota naval: C9

I love a good metroidvania for combat and exploration but to think the platforming challenges may be harder than any of the bosses here is kinda cool.

Pretentious, unengaging, boring and forgettable game.

Great artstyle, stunning music, thrilling combat, and challenging platforming. The story is interesting, but hard to put back together, like a jigsaw puzzle made entirely out of square pieces, since you get lore snippets that are entirely out of order. Except for the coda. The coda are pretty straight up with you about whats going on, your role, their role, and if thats all you know then you know enough.

Excellent take on the souls like metroidvania genre it has great gameplay the parkour is fun and it has a ton of personality a must buy for any souls fan or platformer enjoyer

Goes hard AF. The lore is incomprehensible to me though.

This is by far my favorite souls like/metroidvania lite game! The combat is fun and challenging and trying to find all the different armor and weapons keeps me searching through all the different sections. The boss fights are my favorite part of the game. Thankfully, getting back to the boss fights after dying doesn't take forever. You also don't start back from the very beginning if you die. You spawn back at the most recent beacon, just like any other souls like game. Definitely give this game a try. The demo is free to try and see if you like it!

good

it is very well made and fun

Mechanically a solid metroidvania/soulslike. A very otherworldly atmosphere and interesting world building around living rocks. Well designed backgrounds and unique looks. A lot of weapons and skills you can gain by killing enemies.
Combat is a bit slow but works fairly well, incorporating dodging and parrying/blocking.
What killed it for me is the level design. Confusing layouts, a lot of hidden passages, no clear indication of where to go and unlocking map fragments often happens AFTER you traversed the area, when it should be happening before.

After spending a third of the playtime running around, trying to find the small passage I missed in order to continue, I gave up. New abilities gained from bosses can unlock new areas, but without clear indication of where to go and feeling like you need to traverse the whole world to check back previous places you've visited to see if you can now pass them it becomes a drag.

I have not had such navigation issues with Hollow Kn ight, for example.

weird and JANKY. Worth it on sale. 7 out of 10

good metroidvania game, not better than hollow knight though

I like rock

Though the game is flawed in several points, it mirrors amusingly the setting of inherently doomed broken world, and though at times it could be pretty frustrating and annoying, the game's too fascinating for it to overweigh the positive sides: mostly smooth and rewarding exploration with reasonable backtracking, interesting bosses, several challenging platforming sections, many varied, substantially different and, though not equally practical and effective, overall usable weapons, and not least important for me personally it doesn't demand quick reflexes of the player and relies more on clearly telegraphed patterns and rhythmic flow.

Pretty fun game.

There is a few frustrating moments, especially related to platforming, but the plaforming is extremely smart and well thought out. I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer amount of creativity that the game offers.

The combat and bosses are a very nice piece. They are fun, especially when you get the hang of the parry.

Challenging game, but works out fine if you learn the patterns. Pretty good exploration, very large map. Not that long, but I had a good time with it. Played thru it a couple years ago and went back to it and it's still good.

The game is already one of my favorite metroidvania/soulslikes ive ever played the game clearly has the level of polish of hollow knight elden ring sekiro and nine sols all in one with great story telling and great game-play grime is a really phenomenal game

Good game

I love metroidvania type games, and own at least a dozen of them. I like that Grime does not try to make up new mechanics, but instead uses existing ones creatively. This game gets high scores for its depressing and gloomy but somehow still vibrant art and alien setting. Unfortunatly, in most other areas it falls lower than average.
1. I can only assume that it is a dev choice to have 'Hollow Knight' style maps that you have to locate. Ok, fine, but HK had easily located maps, with a sound cue that pointed you to it from several screens away no matter where you were. Grime doesnt do that, and instead you might get a hint 1-1.5 screens away in only specific directions. This makes much of the game stumbling around unmapped areas, and even when you do find a map, secret areas you have found arent shown, giving you only about 80% of an idea where youve been.
2. Controls: Again I use HK as an example, because the controls are so tight in that game you cant blame anything except your hands for errors. Grime tries that approach, with MANY optional collectibles gated behind hair-fine instant kill effect puzzles. However, the controls are rather sloppy, such that doing the exact same thing at the exact same time rarely gets you the exact same result.
3. Hazards: As mentioned above, there are half a dozen things that instantly kill you or destroy your body and send you back to the last 'solid' ground you stood on. Spikes, electricity, crushing hazards, etc. The problem is, when combined with the sloppy controls, these become very frustrating to navigate. There are several late-game spots where you have to have chained 5+ perfect inputs to get to the next 'solid ground', which doesnt include platforms that you can safely stand on as long as you wish. Most of my gameplay time was trying to get the last collectibles in the game from these spots.

TL;DR: Fun game for about 70%, but level design and controls drag down the quality. 6.5 out of 10.

Really good game! Platforming sections was an absolute blast for me, the movements was very interesting when combined together, and I like that sometime you even need to use the enemy to get to some items. It can be janky at times though, like spawning you inside a wall, softlocking you, or you would very rarely being forced respond despite barely falling off the ledge, or the game would constantly spawn you with your hitbox inside spiky terrains. But I find these very hilarious, so they didn't get on my nerve. In term of combat difficulty, I would say it is around medium to hard difficulty. I died a lot in the game, but find that it is mostly because I was just an idiot, not because the enemies was particularly hard. At least for the first play through, some of the bosses feel a slight bit on the easy side, but I might have been a bit over-leveled. Story-wise, I couldn't understand any of it, but I really like the atmosphere, and can tell that there were a lot of efforts put into the environment, just wish I know what the lore implication of them is. Overall, very good game, should play if you are a big fan of metroidvania, and want to do some awesome platforming as well.

ASDFGHJ

This is a great game.

It is a good game. Wish the ending was longer though.

Wanted to like it.
Way too janky for the amount of precision it demands.
Art is gorgeous though, unfortunately it did little to compensate how frustrating just everything else about this game plays out.

If you like metroidvania and souls like this game is a mix of both. combat is satisfying, controls are pretty good. Parry system is really satisfying.

I couldn't finish the DLC but without spoiling it's just a SHIT ton of difficult platforming.

Also whoever made pale sky, who hurt you?? Couldn't focus on story due to platforming for my life.

Music and art is also amazing. Over all I was a big fan of combat but not too much for platforming. This game has both so keep that in mind before buying.
And yes get it on sale.

Wait this game is actually good, to the point that i finished it and want to play more of it

Despite its many flaws, something just keeps me coming back to this game.

The game just oozes with personality. There are so many creative ideas and unique designs, it's obviously made people people who cared about the game and poured so much into it, but I hope the sequel improves in some areas.

The game's biggest problem is traversal. I think this is the worst metroidvania map I've played. The map is huge, but the movement is so needlessly limited, and so many areas bait you sooo far in before letting you know that they're gated. To add salt to the wound, so much "proper" progression is hidden behind hidden platforming puzzles that you might miss and spend an hour going from one inaccessible area to another.

Another thing I dislike about it is how clunky it feels. The sound design seems almost "mushy", the attacks and their feedback feel lacklustre, even the movement lacks some 'sharpness'. It's clear they were going for a slow/methodical DS1 feel, but I don't think it works here, especially not with the bad readability of the 2.5D artsytle. Hitboxes and ledges just don't seem well-defined, and the character's moves at turtle-speed, dashes and sprinting (which gets cancelled by any pebble) consume so much stamina (this is made worse by how large the map is, idt they should consume any stamine out of combat).

There are also balance issues. My favorite aspect about the game is the bosses, though I didn't care for most of the soundtracks (or sound design really), each boss felt unique, and the difficulty curve is near-perfect imo; every boss was enough of a struggle to feel rewarded, but not so much that it feels impossible. Still some attacks seem completely undodgeable depending on RNG and how hard their movement is to read, sometimes you get hit without visually connecting to the attack, sometimes you're stuck in parry animation, leaving you open for the next immediate attack.

I found the game to be most fun when everything works together. During endgame platforming segments or boss encounters, when you know what the game is asking of you and you just need to get it right, without having to worry about being stuck in an area or getting hit by a cheap shot.

The lore and world-building is great; it's a reverse cosmic horror in a way, but the dialogue is weak. Every line of dialogue was a bit too on the nose (it's ironic, but I think the storytelling of dark souls is what they should've took inspiration from).

Overall, I'd say it's super rewarding despite how frustrating it can be. It's by no means a masterpiece like some of its metroidvania competitors, but its rewarding moments are well-worth the slog.

Good 2D soulsvania, has unique and interesting bosses

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lovecraft/comments/1ha98uo/grime_the_breathless_devastation/
"Grime is a beautiful, surrealistic Metroidvania set in a dying world that refuses to die. It fights back with all its suffering against a Cosmic Horror that is just acting out its role to end a fate worse than living."

The idea is good and visualisation is great, but the main issue is lacking of information about that to do, so you just running around and trying to figure out what to do next