GrimGrimoire

A console RTS. As a friend of mine said when I was describing the game to him, he said after I told him the genre that it sucked. Unequivocally, console RTSes suck. Until I played GrimGrimoire, I'd have agreed with him. It's not just a port of a PC game, but a game built around that it knows its own weaknesses. You can pause, for one. This makes up for how inferior a PS2 controller is compared to a mouse for RTSes. The controls really aren't perfect, but you get used to them quickly.

The AI has the standard hair-tugging aspect of any RTS - They micro-manage a bunch better than you, and there are spellcasters with very, very annoying spells. However, all of the fights are easily beatable on a second or third try if you put some thought into what you did wrong. The game throws a number of oddball scenarios at you, so later in the game I tended to suicide my first time playing a map so I could scout everything out.

The system is pretty neat, overall. There are 4 schools of summonings that you can use, each one having 3 runes, which are the buildings that you build units and upgrades at. Each group has a resource collector, base units, caster types, and so on. There's a summon type circle, where each one is weak to one and strong against another. There's another aspect, where some units are astral and can't be hit by some units. Thus, there tends to be multiple counters to things and multiple strategies to each map. It's a suprisingly deep game for a console RTS.

It's a game made by VanillaWare, the company responsible for Odin Sphere, so the graphics are 2D and absolutely great. Sprites that are huge, detailed, and gorgeous (Of course, I've always loved sprite graphics, so I might be a tad biased.). The music is ... there. There's only 1 battle music for 25 fights. I've heard it for a over 10 hours and I can't even recall it. =/

It's a bit of a short game, though. I beat it in about 15 hours (Of course, that doesn't include failed fights.), but I didn't do the extra missions, of which there are 25 more. Those would probably take at least the same amount of extra time to complete.

The story is pretty neat, too. It has a few nice twists, some implied lesbianism, and is overall well done. I'd say more, but it would be hard to without spoilers.

It's a good game. Pick it up if you like strategy.