Alright someone who owns it and has played it!
Was class change possible like in the Wizardry games it was inspired by?
Was the grimoire manual ever updated to cover the changes when Grimoire V2 came out?
Is Grimoire still being updated with bugfixes? Last update I see listed on Steam is from Feb 5th 2019.

It's not that much, especially if you play old RPGs actively and are used to such UI. And it's not like the game doesn't have a very informative manual.

"there are many bad games here; what's one more" ? ;)

thanks!

Well I went ahead and bought it on Itch.io and added it to my collection. Tried it out, UI's not bad, early 2000's feel to it, something like Wizardry 8 or Wizards and Warriors would be comperable.
I wish there was a PDF for the manual instead of an internet link to an online manual.

Did you happen to see if its updated to the latest version please?

Eh? Why an EXE? You do know that PDF has hyperlinks, right? You can also browse HTML documents offline, if they are not entirely actively generated by some awful CGI/web framework, especially if the document is actually provided as an offline archive as it should. I guess as a Linux user I hate it when such things are hidden behind yet another executable potentially unsupported by wine, and impossible to view any other way (such as copying it to a portable device or printing it out).

Ah, crap. Now I've posted in this abominable thread. Again. Sorry.

I would have prefered a PDF too.
I guess if this guy was typical we wouldnt have this game.

I was one of those guys who kept harassing Cleve Blakemore for him to release the game on GOG. Needless to say, I was pretty mighty pissed when GOG refused Grimoire.

In retrospect I have to admit that I now think GOG made a smart move. Despite the qualities of the game, it's still very unstable on certain aspects and mechanics. And Cleve's work ethos is very "irregular" (to say the least). I can see GOG having to deal with a lot of refund tickets from people who would be angry about the lack of a proper manual and specific bugs. Not a nice thing, considering that GOG has been suffering a lot of flak from lack of game updates and extras in regards to steam.

I now agree with GOG's decision: Better to wait until the game is 100% stable (will it ever be?) and with a good manual before reconsidering their rejection.

Thanks for the update, much appreciated

Yet in the opinion of other users, your last sentence could apply to many games on GOG (even including some old games with issues running on particularly fast or modern systems). Filtering reviews by "Most Critical" can illustrate that multiple people find multiple games here to be unstable on certain aspects and mechanics.

My beef is that I have observed GOG reject a (supposedly) "unstable" game like Grimoire, yet has allowed other (supposedly) "unstable" games in. This is not to make what another poster would call an "X bad game got accepted, therefore Y bad game should be accepted" argument...it is a bit of a variant, though :)

That being,
Why does it appear that only the old-school dungeon crawlers are consistently the (supposedly) "unstable" games getting rejected? Is there an example of any other genre or type of game that has been consistently rejected by GOG curation in this sort of way?

GOG has been rejecting plenty of other genre games: pint n'click adventures, rogue-likes, etc.
And in all honesty, from all the "old-school dungeon-crawlers" GOG has rejected over the years (at least those I know of) Grimoire seems by far the best of the lot. The others were just mediocre cash-grabs trying to ride on the "old-school renaissance".

Fair points, but GOG does still accept point n' click adventures and roguelikes in greater numbers. For dungeon crawlers with bigger production values, Bard's Tale IV is coming up. In the last year or so there was Mary Skelter, and...? If only looking at older-style or pixelated graphics, maybe someone can stretch and argue for the expansion to Barony that released this year?

My argument is that as a consumer who likes these games, I can't help but conclude there is a bias against old-school dungeon crawlers. Because "unstable" games from other genres, as well as games "trying to ride on the 'old-school renaissance'" from other genres, do get accepted. I would be more convinced there wasn't a bias, if the discrepancy wasn't seemingly so reserved to one genre.

Nah, seems like it's more an issue of effort/small reward for developers.

Signing whatever contracts are required, creating a non-Steam version of their game, uploading the game to GOG via GOG's convoluted upload process, and then after all that effort.....seeing a fraction of the sales/money they get from having the same game on Steam coming in.

Given Cleve Blakemore's issues updating Grimoire on Steam without multi-month delays for almost every patch release, not to mention the many headed saga of Grimoires game manual getting published, I now suspect that Cleve Blakemore predictably flaked out and missed multiple deadlines during the "bring Grimoire: Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar onto the GOG Storefront" negotiation process with GOG.