Gythol Granditti Chapter 1 by GZStorm reviewed by Maladroit Him (Brandon Abley) Medium: GameMaker |
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Please note: images are thumbnailed; click to see in actual resolution Impression
I don't even know where to start with this game. I have so many feelings about it, and so many of them are bad, and so many of them are overwhelmingly positive. While Gythol Granditti is a fine example of the sort of quality dedicated Indie developers can come up with, it's also, simultaneously, a culmination of reasons why many people have very little respect for independently developed games. This game has a rabid fan-base in its own niche. People who like Gythol Granditti absolutely swear by it. At the same time, this game suffers from a terribly high amount of obscurity, largely due to the fact that its graphics are, literally, an eyesore. And, unfortunately, most people are unable to look past the screenshots and, despite recommendations from fans, actually give it a fair chance. We'll say this: the developer, GZStorm (consisting of two brothers), came to this project and made it from scratch. Everything in Gythol Granditti is original and was created for use in this game. Cool, right? It's just *so* hard to get into a game when you're controlling Setzer and walking through the streets of Wyndia while listening to One Winged Angel. Unfortunately, it's also hard to get into a game when you spend the whole time squinting. And you make sure to do this:
And that's the problem with this game, in a nutshell. It hurts. It hurts to listen to, it hurts to look at. It doesn't hurt to play at all, but otherwise, everything pretty much hurts a lot. The original resources are AWFUL. The sprites aren't too bad, having that MS-Paint charm to them, but the rest of the graphics can't share that analysis. Some maps, like the one above, hurt my eyes so much that I only kept going because the game was just so damn fun. The buildings are enormous, static, and empty, and everything on the maps is very tiled and geometric. It looks a lot like Last Year at Marienbad, except with agonizing colors and without the beautiful cinematography. Don't even get me started on the music. It sounds like GZstorm went into a MIDI editor, put down some random notes, and rendered MIDIs. It's a five-minute slop job, or at least it sounds like it. These men are quite the polar opposite of composers. The only thing that's done right with the composition is that the notes are all in the same key, which is kind of what happens when you use a MIDI editor like Cakewalk. Speaking the same key, I actually think the entire soundtrack was in the same key. But I could be wrong, so don't quote me on that one. Either way, I had no reservation with putting this game on mute and listening to RPG Radio instead. And now that the bad is out of the way, I can be a bit more positive. Because, even though this game does so much wrong, it does just as much right. The smallest of these feats is the sprite animation; the sprites, though their style is definitely hit-or-miss, are very well animated and I do not lie when I say there are thousands of them. There are tons of different kinds of enemies and plenty of fluid animations for the various attacks and special skills. So, even though this game is ugly, it's well-animated in its ugliness.
And the programming. This game is programmed with such love and dedication as to make even the finest envious. For one, there is a fully functional tactical battle system. And, unlike in lesser games (like Front Mission 4, Final Fantasy Tactics, or Indie releases like Brown and Blue), the A.I. is somewhat passable. For the most part, these enemies will engage you. They won't do much in lieu of planning or strategy, but the game remains challening because they are stubborn and aggressive, and that they outnumber you. The enemies generally have roughly the same stats as you, so you need to use careful planning to come out ahead. There are shops, menues, inventories . . . I can't even fathom the number of late nights with sore stomachs and burning eyes in front of a computer screen, can of Mountain Dew in hand. Bravo, Bravo! The puzzles are definitely worth mentioning. They're the same sorts of puzzles you've seen in games before, but they are somehow fresh and new. They're very hard, and kept me stumped for a little while, which is good. It helped break up the combat-bad dialogue-combat-shop-bad dialogue sorts of routines, and they were a welcome addition. I only wish that the rest of the game deserved such high praises. Like I've mentioned before, there are a lot of jokes, but it isn't funny. Gythol Granditti has a very bizarre and rather unnerving focus on cheese, for one; you consume Holy Cheese to level up, will have a conversation with a certain bearded Scandenavian fellow named Cheesus, and are a member of a stange cult worshipping the Big Giant Head Cheese or some other inane thing. There was a clever gag, or maybe two, but mostly I found myself suffering through the cutscenes only because I loved the battles (and because I had to finish it for review).
Overall, though, I am not in any way disappointed with this game. I had a great time playing it and look forward to the next release, even though it won't be out for years from what I understand. It's a bizarre experience identified by a strange mix of things which horribly offend and things which greatly satisfy. Gythol Granditti should be looked at, if for nothing else, as an example of how the great elements of a game can overshadow its horrible failures. Technical Graphics
Though the graphics are terrible, their technical prowess is one of Granditti's strongest areas. When it's windy, the trees blow in the wind in a very subtle way that actually looks very cool; even though the sprite is just being resized and moved around a little bit, it's very convincing and fits the style perfectly. When you step in mud, your character will kick up little splashes of brown pixels. The smoke from chimneys disperses into the air, and on several occasions there is rain. Now, I'm conflicted here; I haven't seen particle effects in an Indie RPG since that DarkBasic battle demo Equilibrium four years ago. It's very cool to see these effects. But, at the same time, they don't look particularly good, and just look like particle effects for the sake of particle effects. Either way, though, my hat's off to GZ Storm for including them. It is worth nothing, however, that there are literally thousands of sprites drawn for this game. Amazing! Some of the combat animations take up about fifteen to twenty or more individual frames of animation, and it all looks very, very fluid. Whether someone is downing a flagon of ale or letting loose a backflip before delivering a crushing blow, the animation is very good. Again, the problem is that, while the animations are way cool, the sprites being animated are not. While they are cute, and their visual style is a lot more welcome than that of many of the environments, they still don't look very great. As with so many of the other elements in this game, the incredible technical mastery does not nearly compare with the artistry. Code
A good way to describe the amount of code that must be driving this game is: assloads. Between the particle effects, menues, completely original game engine, enemy AI and pathfinding, and other things, any Indie game designer should take a look at this game for the sole purpose of understanding how much work needs to go into a game in order to design something original. And the best part is that I never once encountered a single bug, and that is very admirable. Looking at games like Ara Fell or Pokemon: The Evil Inside 2, it's easy to understand that the greater the scope, the higher the liklihood of bugs popping up. When looking at Gythol Granditti, then, and considering just how broad the scope is here, and how much raw programming effort went into simply creating an engine, it's absolutely amazing to think that all of this was pulled off without a single bug. I love you, GZ Storm, and it's not just because you've released that really bizarre Potato Ship game. Sound Yuck, and yuck. This was the worst-sounding Indie game I have ever played, period. The sound effects are mush and the music hurt my ears. To be fair, I didn't hear most of the sound when I was playing this game, but that was because the sound was so bad I refused to hear it. Artistry
Through it all, Gythol Granditti shows through with a very appealing artistic spirit. Though that spirit is one of lame jokes and horrible drawing, it is a spirit nontheless. All of the ugly original resources come together and mix with the gameplay and tone of the game so perfectly that you feel like you are playing a total package. This is an expression here, guys, and it's a very honest one. Granted, one needs to take the term "artistry" here with a grain of salt. It isn't artistry in the sense that it is beautiful or touching in any way. It's a style, here, and it's a very complete one. Gythol Granditti is a game posessed overwhelmingly of a certain blend of quirky, nerdy style that I very much appreciated as I was playing the game, and I'm sure anyone else would as well. Sure, the graphics are about as ugly as graphics can get when someone sincerely tries to make them. Sure, the sound and music are so terrible that you'll develop a newfound appreciation for the mute button. Sure, the particle effects looks cheesy. And, of course, the game isn't very funny even though it is nearly a comedy game. But it feels good, and it is fun. And that's the idea. All of these negative attributes support that simple, quintessential experience of simply enjoying a charming little game. And that, I believe, is why this game is a piece of art. Play or Not? Play. Reviewer's Notes I am really sorry guys, but I lost all my notes in the move. I promise I'll have them handy for my next review! |
