Play it on: PC
Current goal: Discover the truth at the heart of the world
Over the last few weeks I have been singing praises UFO 50 here on the pages of the Weekend Guide, and indeed it seems likely that this extraordinary collection of games from 1980s developer UFO Soft, which never actually existed, will once again dominate my gaming time this Saturday and Sunday. However, instead of going over the entire collection again in this week’s post, I’m going to focus on the one game I’ve played the most UFO 50 lately: Grimstone, the epic JRPG of the collection.
In many ways Grimstone feels like a traditional early JRPG. It’s more Final Fantasy I as Final Fantasy IV or VIwith its blank characters who never speak or have any personality beyond what can be seen from their expressive sprites and their natural tendencies toward sniping, shotguns, or whatever their particular specialty may be. However, as these weapons may have suggested, Grimstone However, it differs from most early JRPGs in one crucial way: it eschews the traditional fantasy setting that most of them used for a truly awesome “Weird West” world where gunfighters and ghost towns sit alongside angels, demons, and All sorts of strange things coexist with disturbing creatures and events. And even if the characters in your party don’t have much depth, the world itself does. What at first appears to be a landscape in which a simple battle between good and evil takes place turns out to be increasingly complex and fascinating as time goes on GrimstoneThis is a surprisingly long search.
I believe that after playing, I am finally nearing the end of this quest Grimstone I’ve been pretty obsessed with it for the last few days, although I still have no idea what I’ll find at the end of the mysterious late-game dungeon that now awaits me. One thing I know, however, is that no matter what I find, it will come to an end Grimstone will hardly mean the end of my time UFO 50because there are still so many wonderful games that I haven’t really scratched the surface of yet. – Carolyn Petit
