Secrets of Grindea
Game Title: Secrets of Grindea
Released: February 29, 2024
Game Length: 29 Hours
Grade: B
Gameplay
Grind: The question on everyone's mind when looking at this game is: How much do I have to grind? If you are only focusing on quests, then there would be no grind at all. The main story is the way of progression through the landscape. The side stories test your cleverness. These activities don't necessarily provide you better rewards all the time and can be entirely bypassed. Though the puzzles and riddles are all generally easy to solve or complete if you have an ounce of Sherlock Holmes detective skills. If you find a missing cat, put on a fish hat to lure it to their owner. Is a boulder in your way? Maybe there is a monster nearby that can break it. The satisfaction of completing them is part of the fun.
Completion: The major drawback of avoiding the "purpose" of the game is that you will lose out on perks. Each enemy has less than a 1% chance (increased with potion use) of dropping a monster card. There are 40 of them that provide you things like increasing your defence by 6, particles from your wand shoot farther, and reducing environment effects. The true ending of the game, the one that has a somewhat happier ending with two people who live through the ending, requires you to collect every single card.
Currency: Another drawback of not killing things over and over is losing out on extra spending power. You can get a good chunk of change by completing treasure hunts and achievements, but eventually you will need to earn money to buy things. Some endgame special items can cost upwards of 100,000. Sadly, the resources and items you obtain sell for very little. That's when you need to obtain like 60 of an item and craft something valuable if you want to be able to buy stuff from the merchants.
Activities
Hobbies: The developers managed to put a lot of auxiliary content to keep you entertained as you travel through the regions. Each section has a set number of fish you can retrieve for some special rewards. You can take a number of photographs for some characters with your newfound camera. Someone sells you treasure maps that can provide you some lucrative rewards. You can also raise and train a number of pets. Although it might be difficult to discover what enemy can become a pet and the type of treat you need to use, there are sometimes hints given out. You can use a juicy apple to lure a slime or a carrot to obtain a rabbit. Once you obtain one type, you can switch from a number of variants at any time.
Fun Items: What's surprising is the number of items that have some sort of special quirk you can either use in combat or have fun with in your adventure. After you use your net to capture each of the known butterflies, you can then summon one that follows you around. Which type can be switched similarly to pets. There are cosmetic modifiers that have little spiders follow you around or a trail of flowers. There is a hat that lays down a trail of spikes that hurts foes.Combat
Weapons: What you use and their associated skills are very unique and distinct from each other. Perhaps the most unusual thing is how you can use your shield at any time, like a global skill, regardless of what else you might have equipped. Bows can also be used at anytime as long as you have the ammunition to fire arrows. One-handed weapons have a shorter length, strike faster, and deal a little bit of less damage. Their skills allow you to strike enemies in rapid succession. Two-handed weapons reach farther and deal more damage. Their skills push these lengths even more with the ability to throw your weapon or strike all around you. Wands combine the amount of damage you can do from attack and magic while shooting endless particles out from a distance.
Magic: While there are ways to build the amount of damage you can do in each elemental type of magic, every skill is rather unique and almost necessary to have to play the game. Summons cut the maximum limit of your mana but practically handle themselves in battle. Utility magic like blink helps you skip over when enemies shoot out things that cover half the screen and barrier prevents some damage while you wait for the cooldown of your potion to end. Some magic like fireballs will shoot something across the screen while meteor allows you to target where it will land. Upgrading these skills will make their potency grow to some great lengths.
Summary
Review: Secrets of Grindea took years to develop. There is a lot of love put into the game with all kinds of fun things to discover and enough content to keep you going for a good period of time. There are plenty of optional things to play around with and traveling with up to four players is an added bonus. The game's story takes some very interesting turns, but to discover the so-called "true ending" will require you to obtain every rare card off every enemy. Upgrading your skills is a weird but rewarding. Crafting might be a little too cumbersome to use but does give people who like to collect materials more to do. Give this game a look at and see if it is something different enough to try.