Can't really complain much about this one. Was a cute and fun time. The graphics are 100% the standout here from its beautiful art design to the striking color palette that gives a unique cutesy macabre twist to the afterlife. The story accompanies the setpiece well, with touching and thoughtful characters. Just wish that the antagonist was a little more well developed.

Game mechanics were awesome for an RPG2K3 game. Not every day I get to see a timing based attack. Unfortunately I found the battles to be quite buggy at times with me even shouting at my screen wondering why hitting the down arrow didn't let me dodge. Other times I had to hit the dodge button as I was navigating the menu. Obviously this isn't quite the best engine to implement those kinds of mechanics but I don't blame em. I do just kinda wish it was just vanilla ATB if it meant it was a smoother experience.

Can't complain though. Great game, great experience. Only really took me 2 hours to beat and it's free so I'd say this is worth your time!

Grimm's Hollow sweet little experience that unfortunately reaches the end just as it feels like it's getting started. The premise, getting dropped into purgatory as a reaper not yet ready for the afterlife is pretty damn cool and explores the idea fairly well for as long as its given to do so. The main cast are all fun and nicely fleshed out, again relatively to the game's length. This is all accented with a solid soundtrack and visuals, including some nice little visual set pieces, all working very well together. The last area in particular really sells its strong feeling of mourning, an appropriate endcap to where the game ends up at.

One of my least favorite forms of combat rears its head again, Active Time Battle, and this game sure doesn't change my mind on the system--but it's fiiiiiine. The game has solid fundamentals, with a nice variety of enemies, with each one having its own tangible niche: one gives shields to other enemies, one slowly picks up speed to steamroll you if you don't take it out quickly, one constantly buffs other enemies, etc. On paper, each combination of enemies could be an interesting enough fight to take on, if not for the combination of the game feeling both fairly nebulous and overly easy (the former playing into the later).

A standard level up system is eschewed for XP being used on a skill tree, where you can directly level up your core stats and unlock or upgrade new spells to use. Its a novel enough system, and there is something fun to being able to pop points into something new every few battles, but it makes the player character feel incredibly amorphous. There's never really a point when you can get a sense of how much damage you're dealing or taking when those numbers end up changing after almost every battle, making it hard to ever form much of a strategy. Not to mention the ever-present spectre of ATB, where enemy moves just kinda... happen when they happen. These rough parts don't matter all too much though, when the game is near-trivially easy, even when playing on the harder difficulty. Most enemies would go down with a standard attack to build MP, then a defense-piercing blow to finish them off.

Once I reached the end of the game, there is a bit of a feeling of "oh that's it huh?" as you get backloaded with a lot of details on the main characters at once. It's also where I cleaned up unlocking the rest of the skill tree to reach the true ending, which oddly required reloading the game twice (the only way to respawn enemies as far as I know) since otherwise collecting every item and defeating every enemy got me bizarrely close to the total XP needed without actually reaching it. Still, going through the true ending itself was really sweet, just like the rest of the game! Yes, I do wish there was more meat here, but it's largely because the ideas and systems present feel far more well developed than warranted for a game of this scope.

It's kinda funny to come out of it with my main "complaint" being that the game feels too good for what it is, but I hope it just means the developer is using this to make a bigger experience in the future--and that could really be something special.

Grimm's Hollow was one of the best indie games I've played lately.

The idea that you can become a ghost or a reaper is a creative and innovative idea.

The main character, Lavender, is the incredible story of her becoming a reaper in search of her brother, Timmy, who has become a ghost and needs to be reaped by the reapers. Grimm, the leader of the reapers, conveys a sense of distrust, but in fact he is a sensible and mature character.

The game's artwork is beautiful, especially the reaper baker (I can't remember his name) and the background gives off a good vibe as well as a feeling of weirdness.

The battles are normal, it's what you'd expect from a game that uses RPG Maker 2003, so for me a game project creator in RPG Makers is fine, in that it brings the problem that it's easy to farm xp by moving around and so it's easy to get the power ups.

The true and good ending is beautiful and made me emotional, while the bad endings are so depressing that I insisted on having the true ending.

All in all, Grimm's Hollow is one of the best experiences that deserved to be better recognized in indie RPG Maker games and it's an experience that's well worth having.

As it says on the tin, short and sweet.

A heartfelt, lovingly-crafted little game that tackles some nuanced topics in a respectful and tactful way, while having an interesting combat system and adorable character designs.

The developer is inclusive of everyone and gives the player a choice between an rpg experience with normal difficulty as well as an easier difficulty for people who just want to enjoy the story and the art the game has to offer.

Grimm's Hollow only asks of your time, and in return it delivers utter joy.
Highly recommended to anyone.

I think I found a new favorite game.
I know that, since the story is meant to be short, I shouldn't ask for a longer game like that, but I enjoyed it so much that I just wish to play more games from this dev.
Everything is kinda on point with the discussed themes (grief, loss, death), even the colors and the character design is chef kiss.
It just confirms, to me, that a game doesn't need to be perfect or be hyper-realistic to be appreciated and stand out. Even if the controls aren't the best in the world, you eventually get used to them.
I'm expecting so much more for their next game, because I definitely need another one.
Keeping hopes up!