When Grifford Academy begins, you are presented with very little context for the events that are about to transpire. A brother and sister seemingly use a magical book, and then everything goes wonky. If the game then didn’t commit to a long and drawn-out introduction, this might be fine, but the game is about to layer a magical world inside of a magical world, so the characters who understand their world being confused by things the player is missing context for, and spending the next portion trying to figure out what happened, makes everything more confusing and less fun. It was in these early moments that I was convinced I did not enjoy this game.
See, the player takes control of the sister Erika in a fantasy setting that draws from worlds like The Lord of the Rings, yet wearing a hoodie and a skirt. The outfit has the logo for the titular Grifford Academy on it, but at this point, you really have no context for this, so you might wonder if you will arrive at it in this world. In actuality, Erika is a student of the academy who transported themself along with some friends into a fantasy novel where much of the game will play out, with her goal being to locate her brother. Even when you reach Grifford Academy, it weirdly feels more like a secondary setting than one worthy of title status, which is a shame because what had me interested in the game was the magical setting, which I have loved since the Lunar games.
The game plays predominantly as a visual novel, moving from scene to scene with the characters confused about just what happened to them. At this point, you are introduced to the turn-based RPG mechanic as well, but it takes a while to open the world beyond just a scene-to-scene progression. In my Nova Hearts review, I criticized this structure to some degree, especially now, when a turn-based game doesn’t give you the ability to expand off a set path, which makes the system more structured, like combat is based around minor twerks you need to exploit, making it feel more like a puzzle than a fight. The Grifford Academy doesn’t do much to dispel this, as combat largely revolves around buffs and status effects that each attack inflicts.
In combat, each attack will have some sort of effect to coincide with the attack you used. For instance, Viva begins with a book that, when you attack an enemy, also heals your lowest HP ally a minor amount. After the long introduction, you are actually given locations you can move between, which allows you to take on combat with enemies, follow quests, or shop at the local stores, and it’s around this point that the game started getting very interesting. Characters do not have a specific weapon they use; instead, they are able to equip any four they want to, with little limit other than their level dictating what they can equip.
All of these weapons have turn cooldowns that dictate how many attacks the character must take before the weapon can be used. My character of Cap, at one point, had three swords in his arsenal: one for a multi-enemy attack, one for a powerful thrust, and one for a weak slash. Each of these carries status effects as well, like getting a strong hit but debuffing your defense next round. A hammer weapon allowed for a strong hit but cast taunt, which made that character the guaranteed target of an enemy next round. Blending all of these can feel like a puzzle, but there is a depth to it given just how many combinations of weapons there are.
Unfortunately, while once you open up the game, taking part in combat is much more fun, I guess, since you have the choice in the matter, but the RPG elements themselves can feel lackluster. For starters, you are never actually told your experience. Winning a fight has your party pose and a notification of your victory, as well as the in-game currency, but afterwards, you either get a notification that you level up or not. Quests seem to give you experience as well, since I have leveled up by completing them, but I am still left with no real knowledge of whether a random fight might be worth it just to gain that extra exp to improve. Leveling also gives you stat points to improve each character’s stats, but this can be a very slow process as well as you don’t gain levels very fast. Side quests, for their part, are worth taking since they bleed into this, but they are also the most boring of the tasks, jumping from location to location for a slow visual novel sequence to set up a fight, or two, or one with multiple waves, then a visual novel to get a reward. There is nothing there to make traveling off the beaten path more engaging, which is a shame, as they can fill in some needed lore, in between moments that feel more like wading through water.
Despite my initial reservations, once Grifford Academy opened up, there was actually a lot to like here, in particular the turn-based RPG, which took on a life of its own once I had access to about 30 weapons that could diversify how I fought to great effect. The game stumbles on some key elements, with the story in particular feeling disjointed, with the Grifford Academy itself not feeling as important as the name of the game would suggest. Some issues, like the story, sting more cause I can’t really see how you improve or fix that now, even if the game is in Early access rather than full release, but I expect that this to see some improvements along the way, and Grifford Academy convinced me to stick around with them, even if it required making it through a slow intro.
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