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chuckroThe four elemental Grimoas created the world, but when three of them split off child-Grimoas, the Fire Grimoa made a grab for power. Now, the other Grimoas must band together with human Partners to revitalize the world’s faith in them and stop the Fire Grimoa’s plans to burn the world.
The first thing I noticed about this game was that it uses a different graphical style from a lot of KEMCO’s other games; this one much more like Chrono Trigger. It’s not tile-based and it’s more detailed. This is clearly where the designers put their effort.
The plot feels generic, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise. You need to gather up the elemental gods so that you can challenge the one that’s gone rogue and wants to destroy humanity. They make an effort towards character development, but the clunky translation makes a lot of that fall flat and causes a lot of mood whiplash.
The difficulty level is also higher than most KEMCO offerings, necessitating more grinding. Battles are frequent and enemies are very free with status ailment attacks, particularly ones that are annoying to cure. The game’s unique ailment, “Pancho” turns you into a weak tiny bird (but with a 10 MP powerful strike) and most stores don’t sell the item that cures it. Poison also persists after battle and makes extremely frequent appearances.
The quest system is an excuse for grinding, as all of them are either “kill 5 random monsters” or “kill a specific monster”. The latter irritated me, because I couldn’t find any of the special monsters I was supposed to be killing.
There’s also a crafting system that was underwhelming. You can pick up tons of vendortrash from random battles and “sparkles” in dungeons, which you can use recipes to combine. But the combinations are all either consumables that you can (and probably should) just buy, or accessories that aren’t better than what you find in chests and stores. So it’s awkward to use and the benefits of using it are minimal.
The ads are intrusive—not to the point that they make the game unplayable, but definitely annoying. You get a pop up ad after every other battle, and a short video ad after every time you save. (You can also optionally see video ads when you gather materials from sparkle points, but there doesn’t seem to be any benefit to doing so.) A $5 in-app purchase turns off the ads; you can also buy points to spend on game-breaking accessories, like in their other games.
Overall: I wasn’t enthralled here, and I think there were a lot of factors to that. The increased emphasis on grinding versus other games; the simplistic “find all the elements” plot; the emphasis on status ailments that you need limited items to cure; and the mild irritation of the ads. If the game had otherwise be great, I’d have paid the $5 to remove the ads. I opted to stop playing instead.
The first thing I noticed about this game was that it uses a different graphical style from a lot of KEMCO’s other games; this one much more like Chrono Trigger. It’s not tile-based and it’s more detailed. This is clearly where the designers put their effort.
The plot feels generic, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise. You need to gather up the elemental gods so that you can challenge the one that’s gone rogue and wants to destroy humanity. They make an effort towards character development, but the clunky translation makes a lot of that fall flat and causes a lot of mood whiplash.
The difficulty level is also higher than most KEMCO offerings, necessitating more grinding. Battles are frequent and enemies are very free with status ailment attacks, particularly ones that are annoying to cure. The game’s unique ailment, “Pancho” turns you into a weak tiny bird (but with a 10 MP powerful strike) and most stores don’t sell the item that cures it. Poison also persists after battle and makes extremely frequent appearances.
The quest system is an excuse for grinding, as all of them are either “kill 5 random monsters” or “kill a specific monster”. The latter irritated me, because I couldn’t find any of the special monsters I was supposed to be killing.
There’s also a crafting system that was underwhelming. You can pick up tons of vendortrash from random battles and “sparkles” in dungeons, which you can use recipes to combine. But the combinations are all either consumables that you can (and probably should) just buy, or accessories that aren’t better than what you find in chests and stores. So it’s awkward to use and the benefits of using it are minimal.
The ads are intrusive—not to the point that they make the game unplayable, but definitely annoying. You get a pop up ad after every other battle, and a short video ad after every time you save. (You can also optionally see video ads when you gather materials from sparkle points, but there doesn’t seem to be any benefit to doing so.) A $5 in-app purchase turns off the ads; you can also buy points to spend on game-breaking accessories, like in their other games.
Overall: I wasn’t enthralled here, and I think there were a lot of factors to that. The increased emphasis on grinding versus other games; the simplistic “find all the elements” plot; the emphasis on status ailments that you need limited items to cure; and the mild irritation of the ads. If the game had otherwise be great, I’d have paid the $5 to remove the ads. I opted to stop playing instead.
