izigame.me

Grime is a unique and interesting concept of a game that could've been a masterpiece but falls short in the end due to a lack of polish, strange design choices and very poor balance. It's not all bad as the concept & setting, visuals, world & character designs and the audio + soundtrack are all wonderfully made, especially for a team of only 5 devs (+2 sound guys). This is also the reason why i'm giving it a thumbs up, because what's there is still pretty impressive for such a small team. It's just a shame that it wasn't better, because it could've been one of the best games in the genre, because it's so unique.
So first of the game is pretty buggy, nothing game breaking (those have been patched after the rocky start) but still very obvious. There's a ton of animation glitches, places you can get stuck and clipping of characters (both the player and npc's). The controls also feel clunky at times and sometimes even refuse to react to your inputs, especially the grapple which sometimes screws you over during tricky sections. This lack of polish makes the game a slog to play and really hampers the experience. Luckily performance is pretty good, i had no lag or framedrops whatsoever during my 24 hours with the game.
The design choices & balance are probably my biggest gripes with the game. It's a sidescroller action rpg metroidvania but the metroidvania element is sorely lacking. Yes there's ability gating and backtracking, but it's still mostly linear and all the backtracking is for collectibles. These collectibles are 9/10 times consumables (and not very good ones at that) which REALLY SUCKS! Finding a consumable as the reward for a difficult platforming sequence or a well hidden secret wall just sucks... It doesn't feel rewarding and made me not want to 100% the map (which i normally do for all my metroidvania's). There's also nothing to help you 100% the map, as there's no indication of collectibles or clues where to find them. There's also beacons that block the map until reassembled which makes it quite the chore at times to explore new areas, and feels like a needless extra hurdle to overcome. The RPG elements also really hamper the experience imo, as they lead to very poor balance.
This poor balance is due to a multitude of reasons, but mainly due to the RPG attributes system. This system allows you to put points into health, stamina and one of 3 damage categories. The big issue here is that without stamina you cannot attack or dodge, so you NEED to invest about 40% or more of your points into stamina. This leaves the remainig 60% to be divided among health or damage. Which would be fine if the game didn't have such a large variety of weapons. You find these while exploring but you can't even use half of them due to the stat requirements lest you go for a hybrid build (which barely does any damage). This is a MAYOR letdown, because this makes it so you can't use the cool new weapons you found due to not having the requirements.
This can be alleviated by respeccing which also uses (you guessed it) consumable items... You can only respec about 3-4 times in the WHOLE game (that is, if you explored most of the map). What this means in the end is that the variety in weapons conflicts with the restrictions in stats which makes it so that no matter what you choose you still feel like you choose poorly. Add to this the fact that certain bosses are nigh impossible without the proper build (in a game where you can only respec a few times) and you're left with a very frustrating experience. The game is STUPIDLY hard as well because of this. I played blasphemous, dark devotion, ender lillies, death's gambit & death's door, both ori's, vigil the longest night, tunic and titan & eldest souls and NONE of them frustrated me like this one when i died, because i felt that i could've played better in those games. In this game i die because i specced into the wrong stats...
This game is also harder than those games combined due to poorly telegraphed attacks, miniscule parry windows and HARD hitting enemies that can and will one or two shot you with their combos (especially since you'll most likely spec into damage which leaves you with 0 health upgrades). And it's not just the (mini)bosses. Even regular enemies can screw you up, especially if they team up, staggering you as they take turns beating the crap out of you. Add to this that the checkpoint distribution is so sparse that dying sends you back minutes at a time and you'll spend half of the time playing this respawning and making your way back. Luckily the game doesn't really punish death (no loss of currency or anything like that) so atleast it has that going for it.
Despite all these flaws though the game is worth experiencing due to the concept. A truly alien and surreal setting for a metroidvania is something that to my knowledge didn't really exist before grime came along. The game does a superb job at conveying it's atmosphere through the gorgeous visuals and stellar designs for both the areas themselves as well as everything that lives within it. The sound design and soundtrack really tie up the package as an immersive experience into one of the most freaky but at the same time unique and intruiging worlds found in gaming. I think based on that alone that it's a game worth experiencing if you're good at these difficult games. Recommended but beware it will push your skills to their limits!