GRIME II

Enjoyed GRIME II as much as the first part! Looking forward to the next game

Pros: great artwork, challenging bosses, great exploration, pretty good story. Cons: No New Game +, high cost Overall I give it a 8.5/10. If you like metroidvanias and want a twist on the normal formula pick it up, especially if you enjoyed the first game. If you don't want to spend money before playing try out the demo

A master stroke of art!

What a fantastic game. I was not sure at first how I felt it compared to the first game, but over time I really began to appreciate it. They both have their pros (I preferred the traversal in the first, much better appreciated the level design and power ups of the second). It feels it improved on the first in key ways, namely having an earnable power to negate environment jump puzzle damage (makes them significantly less frustrating), and stats feeling better. You can really tell how much effort the devs put into it. If you like challenging platformer metroidvanias, I cannot recommend both enough.

TLDR: Still a very fine MV, but Grime 1 was better. There's a few things I really didn't like about Grime II, which the first game did better. First of all, I didn't use any of the "forms" in the entire playthrough, since they felt useless. They are too slow, too weak, and underwhelming in what they do. Since this is pretty much the main skill mechanic, that's not good. The skill tree for the hunting points was also disappointing. Most of the stuff there was just not interesting. Traversal can get VERY annoying, because many parts of the maps are designed in a way that simply don't allow you to travel through them quickly, even after you got all the abilities. You constantly need to stop and do this charge jump that takes an eternity to charge up, and then there's all these obstacles that you must bypass by "flowing" through the wall, which felt very clusmy to pull off. Then you have cases where you can traverse a section only from one direction - no going back the other way, but the minimap doesnt show this. Finally, when going downwards, the camera doesn't adjust at all and you have like 1 feet between your character and the bottom of the screen. Good luck trying to react to s…

Overall, a great game. Some of the criticisms I definitely agree with. The map is maybe a bit too big and maze like, with too many dead ends. And even after all the patches I still encounterd a fair few bugs. However, the combat is solid, the boss designs are great, and the level backdrops look amazing. Definitely worth a play if you liked the first, or the if you like metroidvanias.