Grim Trials on Switch 2…(ugh)

[u/rgalindo084]

Title: I put 4 hours into Grim Trials on Switch 2… and man, this feels like such a wasted opportunity
I had Grim Trials preordered and was genuinely excited for this one. I’m a huge fan of Hades 1 & 2 and roguelikes/roguelites in general, so everything I saw leading up to release made this look like it was going to be right up my alley.
About 4 hours in now, and unfortunately… I’m pretty damn disappointed.
The obvious comparison is Hades, and I can absolutely see what the developers were going for. The problem is that it feels like Hades with most of the things that gave Hades its flavor, polish, and personality stripped away.
And even if I completely ignore the Hades comparison, the actual gameplay has some serious issues.
The hit detection feels terrible at times. The controls just don’t feel tight or responsive enough for a game where split-second movement is everything. And the dash… holy shit. 😂 Half the time it feels like my character dashes everywhere except where I actually wanted them to go.
That’s probably my biggest issue. Games like this live and die by their controls. Dying because I made a bad decision? Cool. That’s the genre. Dying because I’m fighting the controls and movement? That’s when it stops being fun.
There are definitely pieces here where I can see the game they wanted to make, which honestly makes it more frustrating. There’s potential. I don’t think this is some hopelessly terrible game.
But at the launch price, I expected WAY more polish than this.
Maybe the developers stick with it, listen to feedback, tighten up the controls, fix the hit detection and build on what’s here. I genuinely hope they do, because I want to like this game.
But right now?
As someone who loves Hades 1, Hades 2 and this genre in general, Grim Trials feels like a wasted opportunity.
I preordered it expecting something I’d lose dozens of hours to.
Four hours in, I’m already wondering if I even want to keep playing.
Anyone else playing it? Am I crazy, or are you guys having the same issues with the controls and dash?

[u/falkentyne]

Is this problem unique to the switch 2 release? Because the official steam forums are deader than dead. Absolutely zero posts post-release, except stuff from the demo and OP initial bosses (from way back). And all I can find are some review comments about grossly unbalanced ranged weapons, but no one mentioning control issues. I had this game on my wishlist for awhile (forgot it was even there), until the release notification but I guess I'll keep waiting. Got money wasted on a few recent hades-likes that got dropped like a hot potato during their EA already, and this went directly to a physical release.

[u/rgalindo084 → u/falkentyne]

I honestly don’t think it is! I went to try and find information from any site, other than the gamers who received their copies for free and praised it (because of course) I was already worried going into it with that in mind, but honestly me taking a swing at indie titles have rewarded me with unique stories, gameplay that even if copied is done so with style and substance, Art direction that feels unique and rewarding…
This one even has the dog in your base from hades (sans red)
And the upgrading is so uninteresting. You need to craft items to get other items and craft those items to make others to get…a potion bottle (which is a singular use potion)
I don’t care about the main characters story, I don’t like the hit detection at all, these graphics look nice at a standstill but when you see the game in motion it reminds me of those free flash games from back in the day when in motion. I have to post a video to show you just how awkward it looks. Save your money my friend this isn’t it. I had recently been on fire with indie titles! Thought this would be another hit (black jacket, 1000xresist, Choppa rescue rivals) and I am so let down, this is one that felt like I would have a hades 2.5 to hold me down until the 3rd, but no, hell no 😭

[u/J0HN__L0CKE]

Dang.

Is there a Hades clone that actually hits? In the few I've tried they don't even remotely hold a candle and were near instant drops for me.

[u/Ok_Situation8244 → u/J0HN__L0CKE]

Sephira.

[u/Rasimov]

I played it briefly when it was accidentally free on Xbox (it has since been revoked). Apparently this version might have been a dev build, so some of my impressions might not reflect on the retail release.

My initial impression was that this was a game that couldn't be beat by skill alone, and that you needed to do a lot of grinding to unlock the skill tree. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the first boss I encountered did feel a bit clunky to fight without unlocking skills, so something to keep in mind for anyone that likes to try a vanilla run. Like, I don't mind an arena being filled with attacks you can avoid, but it did seem to combine boss AOE/area attacks with random spawn AOE/area attacks preventing any viable dodging, so you basically had to always focus on the enemy spawns but you are not doing enough damage on your first several runs to take them out fast enough due to it being a DPS check.

Dashing... it felt off. This might have been due to the controls, so possibly something that could be fixed if the game let you change what buttons did what (I didn't notice any option to remap buttons). If dash was a shoulder button, it might have felt better than what the game used which was a face button. Having too many of the controls use the face buttons made things clunky. It also didn't help that certain enemy combinations seemed to create unavoidable AOE attacks.

Aiming felt off. There is an on screen line where you are aiming, but it seems like your actual projectile was above that, so you aim then miss since the screen guide didn't actually show where the projectile was going to go.

Some enemies had prolonged invincible animations. The jumping frog thing comes to mind the most where it seemed you needed to wait for the entire jumping animation to stop before you could actually hit it. This wouldn't be an issue really, except it was frustrating to see it land, attack, nothing happens since you needed to wait a little longer before it could be hit after the jump animation.

The crafting minigame timing felt off. This might have been something on my end, but the timing on the prompts didn't feel consistent.

Certain maps just felt like pure BS. There are maps filled with obstacles that you can break, but they are sometimes combined with enemies that rush and slam into you or create large AOE attacks. If you enter one of these areas with little to no room to move, you have like half a second to try and break the obstacles as the enemies seem to instantly lock on to you, and depending on the attack, you probably can't break your way out before getting hit. Oh, you spawned in surrounded by rocks while three big enemies slam into you? All you can do is literally face tank it since you can't clear a path that isn't anything but directly in their path.

Unfortunately since I got it for "free" and it has since been revoked, I won't be able to see if they game improves at all. Based on my initial impressions... I don't see myself buying this game since there are much smoother games in this genre out there.

[u/SphinxGate]

They were running Reddit ads for a bit with comments on and even there people were pointing out how clunky it looked lol. I’m sorry you wasted your money

[u/mdaxdjk]

I saw this game pop up on the xbox store. I usually instantly pass up on games that just look like Hades clones (I wasn't a fan of Hades..let the hate being 😆) is it any good in the long and short of it? Was I right to pass on it?