regrettably sub-par game

gonna keep this review fairly short. grinsia is a game that i don’t wanna call bad, but it unfortunately sort of is. it doesn’t even reach the threshold of mediocrity in my eyes. dull presentation, woefully inconsequential plot and characters, no semblance of exploration, low level of challenge and an annoyingly high encounter rate; pretty much every aspect of grinsia is not good. if there is anything i can at least give praise to, it is the large amount of abilities your characters gain access to as they level up, which lets you mix things up somewhat when in battles. also the fact that ex skills are able to be used by any character is nice

The 3DS version has been patched and doesn't crash anymore, that's something, right?

This review is for Grinsia’s port on the 3DS.

At launch, Grinsia’s 3DS port was an absolute disaster that crashed every 5-15 minutes, with only the autosave enabling any kind of progress. Grinsia has since been patched to fix the crashes, and plays quite smoothly.

There was one glaring bug… the two optional playable characters had their menu portraits switched in battle. I don’t know if this depends on what order they are recruited. This bug had no effect on gameplay; it was just visually jarring.

Grinsia is JRPG comfort food. Anyone accustomed to traditional Japanese RPGs with turn-based combat will find Grinsia very easy to pick up and play. Grinsia is also fairly easy to beat; only a couple of bosses are challenging enough to require careful strategy and/or mild level grinding. There are no in-game purchases on the 3DS version.

Like comfort food, Grinsia has very little nutrition. The story is very by-the-numbers, and nearly all the characters are two-dimensional with zero character growth. The hero can only respond “Yes” or “No” to every choice.

Grinsia does not have multiple story paths, making the hero’s Yes/No choices unimportant. One notable story feature is that different party members (other than the hero) will say different things during story cutscenes, so the player’s choice of who to put in the party does have a slight effect.

Grinsia ultimately felt quite bland and uninspired. It’s a throwback to the 16-bit era meant to invoke nostalgia, but its gameplay is routine, and its few, mildly interesting story developments were too little, and came too late.

My first Kemco RPG experience was...uh...an experience.

First off, I played the 3DS port, which is why the controls got a 5/5. It’s hard to screw up basic RPG controls when you’re playing on an actual system and not dealing with touch-screen controls like I do regularly on my tablet.

Now, the best way to describe this game is to simply ask a person to envision a fundamentally sound, but completely generic RPG that does nothing innovative or particularly interesting, but also does everything competently enough that a fan of the genre will likely see it through to the end.

Your party starts out as a party of treasure-hunting adventurers who quickly find themselves at odds with an emperor or overlord or whatever, who also is seeking certain important artifacts. You gain a few more allies, fight his allies and gain those artifacts. There’s a general light-hearted tone to the story, in particular, the interactions between your party members and a decent number of dungeons.

Everything is solid on the surface, but the game has two big problems. First, it is extremely derivative. I remember chuckling over how the final segments felt like Magitec (the Kemco subordinate in charge of producing this one) really liked Dragon Quest II and wanted to make their own version, with how you need to take a cave to get to the land where the final boss resided and how that cave was littered with pits you couldn’t see until you blundered onto one and got sent down a floor. Second, it’s comically easy. You get so many restorative items per battle, you can heal out of any situation and there are full health/magic restoration points at the beginning of dungeons and before boss fights. You also can teleport to and from towns from those points, so if you actually need to get more items for a tough battle, that is simplicity itself.

It’s not bad, but not good. It’s just an average game that exists.