GRIME

way better than hollow knight.

biggest meh ever so many better games

its really great, but the onyl downside is the delay omg i cant its so anoying

Recommended.

.

fun metroidvainia with some fromsoft influence

fantastic mv. polished and with a nice atmosphere. challenging and linear but with many secrets

This says I only have about an hour at time of review, but that is false. I've got about 2 more hours that I played on the demo and steam deck, and for some reason those aren't totalling up. I have between 3 to 4 hours in the game, which I just started here in 2025.

This is a very good review, which is odd because this is not my typical game.

I love Metroidvanias, but I typically stay away from anything that is too gruesome. I really don't get into super dark gore and fantasy, the whole genre kind of grosses me out or turns me off too much. I decided to try the demo of this game though because I played another game by this same developer that I really thought was great.

I have to say... I am sticking with this one, even if the theme isn't my typical cup of tea. Why? Because put simply, this is how to do a difficult combat side scrolling Metroidvania the right way. So many kudos to the development team for the decisions made here, because I think this is the prime example of how to make a challenging game that balances things out correctly. Not only did they sell me Grime, but I'm now a slam dunk customer for Grime 2 when it releases.

Their primary goal in how they developed this combat system was, in my opinion, to combat button mashing. That's really the enemy of every side scrolling game, because button mashing becomes much easier when the game is restricted to two dimensions vice 3. They did it here by limiting the force bar (think of it as stamina). So you only get so many attacks or dodges before you run out, and then you have to recharge and you are vulnerable when that happens. Honestly though... I really like how they tuned it. You do have to slow down, plan your strikes a bit, save some for dashing, and plan out your positioning.
Also the way they do the absorb (parry) mechanic requires you to have very tight timing... you don't get a huge window of opportunity to absorb correctly. Also each enemy has different timing, so you have to account for their different attack types. Sometimes an enemy will have to be reduced in health before it can be absorbed.

You get a seemingly wide variety of weapons, from fast firing daggers to large, slow hammers. You get to buff the stats you want and play with the weapons you like. You get consumables all over the place like throwing daggers and 15% damage reduction items, so as long as you learn to use your consumables they provide a huge benefit and increase the flexibility of the combat system. Also jumping doesn't use force (stamina), so sometimes when you naturally be inclined to dash, you have to learn that maybe you could jump instead and save the force.

So this game demands that you don't button mash, you plan things out, stay conscious of your stamina, and have really good reactions and timing for absorbing (parrying, essentially). The limited stamina and thus limited dashing really adds to that. Also you don't get a ton of life... you will die in only a few big hits. You cannot use a heal until you charge it up, which requires that you mastered the absorb mechanic to charge up your breath bar (healing resource). This game is tough! You have to practice and pay attention.

But they did so much right. First off, on the absorb (parry), every enemy has really good attack animation telegraphing. It usually isn't long... you have to be quick and precise and focused. But it is always there and always reliable. All the notification you need is there, as long as you pay attention and control your immediate vicinity such that you can focus. I've found it very rewarding to finally "get it" and learn how to time each of the enemies.
Secondly, they don't punish you for dying! This is such a big thing. You do warp back to your last save point, so you may lose some time backtracking your steps. But you don't lose your collected mass! That's the most important thing, because mass is what you use to improve your stats (think of it as xp). You do lose your ardor, but ardor is just a nice to have buff that you can earn back quickly enough. And if you do get to your "death chest" you get half your ardor back anyway. The way I've been playing, ardor is kind of a nice to have anyway so I'm not worried.

So essentially this game does not punish you for experimenting with different weapons or styles, or for dying while you learn to fight certain new enemies or certain bosses. Or at least the only punishment is a bit of time while you backtrack from your last save point. I really like that, because it means the game can be difficult without wasting more of your time than necessary.

To me, this is the gold standard of how to balance a difficult souls-like combat 2d Metroidvania, and I'm enjoying it so much that I really am liking the game despite my general distaste for the really weird, dark, gross theme. I'll even for sure play the next one.

This game is solid but still got a lot flaws:
1. Movement is clunking and not smooth, the repel sound effect is not satisfying.
2. Stamina(Force) bar is a 2-edge sword, for me is the bad side, you cannot spam dodge and attack whatever you want, a lot of the boss fights I need to stand still for 1.5 secs to wait for its cooldown, not smooth.
3. Ost is meh. Boss fight have some orchestra music, but the map music is very forgettable.
4. I am not sure about the story because I am not a lore-reading player, but personally I think the flow of the story is not attracting me enough.
5. Too little checkpoint when the map is so large. Beacon put at secret room. I was using interactive map for my playthrough because I don't want to get loss. Fast travel between Surrogate is too late to be introduced imo. But good thing is some platforming sections are fun.
6. Ardor damage combo is suck when dealing with boss. Each time the boss hit you you will loss Ardor, meaning if I want to get the full damage buff from Wretch, I need to go somewhere to fight enemy to maximize it, then go back to the boss room again? This is super inefficient.
7. Vessel point is a creative system. However other soul-like metroidvania does have some upgrade but it will not give you that much advantages. Eg: Hollow Knight charm and nail upgrade. For this game you technically can spam your levels to breeze through bosses. This give you an option to 'grind and become godlike powerful', I don't really like this, other similar games will limit your grind, and they want you to trying the boss again and again.
8. Healing is very inconvenient. You need to parry to heal, this is sooooo unnecessary thing to add, sometime you are low at health in the middle of nowhere, you still need to risk it to parry? When most of the time you don't even know if that enemy can be parry at the start.
9. From the previous point, repel and absorb kit is not really friendly to use because its hard to know the timing, dashing to dodge is way more better, but I cannot get any breath point from dodging broooo. Additionally, absorb is way more harsh because it needs the enemy in extreme low health.
10. Consumable items feels like useless. Ok its not entirely useless, but I tend to be preservative, at the end I lefted out a lot of the items when I already cleared the game.
11. Grieving rockgiant is utter BS because it can one shot me with his falling down crash attack. In my opinion every boss should not be able to one shot you because it is super unfair and frustrating to deal with. I can fight Pure Vessel and Eigong for a whole day, but one shot you is a no no. So I need to grind more to increase my HP/Atk/Force, this lead back to the problem mentioned in (7).

Very cool game, good graphics/aesthetics, combat, originality. Definitely worth when on sale.

Bit of a slow start, but once it gets moving shit really takes off. The combat is simple but super weighted, and the player movement is like butter. I'm not typically much of a platforming guy, but man...some of the platforming is SMOOOOOOOOTH! Bosses are super fun, after finishing my play-through I immediately fought em' all again in the gauntlet...and the art. Of course the art and illustrations are absolutely fantastic - if I could melt this game down into a smoothie and drink it I would.

And I mean as far as *cons* go, there's a lot of weapons in the game but I do wish they felt a little more varied and stood out from each other a little more. Love the exploration aspects of the map, but I felt like most of the time any of my heavy exploration just lead to the same few repeat-consumable items, which can be a bit of a bummer.

All in all though, a few tiny gripes aside this game absolutely kicked ass. Grime 2 is gonna be a day one purchase that's for sure~

A fantastic combination of soulslike and metroidvania. Combat feels great, centering around a parrying mechanic that rewards you for learning enemy attacks, as well as a soulslike leveling mechanic and many different weapons that let you customize your own approach to battle. Platforming also feels great, with tons of hidden areas and items to reward exploration. The atmosphere and the lore do just as good a job at capturing that same dark, unsettling, and mysterious yet intriguing quality that Fromsoft games are known for.

Definitely one of my new favorite metroidvanias.

Rocks.

Beautiful game with highly frustrating parry-based combat and no difficulty options.

Most underrated metroidvania of all time.

8/10

I hope whoever came up with NG+ gets glassed by a pack of rabid kangaroos.

Very sad game otherwise.

excellent metroidvania game

“Am I the bad guy?”
-Grimes
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With many, MANY games of this genre coming out these years Grime carves (heh) itself a sport among the best known titles using its “chiseled from stone” looks and parry-centric gameplay.

Story

In a strange world where life isn’t made equal and is breath into stone you take control of a mysterious and silent blackhole-headed entity with a quest that’ll become clearer as you progress meeting characters that become better and better versed about how this whole strange world works.

Gameplay

Explore, get blocked by the environment, explore some more, find an upgrade that expands your movement repertoire, explore some more with new moves.

Combat is slow, weapons have a little combo string to do damage but the star here lays in the parry mechanic.
More generous than in other games, parrying both damages an enemy and opens them up for more damage.
Also parrying instantly defeats some enemies, and on most it also unlock special abilities if you use it as a finishing blow.

Improvement is donr through the aforementioned parry-absorb, minibosses dropping “hunt points” to activate these abilities, and the classic use of experience at rest sites to level up different stats.

X-Factor

The metroidvania genre you know and hopefully love since you’re not on this steam page by mistake, now wrapped in stonelikeahestetic, and lots of content.

Downsides

Weapon balance is broken, with fast striking weapons dealing more overall damage than heavier ones mean that combined with having more windows to attack with the former will make the latter comparatively useless.

Animations are often stiff and janky; this wouldn’t normally mean much but they are crucial to engage with the core parry mechanic.

Exploration isn’t exactly rewarding, a lot of places have dead ends in their branching paths, an experience reward that often amounts to less of what you get from the enemies just before it, or a single piece of an armor set where you need all 3 before even activating its effects.
Even worse is the fact that these dead ends don’t reward with unique vistas or give you a feeling for the world or that you’re mapping it out, instead it’s often a corridor ending in a flat wall with nothing going on in the background.

The game actively discourages experimentation as stats, weapon upgrades, and abilities cannot be switched around and there0s a limited annount of upgrade materials each game.
There’s one way to respect stats but the items needed are so rare you’ll be able to do it just once in the game and only if you’re really thorough with your exploration.
[hr][/hr]

Still a competently made metroidvania with some fun slower-paced combat that asks you to really figure out what the enemies are doing and how to best respond to their attacks, unique looks and lots of content is what makes me give this a thumbs up even at 20$.

Genuinely one of the best games I have ever played. The atmosphere is amazing. The OST is amazing, The combat is amazing. The world design and traversal is amazing. Platforming puzzles can be a bit challenging but they feel wonderful to complete. If you are on the fence about picking this game up I highly recommend you give it a try.

If you can stomach a bit of a slower pace in a metroidvania, and a stamina system that makes it so that sometimes the correct action to take is none at all whilst you wait for regen, I think it's really special.

Combat is weighty and rewarding when properly balancing your stamina, positioning and what attacks to parry and dodge. Parrying things with your head is as cool as it is gratifying, pulling limbs off of bosses and swallowing smaller enemies wholesale in your ever-gaping maw.

Exploration is a treat with the art direction on display and I very much enjoyed the vibe of the world, though tile-sets can be a bit samey and so keeping your bearing is sometimes not the easiest. Doesn't crop up too often, but it's there.

Similarly, the path to progression can be a little obtuse. But we have guides for that.

Ok I don't like giving bad reviews especially to passion projects, but even an hour within this game I can already tell the vibes are just "anti quality of life".

Stamina bar is tiny and regens so damn slow, after the first boss i just started dumping into the stamina stat and it still felt miserable. Jumping and movement in general feels like the worst kind of snappy, like you just teleport into a ledge grab and the animations feel so rigid (and not like in an aesthetic way, the animations just feel clunky). To use items you have to assign them to the d-pad menu and cant just use from the pause screen. Im also gonna guess sprinting is an unlocked skill later on that will likely cost more stamina than its worth.

The cutesy little hidden area gimmick gets old fast since you just have to walk into every wall you see, and the hidden rooms don't even have the decency to stay revealed once you leave. Im ok with hidden areas but when half the tutorial is so dense with them that you accidentally find them because you held right a bit longer than normal is a tad much. I won't hold this against the game since maybe it calms down past the early game but jeez.

My last straw was in the area after the first boss, theres this drop down to encounter a "nervepass" (apparently the fast travel system) and idk if i was meant to find an earlier one but interacting with it had zero options (just "close menu"). Cool, whatever, except the room was apparently one way. After a few minutes of fumbling around i decided to look it up and sure enough the top results are just use the darksign button or the homeword bone item.

I also encountered a few bugs, including one where my body was physically logged into an enemy ragdoll (had to darksign). Oh and BTW the rag dolls have collision for some fucking reason I guess you get "mass" from breaking them but just. why??? you can have breakable corpses without needing them to physically restrict movement until hit,...

Your healing is also fully restricted to the parry mechanic, which im neutral on. I feel like in any other game that would be a fun core mechanic, but when you have the stamina of the average 200X horror game protag its really, really annoying. At least parrying feels forgiving enough. Another cool mechanic is the hunt gimmick but since I tapped out pretty early i feel like i shouldnt comment on it, unless something changes it feels mostly slapped on to further encourage parrying enemies in an unnatural way.

One positive is that death (seems to be) less punishing, since all you lose is a percentage increase you get by just parrying people, and even outside of the first area I was able to max it out with little issue and (so far) it only increases "mass" gain. So death doesnt punish your currency but the rate of your currency gain, which is neat and I kinda dig it.... wish it was in a more fun game.

TL'DR

great graphic and world design, gameplay feels slower than fat-rolling in dark souls 1, I got pseudo soft locked twice and had to darksign both times, if the game had the stamina regen delay shortened and a tad faster animations id be fine with it. I cannot recommend unless your favorite souls-like of all time is demon souls.

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