Grime Definitive Edition Review: Battle of the Rock Lords (Switch)

I have a complicated relationship with Soulslikes. I’ve barely ever touched anything from FromSoftware themselves. From them, I’d infinitely prefer flattening buildings in an Armored Core than trudging through poisonous swamps and getting eaten by giant rats. And yet I’m not opposed to the idea of Soulslikes. I liked what I played of Nioh, I still want to grab Lies of P one of these days, and Stranger of Paradise looked like a fun game even beyond the endless “Kill Chaos” memes.

Grime marks a milestone for me, as it’s the first game I’ve ever played in the surprisingly massive “Soulsvania” subgenre, trying to give us the best of both a Metroidvania and a Soulslike. It’s a subgenre of a subgenre, because the people who come up with these names are as smart as pond scum.

Clover Bite’s Grime has been out for quite a while, debuting in 2021 on PC and Google Stadia (HA!), coming to the big boy consoles the following year, and only just now making its way to Nintendo Switch with a boatload of free DLC thrown in for good measure. Is Grime a glorious introduction to this genre, gleaming shiny and chrome, or is it, well, grimy? Sorry, I couldn’t not do the joke.

Grime is available now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and Steam for $24.99.

Story: Rock Out With Your Rock Out

Beginning a game with your character waking up in a strange situation is never a bad idea. It helps provide a natural incentive for the player to proceed, to figure out what the hell is going on. Grime does this, raising more questions than most and refusing to answer them until many hours later. Grime begins with our hero waking up from what is surely the worst hangover in the universe. He finds that he is made of rock, has a black hole for a head, and there are monsters out to kill him. Our hero finds himself a friend in the form of Yon, a weird malformed creature. Yon gives him a weapon and tells him to meet the rest of his kin, and he goes on his merry way.

The lore is incredibly interesting, even if the game’s actual narrative is not a priority. One of the most common themes of the game’s narrative has to deal with the pursuit of beauty. Many of the side characters you meet complain about how ugly their bodies are, and they aren’t wrong. They’re misshapen and horrible, compared to our main character and his normal humanoid proportions. Some of them even revere you as a god, which feels deeply uncomfortable at times, for all the right reasons.

You are a god among men. A god among twisted, horrifying rock men.

Grime’s oppressive atmosphere does a strong job of carrying its narrative. You don’t know exactly what happened to this world, but exploring it is quite interesting, with imaginative vistas and ruined areas. The people of this world are all obsessed with strange religious terms, Mothers and Crafted and whatnot. The lore is incredibly interesting, even if the game’s actual narrative if not really a priority.

Gameplay: Rock Man X

As previously mentioned, Grime is a (ugh) Soulsvania, combining the exploration of a Metroidvania with the punishing combat of a Soulslike. It’s a combination that works, but not without a lot of wrinkles, and the combat definitely got more love in this package.

The combat is very solid, with myriad weapons and tons of monsters to defeat. It’s appropriately tense and punishing. As is the Soulslike way, enemies will eat you for breakfast if you don’t fight carefully. The weapons are varied and quite striking, with no typical fantasy fare. Enemies are disgusting and malformed, something that factors into combat, as they move around in unnatural ways. Most monsters will just run up and claw at you, but others will pelt you with projectiles from afar, dive down at you from above, or explode upon death. You always have to take an enemy’s capabilities into careful consideration. 

Using the hostile terrain to your advantage is the key to victory, like throwing enemies into obstacles and pits.

The game’s weapons are every bit as disgusting as the monsters, and I mean that in a good way. You get weapons made of body parts, weapons that are body parts, and other malformed monstrosities. They all have lots of unique special attacks too, ranging from growing in size to shooting out thunderbolts. Your equipment options are highly restricted, sadly. I spent most of my playtime using a big sword called the Unformed Slab, because it was one of the only weapons I could equip with my stats. I dumped most of my points in Strength, and most of the game’s weapons require a sizeable investment in multiple stats before the game will let you use them. Hyperspecializing in one stat seemed intuitive to me, but Grime begged to differ.

Death and Forgiveness

The game is somewhat more forgiving than typical Soulslikes, something that I very much appreciate for reasons that’ll be discussed later. For one, you do not lose your sou-I mean, “Mass” upon death. The post-death chase is still there, but it’s now for Ardor, a resource gained upon killing enemies that gives you a stacking Mass bonus the more of it you accumulate.

Grime does a good job of encouraging you to take risks. Miniboss encounters are scattered throughout the world, and you’re encouraged to fight them for skill points. The most satisfying mechanic in your game is the absorb mechanic. When an enemy is about to attack you, you expand your black hole head and they get sucked inside. Absorbing enemies is important in other ways too, refilling your healing charges and allowing you to learn skills from them.

Black hole weapons are usually great in games, and Grime is no different. The animations and sound effects are perfect.

The bosses are very satisfying to fight, all unique and visually striking. I know asking for more difficulty out of a Soulslike is madness, but maybe the bosses are a tad too easy? Soulslike bosses are supposed to be famous, iconic, and monstrously difficult. But in Grime, the only difficult part is getting to the bosses. I beat most of them in only a few tries. I’ve honestly had more trouble with the minibosses than I have the game’s actual main bosses, as you at least get a nice flat arena to fight them on. The minibosses are often fought in much smaller areas, areas with uneven terrain, or they have other monsters to guard them. Optional bosses do offer a much greater challenge, so fighting them the moment they’re available is an option if you find the main game too easy.

Mazes and Monsters

It’s a good thing that the game is more forgiving than your typical Soulslike because the exploration blows. The level design is just horrendous. It is one of those “Where the hell do I go?” games. Most of the levels are obnoxious, frustrating mazes filled with death traps and janky platforming. Half of the game’s challenge simply comes from figuring out how to navigate. There are invisible pathways everywhere, and the map does not get filled in until after you find a beacon that’s usually buried deep into each area.

Go on, go for that treasure, the game triple dog dares you.

The worst example of this I found was in the third major area of the game, the “Feaster’s Lair”. There is an obstacle in this area, a small set of teeth that bite you if you try to pass, not to be confused with the large set of teeth that also bite you if you try to pass. Since I get eaten every time I met that obstacle, I figured I have to come back later with an airdash. Cue me wasting hours searching for this ability, only to find that you could just jump through the small teeth. Words cannot describe how frustrated I was to find that out.

Navigation is not helped by the fact that the bonfire equivalents are few and far between, with fast travel points being even rarer. I checked the patch notes, and it seems even the devs knew that fast travel points are too rare, because they added a half dozen more in with one of the game’s major updates. They’re just barely common enough to be useful, but they’re always tucked into the far corners of each area, making the act of using them inconvenient. Why couldn’t just have the Surrogates as fast travel points?

Grime’s platforming expects a lot out of you, something which genuinely surprised me.

Graphics and Sound: Beauty in Ugliness

The game’s visuals are very imaginative and stunning, particularly the backgrounds. Every screenshot could probably be the cover of a Metal album, assuming they had more blood and orcs riding motorcycles. The body-horror-themed environment is immediately striking, can’t think of many other games that look like this. The game spends a bit too much time in underground caves for my liking, but the more open areas are great. There are also some very strong monster designs on offer. It’s amazing how they can take the concept of “Rock Monster” and have so many unique-looking variations on them.

The game’s actual visual fidelity could use some more work though. 3D Switch multiplats can be pretty iffy when it comes to visuals, and Grime, sadly, is no exception. It generally looks fine at a distance, but the few times the game gives you a closer view of the action tends to reveal some pretty middling texture work. It looks fine in handheld mode, but it’s not especially flattering when playing docked.

The music consists mostly of spooky ambiance, fitting for a game with this atmosphere. The music only really kicks in for the bosses, you’re mostly just dealing with sound effects. Impact sounds are nice and chunky, it makes you feel like you’re breaking these monsters apart bit by bit.

The visuals are super creative, even if the fidelity is somewhat lacking.

Bug Bombs

There were a fair amount of bugs in my time with Grime. The game does not like being put into sleep mode, often having a 10-15 second lag period before it’ll accept inputs after resuming play. And if you put it in sleep mode for a sufficiently long time, such as putting it into sleep mode before you go to bed and picking it up the next morning, it will never respond, forcing you to reset the game. Phasing into terrain also happened a few too many times for my liking, and I think the game mistakenly gave me the rewards for beating an optional boss twice. I’m not complaining about that last bug though.

Adding to the issues with sleep mode is the fact that control bindings are not saved when quitting the game, forcing me to change them every time, especially because I find the default mapping to be very strange. Any developer that doesn’t map dash to a shoulder button by default should be tarred and feathered. Another oddity with the controls involves dialogue. Dialogue is advanced with the “Interact” button (ZL by default). I remapped it to ZR, but the dialogue is still advanced with ZL, making advancing dialogue needlessly awkward.

Grime was reviewed for Nintendo Switch using a key provided by akuparagames.com.