![]() ![]() Later on you'll find powerful hidden NPCs (you can even resurrect dead bones) and those feel more like you earned it, but it's still a bizarre balance choice. They start with 40-50 points in basically every skill their class offers, while your characters will barely have 10 points in their main weapons. One thing to keep in mind is that NPCs can be really overpowered early on. The downside is that you can't speak with them while they're in your party, which can be frustrating sometimes or lead you to having to dismiss them, backtrack to their spawn location & recruit them again. Nice that I can do that. A cool feature is that some dungeons have NPCs that will help you if you take them along - explaining some puzzles or unlocking secrets. On two occasions I knew I had to get an item from an NPC but couldn't figure out the keyword, so just killed or robbed them. Still, I found this very uneven - some NPCs would talk extensively about several subjects, others ignored most of my keywords and I honestly have no idea of what their purpose is. Luckily there's spells like Mindread, which provide you with a list of the keywords the NPC will react to. Also, some are really picky about keywords - names, for example, must be fully typed: you can't just type Morgana when asking about Morgana Lefey. As an Ultima veteran I tried to ask them about JOB and that worked great but, once again, younger players might feel lost here. Early NPCs will talk to you and throw some keywords you can ask (they're underlined), but some later ones will just stare at you - there's no way to progress unless you know what to type. In true old-school fashion, dialog is done via a text prompt, which can be intimidating. This isn't necessarily a problem, but Grimoire has a severe lack of stores - which we'll address soon. In truth, Crowl is the only real town in the game, as the other only has a single NPC. ![]() It's a small area, with a handful of NPCs standing in their houses, ready to chat, trade or join you. Soon after leaving Aquavia you'll come across the game's first settlement, the Village of Crowl. There's also the option to force doors, which I only read about after 60 hours of playing the game - again, there's no manual. Supposedly those green stars in the bottom are my chances to make mistake, which increase with my Lockpicking skill - but often traps would trigger even on my first mistake. I enjoyed the door riddles, but the chest lockpicking doesn't seem to work as intended. Doors are unlocked by solving riddles (much like those in Betrayal at Krondor), while chests are unlocked by a guessing mini-game similar to Minefield. Things never get too complex and most can be brute-forced, but their contextualization makes them engaging - even if they start to feel repetitive after a while. #Betrayal at krondor chest riddles code#Some also require you to explore an area, learn about its lore and use that to figure out a code or a sequence of actions. While exploring you'll come across several puzzles based on finding & using items, uncovering secret switches and fake walls, pulling levers or entering codes into dials. I started playing on Rare, then turned it down to Never since I was constantly walking around trying to figure out puzzles and didn't want to keep fighting - more on that later. However, "Never" doesn't mean there won't be combat, as each area has several hand-placed encounter points - usually when you pass through a door or narrow passageway. You can set it to Onslaught, which means every few steps an enemy will attack you, all the way to down to Never. Here's a snippet: Adventures in Hyperborea Grimoire offers five difficulty settings, from Novice to Super Hero (I played on the middle one, Advanced), and also a very appreciated "random encounter rate" option. He then penned a comprehensive review, mentioning both the great parts and the shortcomings of Grimoire, for which he subsequently got banned from the Grimoire Steam forums. Felipe Pepe, the man behind the excellent CRPG Book, has managed to finish Cleve Blakemore's Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar after roughly 80 hours, way ahead of the advertised 600. ![]()
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