It has been 4 months since the last time I played Grimms Notes. It was the first Gacha game I played, which was around mid-2017. I can't remember how I found about it, since it was a Japan-only game (Flero Games attempted to run a Global version, but it didn't last long).
Gameplay was fun. The fact that there was no stamina is it's strongest point. The battle system was a watered-down version of Tales of Rebirth's 3L-LMBS, but still enjoyable thanks to the tons of characters you could try out, weapons, skins, and offering a decent challenge. You could send a party of 6 Heroes to battle (2 more with support units), with the leader being player-controlled, and the rest by a customizable AI. IMO, the real fun was simply soloing quests.
Multiplayer was neat, you teamed up with other players to beat Boss Rush quests. In the PVP arena, you party was pitted against other players' in a timed fight. Unfortunately, the key to win was properly setting up your party's AI, for your leader was not controllable. The only thing you could do was watching your team either successfully surviving, or getting smacked down.
I can't talk about the plot, since I don't know Japanese, but I heard it's pretty good. Cutscenes are in Visual Novel format, displaying lots of beautifully drawn artworks. Personally I found the music incredibly boring, especially the battle themes. The voice acting was on point, bringing up talented seiyuus such as Kosuke Toriumi and Sakura Tange.
As for the Gacha aspect, Grimms Notes would not give you 5-star Heroes that easy. Farming gems was a must, especially if you wanted to get those OP limited 5-star, since drop rates were low.
The game was overall kind to F2P players, giving us many chances to get free gems. Though by 2019, it got pretty greedy; It started to introduce paid-only skins/Heroes, the newer quests ramped up the difficulty to unfair levels, so you were forced to get and upgrade the latest Heroes to merely survive. And by 2020, the devs seemed to release fewer and fewer events than usual.
Once the game was deemed unprofitable, they gave up and simply released the final chapter and made almost ALL the heroes available to purchase with gems. It was a blast playing it during it's last months of life, trying out Heroes I never managed to get! Then they pulled the plug and left only most of the cutscenes available to read. The battle system was completely removed.
So what's the point of writing a review of a dead Gacha game? None, I guess. I just wanted to rembember the good ol' times I had fun playing Grimms Notes, in spite of it's flaws. I miss it so much. Few non-Japanese people knew about it, but for me, it holds a special place in my heart. If you are into untranslated Visual Novels, then you may want to take a look at this app. If you watched the anime, then you'll get to see how it ended, rather than have to wait for a Season 2 that will most likely never come out.
An underrated but memorable dead Gacha RPG
It has been 4 months since the last time I played Grimms Notes. It was the first Gacha game I played, which was around mid-2017. I can't remember how I found about it, since it was a Japan-only game (Flero Games attempted to run a Global version, but it didn't last long).
Gameplay was fun. The fact that there was no stamina is it's strongest point. The battle system was a watered-down version of Tales of Rebirth's 3L-LMBS, but still enjoyable thanks to the tons of characters you could try out, weapons, skins, and offering a decent challenge. You could send a party of 6 Heroes to battle (2 more with support units), with the leader being player-controlled, and the rest by a customizable AI. IMO, the real fun was simply soloing quests.
Multiplayer was neat, you teamed up with other players to beat Boss Rush quests. In the PVP arena, you party was pitted against other players' in a timed fight. Unfortunately, the key to win was properly setting up your party's AI, for your leader was not controllable. The only thing you could do was watching your team either successfully surviving, or getting smacked down.
I can't talk about the plot, since I don't know Japanese, but I heard it's pretty good. Cutscenes are in Visual Novel format, displaying lots of beautifully drawn artworks. Personally I found the music incredibly boring, especially the battle themes. The voice acting was on point, bringing up talented seiyuus such as Kosuke Toriumi and Sakura Tange.
As for the Gacha aspect, Grimms Notes would not give you 5-star Heroes that easy. Farming gems was a must, especially if you wanted to get those OP limited 5-star, since drop rates were low.
The game was overall kind to F2P players, giving us many chances to get free gems. Though by 2019, it got pretty greedy; It started to introduce paid-only skins/Heroes, the newer quests ramped up the difficulty to unfair levels, so you were forced to get and upgrade the latest Heroes to merely survive. And by 2020, the devs seemed to release fewer and fewer events than usual.
Once the game was deemed unprofitable, they gave up and simply released the final chapter and made almost ALL the heroes available to purchase with gems. It was a blast playing it during it's last months of life, trying out Heroes I never managed to get! Then they pulled the plug and left only most of the cutscenes available to read. The battle system was completely removed.
So what's the point of writing a review of a dead Gacha game? None, I guess. I just wanted to rembember the good ol' times I had fun playing Grimms Notes, in spite of it's flaws. I miss it so much. Few non-Japanese people knew about it, but for me, it holds a special place in my heart. If you are into untranslated Visual Novels, then you may want to take a look at this app. If you watched the anime, then you'll get to see how it ended, rather than have to wait for a Season 2 that will most likely never come out.