But it also led directly to Vanillaware’s greatest success. Unlike Odin Sphere, though, GrimGrimoire underperformed and led to Kamitani having to take out a sizable personal loan to save Vanillaware. Others found the battles grew repetitive given the lack of variation once you have every grimoire unlocked. Common criticisms were leveraged against the game’s basic interfacing, which were seen as clunky given the restrictions of using a controller or the lack of saving mid-battle. Like Odin Sphere, GrimGrimoire had its noticeable flaws at release. Though your options are limited when compared to a game like Starcraft, the brevity of each level and complex stacking of match-ups and abilities between summonable familiars means you can approach each level differently, replay them to find more efficient means to succeed, and experiment with options as you go.
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Instead, GrimGrimoire is structured as a series of visual novel segments that lead into discrete levels, viewed horizontally, where you have an explicit goal, such as annihilating all an enemy’s runes or surviving a 20 minute onslaught. GrimGrimoire doesn’t have a top-down aesthetic, nor does it have a way to accelerate time. Instead of building tanks or recruiting vikings, the player takes on the role of a novice magician named Lillet Blan, who can summon fairies, ghosts, and demons with runes.
GrimGrimoire takes place in a whimsical, sweetly gothic world of magic and spells. They would have to make an entirely new type of RTS, one that could not be so easily compared to its keyboard-and-mouse cousins. Vanillaware united over their already established love of Starcraft to craft a short, stylish, and mechanically deep console RTS, a genre that has almost always made its home on PCs.
GrimGrimoire was a commission from Nippon Ichi Software’s then president Sohei Shinkawa, who, being a fan of Princess Crown, essentially gave Kamitani complete creative control to produce whatever he wanted.
Though Odin Sphere was their first project and the entire reason for Vanillaware’s inception, GrimGrimoire was their first actual release. After the trio’s frustrated experience working on Square Enix’s MMO Fantasy Earth: The Ring of Dominion, they corralled former Atlus employees to work on Odin Sphere, Kamitani’s white whale that was intended as a spiritual successor to Princess Crown, the game that nearly ruined his career. Kamitani previously had negative working relationships with both Sega and Enix (who were in the midst of their merger with Square), effectively blacklisting him and his future projects from being anything but self-produced. Formed in 2002 by George Kamitani, his Starcraft buddy Kentaro Ohnishi, and doujin developer Shigetake, the goal of Vanillaware was to make games on their own terms, freely experimenting and taking inspiration from RTSes, beat-em-ups, and the Atelier series. Vanillaware has always been a group of misfits.
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