Glazunov: My great niece, who often shares a first experience of new games she's purchased with me, has gone ahead and bought Grimoire. (Oh for the folly and money of youth!) I offered to find her my preview code, but she gracefully declined.
Initial reactions from a very cursory glance:
* Character creation is just as unpleasant as it looked in The Weary Adventurer's walkthrough, and yes, identical to Wizardry's system that I didn't like. That's a bit of retro RPGing I wish I'd not been reminded of.
* Both of us enjoyed the limited animations and colorful graphics, though we would have preferred a larger screen on the world, and smaller controls.
* Yeah, it's damn hard, just as I remember it being. It pays to grind a lot.
* The map system is pretty good. I still wince remembering Wizardry 6's maps-as-a-raisable-skill, which meant spending your few, very precious skill points to see more on maps.
* Many more items hidden in bushes, etc, than in the Wizardry titles.
Not much else to note at this point. We both have work.
PS: Should have added that the music is awful. The later Wizardry titles had some decent music for the time, with allowances for technology and memory limitations, but that isn't the case, here.
I have watched a few streams so far and it looked really annoying to me but seeing something and having to do it yourself can feel different.