I played this game to completion during its early access phase, and I thought it had a lot of potential. Now that it's officially released, I find myself a bit disappointed. The combat still feels clunky and lacks impact. The parrying mechanic is an interesting idea, but if you're using a shield, you almost always parry automatically—only for the shield to randomly fall out of your hand.

Enemies are either complete pushovers, going down in one hit, or absolute tanks that take an unreasonable number of hits to kill. There are also frustrating bugs, like when I try to holster my weapon on the side, and it simply doesn't work. The difficulty feels artificial, with the game spawning random high-health enemies behind you or placing a sniper in an obscure corner.

It's clear the developers were inspired by Dark Souls, but they’ve failed to inject much of their own identity into the game. Instead, it feels like a linear rollercoaster ride with the occasional chest hidden in a corner.

If you're truly bored of Blade and Sorcery, Battle Talent, or Legendary Tales, then sure, give this a try. But in its current state, I honestly can't recommend it.

I don't write reviews for games. Ever. But the developers insisted they wanted to hear from us and I think there's great potential for this title. So here it goes.

My favorite genre of game has been, and always will be, action RPG. RPG being the more important part. Experience gains, levels, points, skills and talents. All very exciting and gives me a sense of investment and something to show for my time. Grimlord partly delivers on this, albeit with a Dark Souls twist. You die, you lose your "matter", then you must retrieve it or you risk losing it. This part is fine, but the amount of xp required to get a single point to place on a gigantic wheel of options, seemed rather daunting. Not to mention that the wheel is made up of mostly basic value increases. One point in strength here, some for intelligence, so on and so forth. Which reminded me greatly of the old Final Fantasy 10 leveling system. Point being, they are seemingly inconsequential buffs to your character and only shine when you've been able to put several dozen points into the wheel. This gets frustrating when you're constantly fighting armored foes that take several hits to defeat so early in the game, while simultaneously giving so little experience. Again, I understand it's a Souls-like game, but this one comes with actual physical exhaustion over time, given that it's VR. It makes the overall experience seem as if the intent was for people to get exercise rather than go on an adventure. I'd like to see some more impactful choices later on. Increased capabilities for two handing a typically one-handed weapon, for example. Or some bonuses for using a fencing weapon. So on and so forth.

However all of this could be that I choose to be a Spellsword in nearly all my action RPGs and forego using anything other weapon than sword/dagger weaponry, un shielded of course. Which leads me to the next part, spellcasting.

I find the idea of requiring a staff or other implement to use spells rather irritating if not downright inefficient. If a tool is absolutely required, then I expect it to at least be more powerful than slapping an enemy with a sword. Which, so far, it is not. It takes my entire mana supply to down a single archer with a lightning staff. Firing the little pew pew bolts and assuming I don't ever miss. Not to mention that for whatever reason, it seems to require a faster motion to activate than the fireball staff, which I assume is just a bug that'll get fixed eventually. But I digress, use of a staff/wand whatever, should be optional. With perhaps using said objects to give a buff to the damage, or having it cost less mana, or something. It drastically hinders the flow of game play when I'm needing to switch from a two handed long sword stance and reach to my back just to sloppily spin the stick around to fire off a bolt that does very little or raise it up to perform a "power" magic attack that does slightly more and drains my mana near instantly. Just allow me to release one hand off my weapon, then quickly flick some magic in the enemy's eye so I can get back to swinging.

Now for the weapon combat, of which I have some complaints that may or may not be typical for VR combat. I understand that there's only so much you can do with the game itself, but more than half the time I go in for a stab, the blade seems to veer off from the point of impact as though I'm striking a shield. This occurs whether I'm hitting armor or not. Making precision striking, like aiming for holes in a helmet or exposed midsections, near impossible. I've only played the game for 7 hours and I've already forsaken thrusting strikes save for when the enemy is on the ground. Of which I'm slightly more successful in the weapon actually going into the target. Speaking of knocking enemies around, my immersion for combat is completely shattered when I strike an enemy or shoot it with magic and there is zero flinching, staggering or stunning of the target. I get that zombies might be more resilient to damage and wouldn't just fall over. But damn it really makes me feel like I'm wasting energy when I do a full swing and the blade just stops like I struck a brick wall. There is zero follow through with my attacks, meaning that I need to reorient myself frequently, taking steps back because the enemy is going to counter attack as if I was trying to maul them to death with a pillow.
Quick side note, the slightly longer sword handle isn't long enough to have both hands on it with appropriate spacing. If trying to put even an inch of space between hands, part of the bottom hand has to grip the pommel which is bothersome. Nor am I allowed to choke up on the handle like in Blade and Sorcery. I figured the claymore handle would fix this issue, but sadly it forces me to sheathe it on my back, meaning I also can't equip the magic staff. Which forced me to go right back to the same handle.

And I think lastly, I'd like to touch up on stealth. Which I'm still testing out and learning what triggers aggro. It seems that if I'm kneeling down and walk up behind an enemy slowly, I'm able to go in for a sneak attack with my trusty dagger. Which I admit is pretty fun to rapidly stab into an archer that hasn't noticed me yet, at least when the weapon actually penetrates the target and not be deflected. But once again, the amount of stabs required for the dagger makes them generally ineffectual. Recently I managed to sneak up on one of those two-handed axe zombies with my girlfriend watching. I pulled my dagger out and gave a fast stab to it's face... twice. Both times the dagger actually sank into it's skull and I was pleasantly surprised. But darn it, the axe zombie just looked at me as if I pissed on it's boots and geared up for some swings. Girlfriend says "You stabbed it in the face twice and it didn't even flinch. How come?". All I could do was shrug as I was also at a loss for an explanation.

All in all, I think this game has great potential to be a truly entertaining and immersive adventure that I'd love to replay over and over with different builds and play styles. The parrying and dodging seems reasonable, along with the amount of damage received when making a mistake. I'd say armored foes are a bit rough to deal with when using a sword at least, as they probably should be. Forcing me to use bombs and magic/potion chugging to bring one down when in groups. Perhaps these issues are just specific to me and should be taken as such. I will continue to play it and see what else it offers while looking forward to whatever changes may come. I think it might be a tad expensive for what it provides at the moment, but I can also see myself paying near double for it if the changes I mentioned were introduced.

I'd say for most players, give it a try for 1.5 hours and see how it goes. Refund if necessary.

It's a VR souls game. It's sort of hilarious how closely this game tries to match that formula, and for the most part it's endearing. But I honestly can't remember a VR game that caused me to approach it like an actual souls game, which this does. I am really enjoying it so far.

The tutorial is low info and obtuse. That's not great for a VR game which already has a high degree of frustration. The jank is thick here.

The fact that you can hold the firekeeper waifu's hand whenever you wish means auto-reccomend for me. 11/10