I also like their real-time counterparts, which add in the need for some manual dexterity as well as time and resource management skills to keep up with an enemy who is never waiting for their turn. It also helps to have a mouse and keyboard in this scenario, to make issuing commands to the right units at the right time as simple as possible. This is surely part of the reason why controller-bound console RTSs aren't especially common. Just remember RMRMR when you go to write it out later GrimGrimoire (PS2, 2007) manages to overcome this restriction well enough, thanks to the way it compensates for the relatively simple input device. The first and most useful of these is the ability to issue commands while the game is paused. It helps make the early game fabulously efficient as gathering resources and initial base building is done by issuing commands that only cost a few seconds of actual game time. At the first sign of enemy attack, just pause, check out what's coming, and give orders to the proper counter units. Without any keyboard shortcuts or the quick precision of a mouse, I see pausing like this as a perfectly serviceable way to support a fairly complex game without making it too stressful and cumbersome to actually play.Īnd GrimGrimoire is fairly complex. There are 20 different units in the game, each with their role to play. To help make sense of what units work best against which other units, the game uses four unit types (Alchemy, Necromancy, etc) that are each strong/weak/equivalent to certain others. These are almost like the races from a game like StarCraft, except all of the unit types are available to player and the AI simultaneously. Each type has only a handful of units: usually a resource gatherer/infantry, stronger infantry, status effect unit, immobile defensive unit, and a super-weapon. Despite the broadly defined overlap in these roles across the four types, every unit is very different from its closest counterpart, making it worthwhile to use a variety of types rather than focusing on just one.ĭoing so, however, requires a variety of structures (summoning circles, actually) capable of producing those different units. There are twelve of these in all - three for each type - though it's unlikely they'll all be needed at the same time. Interestingly, all twelve are available immediately at the beginning of a match (in story mode, the ones that have been previously unlocked are available), which allows the player to go more or less directly to producing whichever unit they like. It is necessary to level up some structures before they can produce certain units, but it is nevertheless possible to field any unit within minutes of starting a match. This keeps the game moving at a pleasantly quick pace, and is what I found most attractive about how GrimGrimoire plays. Everything builds and finishes so relatively quickly that there's rarely any need to wait for anything so long as the resources are there to produce it.