Grimlord Review Summary

A true VR Souls-like with satisfying parries and fun combat, though sluggish, unimpactful hits, stutters, and cross-platform optimization issues hold it back.

True VR Souls-like Experience: Reviewers highly praise the game as the most complete and authentic souls-like experience available in VR. It captures the Dark Souls atmosphere, combat, and progression, satisfying a specific niche for VR enthusiasts.

Satisfying Parry and Combat Feel: The parrying, blocking, and deflecting mechanics are frequently highlighted as feeling fantastic and extremely satisfying. Successful parries and ripostes provide a strong sense of accomplishment.

Fun and Enjoyable Gameplay: Many reviewers find the game fun to play and an amazing experience overall, despite occasional clunkiness. The enjoyment is a recurring theme across multiple clusters.

Engaging Crafting and Skill Systems: The crafting system is praised as unique, cool, and simple yet pleasant. The skill tree is also well-received, allowing for skill point allocation and character customization.

Well-Designed Bosses and Enemies: Bosses are described as well-made, satisfying to learn, and cool. Enemies feature unique attacks, weak spots, and varied behaviors that encourage different strategies.

Combat Feels Sluggish And Unimpactful: Many players report that combat is slow, clunky, and lacks impact, making it hard to get into. This is a core issue affecting overall enjoyment.

Bosses Have Excessive Health: Bosses are described as damage sponges with high HP and small movesets, leading to long and tedious fights. This is a common complaint.

Skill Tree Translation Issues: Skill descriptions and effects do not match, with inconsistent icons and poor translation overall. This affects gameplay understanding.

Hitting Enemies Lacks Feedback: Attacks feel like hacking away without impact, and enemies lack hit reactions, reducing combat satisfaction.

VR Compatibility Crashes: Multiple crashes occur due to SteamVR and WMR headset issues, including tracking loss and hands stuck.

Physics-based VR combat: Combat relies on physics-based weapon and shield handling, with movement mechanics adapting melee actions to VR motion controls. Players highlight weapon weight, impact, parrying, and physical positioning as key features.

VR souls-like core experience: The game is consistently described as a souls-like experience built for VR, closely following the classic Souls formula. Players compare it to Dark Souls or Demon's Souls in terms of combat, atmosphere, and character building.

Varied combat and RPG systems: The game mixes melee, ranged, and magic combat within a VR souls-like framework. It also includes RPG systems such as leveling, skill trees, armor, weapon upgrades, and quests.

Challenging boss encounters: Boss fights are a major component, featuring attack patterns, weak spots, and high health pools that make them challenging. Bosses are central to progression and often require learning their patterns.

Soulslike mechanics and difficulty: The game implements traditional soulslike mechanics and difficulty, including the structure and nuanced design associated with the genre. This is a core expectation and draw for players.

Performance Drops and Stutters: Frequent frame drops, severe stutters, and lag spikes occur across various hardware configurations, including during collisions and heavy effect usage. Some areas like the waterside and monastery cause significant slowdowns.

Optimization Problems Across Platforms: The game suffers from general optimization issues, with poor performance on standalone Quest 3 and PC VR, and settings changes often having little effect. Some users report crashes and compatibility problems.

Inconsistent Performance on Different Hardware: Some users with high-end systems experience smooth performance, while others with similar or lower specs face severe issues. This inconsistency makes it hard to predict performance.

Severe Pop-In and LOD Issues: Players report blatant pop-in and poor LOD management, with distant structures visibly degrading and enemies popping in. This is especially distracting in VR and persists even at moderate viewing distances.

Visual and Rendering Glitches: Players note lighting breaks, water rendering out of sync between eyes, level geometry rollbacks, and visual blurriness. These issues detract from the overall visual quality.

Strong souls-like VR appeal: Many reviewers strongly recommend the game to Souls fans who want a VR version of that style of combat and atmosphere. It is repeatedly described as a must-play for VR players seeking a souls-like experience.

Strong immersion in VR: The game is praised for providing strong immersion for VR players. It is recommended for those who want an immersive experience in a dark fantasy world.

Not recommended in current state: A significant group of reviewers cannot recommend the game until glaring issues are addressed or it leaves development. Some requested refunds or advised avoiding it for now.

Buy on sale, not full price: A recurring recommendation is to wait for a discount rather than paying full price, especially given the game's current issues. Several reviewers say it is worth checking out mainly on sale.

Early access caveats acknowledged: Some reviewers recommend the game only with the understanding that it is unfinished and still being worked on. Others suggest waiting for more updates before buying.

Community fair range: $19.99 - $30.00.

Game completion: 14.3h.

Story completion: 27.5h.

Session length: 1.0h.

Grimlord often starts slowly or roughly, but players report it becomes fun after learning systems, improving weapons, or clearing the first area and boss.

Reported time to anchor: 2h.

Friction: slow and rough opening; boring introduction and tutorial pacing; many systems introduced at once; missing or inadequate tutorial prompts for crafting and inventory; being stuck in the tutorial area or hub; damage-sponge boss fights.

Soulslike Veteran: Pattern-learning melee focused on blocking, parrying, boss fights, and intentional grinding of enemies for matter. Motivation: Experiencing the punishing Dark Souls combat loop and mood translated into VR. Stance: buy.

First-Time VR Explorer: Slow, exploratory play with little prior VR experience, appreciating the overall experience rather than optimizing combat. Motivation: Discovering and enjoying VR gaming for the first time. Stance: buy.

Physics Melee Purist: Hands-on experimentation with weapon physics, prioritizing feel and interaction over RPG progression. Motivation: Finding responsive, physically convincing melee combat in VR. Stance: no buy.

The Windows 8-11GB VRAM cohort is mostly positive, with recommended reviews noting rough optimization, while the Windows 12-15GB VRAM cohort is negative due to severe performance complaints.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: positive. Recommended reviews report the game runs but mention rough performance and poor optimization.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: negative. Reviews report some of the worst VR performance seen, with both included snippets not recommended.

Dark Souls VR Comparison: Reviewers repeatedly describe the game as a VR version of Dark Souls or a VR soulslike. This comparison is used to convey the game's difficulty, aesthetic, and overall genre.

Blade & Sorcery Comparison: The game is frequently compared to Blade & Sorcery for its combat, parry feel, weapon handling, and physics. Some note it feels like a step up, while others see it as less refined.

Early Access Release State: Several reviewers mention the game is or was in early access. There is also a 1.0 release that some feel lacks polish.

Classic Soulslike Benchmarks: The game draws comparisons to Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, and Sekiro for its mechanics, joy, and excitement. It is mentioned alongside Dark Souls as a legendary series.

Incomplete Russian Localization: Russian localization is available but the translation is incomplete, particularly for the last two bosses' dialogue. Russian subtitles are not supported.