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

[Leitz]

WTF

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimoire:_Heralds_of_the_Winged_Exemplar

The game was eventually released on August 4 with no warning

The fringe role-playing game website RPG Codex published an amateur review of the game that criticized Grimoire's "broken combat", missing features, overpowered NPCs, repetitive tilesets, transparency artifacts, and bad quest design, stating that "Grimoire is still unfinished". However, the reviewer expressed hope that there was "a great game behind all the flaws" and that further patches might improve the game.[16] User reviews on Steam were generally positive[17].

Must be written by a RPGwatcher.

Seems like the quote is already gone from the Wiki article. Who of you faggots did this?

 

[Roguey]

Apparently you haven't read the review.

Sure I did. Well, I gave it a good skimming.

Then I started to find monsters that instantly killed 1-2 characters in the first turn, before I could even act. This wasn't due to low HP - the blows were insta-kill. Many also heal themselves each turn. So I stopped saving mana and began to spam my most powerful spells right upfront, ending battles as quickly as possible - you can rest anywhere anyway. And this "arms race" kept going, getting worse and worse...

Later, an extremely fast boss attacked me TWENTY TWO TIMES before anyone in my party could act - oh, and its attacks kill instantly if they hit.

Additionally

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.

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.

Grimoire indeed starts very challenging - but, after you leave the Super Demo area, it's such a mess that it becomes extremely easy, even on Super Human difficulty. Fights are more about speed, luck and OP skills than anything remotely close to tactics.

This is the equivalent of someone getting brickwalled by the hard counter fights in BG2, and deciding there's no way you can get through them other than turning the difficulty to the easiest setting, relying on fan-documented exploits like trap spam and wands of cloudkill, and resting after every fight (either backtracking or reloading to avoid random encounters). Then writing a review talking about how utterly terrible and unbalanced the combat is.

 

[Infinitron]

Then I started to find monsters that instantly killed 1-2 characters in the first turn, before I could even act. This wasn't due to low HP - the blows were insta-kill. Many also heal themselves each turn. So I stopped saving mana and began to spam my most powerful spells right upfront, ending battles as quickly as possible - you can rest anywhere anyway. And this "arms race" kept going, getting worse and worse...

Later, an extremely fast boss attacked me TWENTY TWO TIMES before anyone in my party could act - oh, and its attacks kill instantly if they hit.

The trogs aren't mentioned in the review, therefore the post you quoted isn't a correction of an inaccuracy in the review, period.

That said, felipepepe is not unaware of the Armorplate spell: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...he-winged-exemplar.117874/page-8#post-5265779

In most cases the only pre-buff that makes any difference is Amorplate to buff armor, so that insta-kill attacks are harder to hit & penetrate.

 

[Roguey]

The Trogs aren't mentioned in the review, period. Therefore the post you quoted isn't a correction of an inaccuracy in the review.

This is some rules lawyering. He alluded to them with the the talk about instakill battles that you can do nothing against other than cheese (which is wrong).

That said, felipepepe is not unaware of the Armorplate spell: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...he-winged-exemplar.117874/page-8#post-5265779

In most cases the only pre-buff that makes any difference is Amorplate to buff armor, so that insta-kill attacks are harder to hit & penetrate.

And honestly, I'm not really sure the spell actually WORKS

This line shows that he never even bothered to use it. According to PEACH, it works perfectly.

 

[Infinitron]

This line shows that he never even bothered to use it. According to PEACH, it works perfectly.

But he says that it makes a difference, which suggests that he did use it.

Do you really think that all insta-kill attacks in Grimoire can be resisted with a high degree of reliability?

You're trying to draw an analogy between Grimoire and Baldur's Gate 2 to out people as hypocrites, but I suspect that analogy is imperfect. The grognards ITT are praising this game not because you have to play the mage duel/hard counters game to stop yourself from getting killed, but because often there's nothing you can do to stop yourself from getting killed.

 

[Zep Zepo]

liking this game... because often there's nothing you can do to stop yourself from getting killed.

wut????

Zep--

 

[Roguey]

But he says that it makes a difference, which suggests that he did use it.

Do you really think that all insta-kill attacks in Grimoire can be resisted with a high degree of reliability?

If you cast the protection spells (armorplate for physical, missile screen for ranged attacks, magic screen for magic) at the highest possible level, yes.

You're trying to draw an analogy between Grimoire and Baldur's Gate 2 to out people as hypocrites, but I suspect that analogy is imperfect. The grognards ITT are praising this game not because you have to play the mage duel game to stop yourself from getting killed, but because often there's nothing you can do to stop yourself from getting killed.

Hmm.

I'm not really a fan of out-of-combat buffs. Missile Shield in particular is really binary -- if you have it up at a decent level, you're pretty much immune to enemy projectiles... and if you don't, you get shredded. Armorplate and Magic Screen are similar.

Doing a no missile shield run is nothing uncommon, it's a wizardry only spell with no gadgets/instruments available so many parties have to do without it. Armorplate and Magic Shield are almost mandatory, true. I can imagine doing without AP, but no MS would be a huuuge pain.

Guess what game they're talking about, it's Wizardry 8.

 

[karnak]

Man... the Wiki article about Grimoire has more hate on it than Mein Kampf. The writer of the article got his ass ripped by Cleve or something??

 

[Banana Smuggler]

 

[felipepepe]

This is the equivalent of someone getting brickwalled by the hard counter fights in BG2, and deciding there's no way you can get through them other than turning the difficulty to the easiest setting, relying on fan-documented exploits like trap spam and wands of cloudkill, and resting after every fight (either backtracking or reloading to avoid random encounters). Then writing a review talking about how utterly terrible and unbalanced the combat is.

I thought my review was pretty clear on this... yes, there are buffs and whatnot - which I was looking forward to enjoy:

Here I experienced a glimpse of glorious combat - slowly fighting enemies, keeping your barriers and HP up, dealing with deaths & debuff and slowly destroying the monster.

However:

But it was only a glimpse. In the forth round my Ranger scored a critical hit with his Lethal Strike skill. The boss died instantly, despite all its resistances and still having 80% health.

This wasn't a lucky, one-in-a-million hit, it happened several times. The game's main bad guy died like this in the very first turn - I actually reloaded to see how his fight was like!

The problem is shit like this.

Both the enemy AND the player are packed full with OP shit that kills in one hit. If you have very fast characters - like PEACH said he has - then you'll likely kill the enemies before they even act. And I didn't rely on "fan-documented exploits" - I was one of the first people to ever finish the game. We don't even know for sure what most stats do! Yet I posted a video where I kill the game's final boss on the highest difficulty in one turn! With no buffs! Yeah, I used the Vorpal Sword, but there were plenty of other options that would achieve the exact same effect.

You might have also "skimmed" this:

Later, an extremely fast boss attacked me TWENTY TWO TIMES before anyone in my party could act - oh, and its attacks kill instantly if they hit. Once this Russian roulette marathon ended, I simply used a Hold Monster scroll. The boss was paralyzed and quickly killed. Much tactics, very RPG.

Of course I had Armorplate on max level here - yet was still occasionally hit. But what's my reward for using it? A glorious battle, epic enough to make Firkraag blush? No, the boss just dies once it's my turn.

Same thing for the "true" hard counters. In Baldur's Gate the basilisks will turn you to stone unless you use hard counters like Protection from Petrification or Potion of Mirrored Eyes. If you're using hard counters, then a fair battle truly begins. In Grimoire you enter a Cockatrice's cage, find an item that casts reflect right next to the monster - and if you use it in battle the Cockatrice turns itself into stone - the battle is over.

Saying this is balanced "just like the old games" is an offense to them.

 

[Rpguy]

The Trogs aren't mentioned in the review, period. Therefore the post you quoted isn't a correction of an inaccuracy in the review.

This is some rules lawyering. He alluded to them with the the talk about instakill battles that you can do nothing against other than cheese (which is wrong).

That said, felipepepe is not unaware of the Armorplate spell: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...he-winged-exemplar.117874/page-8#post-5265779

In most cases the only pre-buff that makes any difference is Amorplate to buff armor, so that insta-kill attacks are harder to hit & penetrate.

And honestly, I'm not really sure the spell actually WORKS

This line shows that he never even bothered to use it. According to PEACH, it works perfectly.

You guys realize that the armorplate spell is one of the most exploitable mechanic In the game? it stacks with itself giving you more protection and more duration , you could sit at a magic refill shrine and then cast it 1000 times with magic screen and nothing can stop you. I don't know when peach says it works perfectly if he used it more than once or not, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Man... the Wiki article about Grimoire has more hate on it than Mein Kampf. The writer of the article got his ass ripped by Cleve or something??

Jonathan Swift was right.

These people especially can't stand the idea that somewhere people are having real fun playing the game and it is not even complete with a manual yet.

There is crazy sick in the head then there is full blown psychosis. These people are moving into Baxander territory.

When you have half the wall of your apartment covered with cut-out pictures of Cleve, some with hearts and others with blood inked in coming from the eyes, it might be time to admit you have lost your mind.

It's the Neanderthal effect. People who were already unstable just fly apart around them. They can't cope with even a little stress and being around a Neanderthal brings stress because they realise they are just ass monkey clones of subset Neanderthals. Nobody is more mentally unstable and hanging by a thread than the SJW.

 

[Fowyr]

In Grimoire you enter a Cockatrice's cage, find an item that casts reflect right next to the monster - and if you use it in battle the Cockatrice turns itself into stone - the battle is over.

It's one way and it needs Scout skill or casting Locate Item to know where mirror is. Though I thinks there is a message about shards. Another way is cast Gaze Reflection spell, third is just kill stupid chicken.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

The Trogs aren't mentioned in the review, period. Therefore the post you quoted isn't a correction of an inaccuracy in the review.

This is some rules lawyering. He alluded to them with the the talk about instakill battles that you can do nothing against other than cheese (which is wrong).

That said, felipepepe is not unaware of the Armorplate spell: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...he-winged-exemplar.117874/page-8#post-5265779

In most cases the only pre-buff that makes any difference is Amorplate to buff armor, so that insta-kill attacks are harder to hit & penetrate.

And honestly, I'm not really sure the spell actually WORKS

This line shows that he never even bothered to use it. According to PEACH, it works perfectly.

You guys realize that the armorplate spell is one of the most exploitable mechanic In the game? it stacks with itself giving you more protection and more duration , you could sit at a magic refill shrine and then cast it 1000 times with magic screen and nothing can stop you. I don't know when peach says it works perfectly if he used it more than once or not, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Wizardry too.

 

[coldcrow]

Not Wiz8 though. And to allow stackable buffs is pretty lazy design or an oversight. Also (imho) there is really no excuse for cluttered UI design if you worked on this game for 20 years. Vogel shits out a game or two per year and while he is declining pretty hard, at least he improves the UI part of his games.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

In Grimoire you enter a Cockatrice's cage, find an item that casts reflect right next to the monster - and if you use it in battle the Cockatrice turns itself into stone - the battle is over.

It's one way and it needs Scout skill or casting Locate Item to know where mirror is. Though I thinks there is a message about shards. Another way is cast Gaze Reflection spell, third is just kill stupid chicken.

Yep, was a design goal of his since the beginning to have an optional "achilles heel" on the bosses, of course these options appeal to some more than others

a few spoilers

26/10/99

Was working on the very first boss encounter a bit to create a secret way of defeating Shiva-Han-Goromu more easily by application of a little brain power. Most of the boss level encounters in Grimoire have an achilles heel of some kind. Needless to say, Shiva-Han like all mummies has a canopic jar not far from his resting place and if we are clever we can find it, which is basically his kryptonite. Also worked on the Kraken encounter to give us another method of controlling it during battle by using a special helm to charm it into submission.

 

[Rpguy]

The Trogs aren't mentioned in the review, period. Therefore the post you quoted isn't a correction of an inaccuracy in the review.

This is some rules lawyering. He alluded to them with the the talk about instakill battles that you can do nothing against other than cheese (which is wrong).

That said, felipepepe is not unaware of the Armorplate spell: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...he-winged-exemplar.117874/page-8#post-5265779

In most cases the only pre-buff that makes any difference is Amorplate to buff armor, so that insta-kill attacks are harder to hit & penetrate.

And honestly, I'm not really sure the spell actually WORKS

This line shows that he never even bothered to use it. According to PEACH, it works perfectly.

You guys realize that the armorplate spell is one of the most exploitable mechanic In the game? it stacks with itself giving you more protection and more duration , you could sit at a magic refill shrine and then cast it 1000 times with magic screen and nothing can stop you. I don't know when peach says it works perfectly if he used it more than once or not, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Wizardry too.

You should have placed that as one of the bullet points of the game!

• 600 hours of play possible in a single game

• NPCs that use words to talk

• All the old wizardry bugs and exploits + some new innovative ones as well!

 

[Grauken]

Not Wiz8 though. And to allow stackable buffs is pretty lazy design or an oversight. Also (imho) there is really no excuse for cluttered UI design if you worked on this game for 20 years. Vogel shits out a game or two per year and while he is declining pretty hard, at least he improves the UI part of his games.

Stackable buffs are great, so fuck off

 

[PEACH]

I'm aware of armorplate stacking but at the time I believe I had only cast it once. Not sure.

When I said it worked I meant it was clearly stopping hits from penetrating. I can't speak on how exploitable it can be because I don't have enough experience doing that and my Templar can only cast it three times from full.

 

[Rpguy]

I'm aware of armorplate stacking but at the time I believe I had only cast it once. Not sure.

When I said it worked I meant it was clearly stopping hits from penetrating. I can't speak on how exploitable it can be because I don't have enough experience doing that and my Templar can only cast it three times from full.

3 times is more than enough, with another exploit you can just bring potions that refill your mana ( you can get an endless supply of those from the stores if you haven't killed the owners... )

 

[Eyestabber]

Bull-fucking-shit.

Your beloved PoE is the very definition of what David is talking about. Sawyer-style "balance" means EXACTLY that: ensuring failure is not an option. Just take a close look and do the math on PoE and you'll quickly realize that passive leveling trumps everything else. Player agency is kept to a minimum in order to ensure you can't possibly screw up.

PoE wasn't brought up-once in this thread as a positive example, neither was Sawyer's input in that game. Why is everyone in this thread acting as if in the last 10 years only two RPG games were released: PoE and Grimoire. You don't have to look that far. Both Age of Decadence and Underrail are properly balanced games. Sure there are some combos that are stronger but you don't run into totally broken shit by mistake. I'm sure most "balancefags" means something more like Underrail than PoE.

Way to miss the point. I never said anything against proper balance (asymmetrical balance, not DPT/DPS parity). The problem is that the term "balance" has been stretched to the point of becoming meaningless.

As excidium already pointed out, balance is about ensuring that options with the same cost provide COMPARABLE (not the same) benefits, with no clear "winner". That's all. "Balance" has nothing to do with how many monsters you'll find at X (encounter design) or what's inside chest Y (itemization).

With that said, PoE is constantly brought into the discussion because that game is the perfect example of this degenerate notion of "balance" in action. PoE puts "balance" above all else. Whereas in AoD the bow and the crossbow are fundamentally different, in PoE the only difference is whether you prefer to hit hard and slow or weak and fast.

A low STR bow user is a botched build in AoD, whereas in PoE your choice of ranged weapon makes no difference. They are balanced around the same DPS, scale of the same attribute and share the same feats. Regardless of your build, you get a trophy. Such choice, much depth.

The balance obsession becomes comical when you realize that firearms were added to PoE but they had no impact in the world whatsoever. Raedric hold is a standard medieval castle, despite the fact that such castles were rendered obsolete by canons. Firearms are simply another form of hitting harder and even slower.

Proper balance is always desirable, but it is not the top priority on any sane person's list. I have never seen anyone make a big deal about the fact that "blunt" is just a bad "blade" in Oblivion. That's poor balance, but in oblivion's case, that's completely irrelevant, because there are more important WRONG things about that game.

With all that said, I would add that some balance issues here and there are not a big deal within the context of a game that provides enough distinct and fun options. Eg: throwing in fallout, kits in bg2 etc.

 

[Fowyr]

I have never seen anyone make a big deal about the fact that "blunt" is just a bad "blade" in Oblivion.

Sadly, I never saved that Codex poster with sledgehammer and "this is an ax!" when I saw it back in '07

 

[Ranarama]

Dude, never get a regular job again once it has been proven the things you create are loved and gladly paid for by people.

He needs one. His average pay so far for GrimWah is at best around 4K a year.

 

[mondblut]

Same thing for the "true" hard counters. In Baldur's Gate the basilisks will turn you to stone unless you use hard counters like Protection from Petrification or Potion of Mirrored Eyes. If you're using hard counters, then a fair battle truly begins. In Grimoire you enter a Cockatrice's cage, find an item that casts reflect right next to the monster - and if you use it in battle the Cockatrice turns itself into stone - the battle is over.

Saying this is balanced "just like the old games" is an offense to them.

Except that mirror shard is not a hard counter. I used it, and basilisk's stoning attack still got through, petrifying one of party members before lethal blows kicked in.

 

[mondblut]

Vogel shits out THE game or two per year and while he is declining pretty hard, at least he improves the UI part of his game.

FTFY. As he keeps releasing the same game over and over and over again, there is hardly anything else left to do than to tinker with UI.