Lost Grimoires: Stolen Kingdom

This one was a pile of shit that nearly caused me to lose my rag and also caused me to email Artifex Mundi with my issues.

Lost Grimoires follows the story of some twat who comes to a town to be an apprentice to some other twat who is so obviously the bad guy that it hurts. The biggest criticism of the story is that so much it only happens because of stupid decisions made by our character that we are not in control of.

The game also introduces ‘dialogue choices’ in quotation marks because they are not choices at all but merely boxes you need to click on. What’s made worse is the fact that your character is voiced in parts so why the fuck these bits couldn’t just be conversations, I don’t know.

The game is a lot shorter than the others. There is no bonus adventure after you complete the game either, which isn’t too much of a loss as these are normally unnecessary tag-ons anyway. They do introduce a new game mechanic though where the items you find in the environment are used as parts of recipes to make other items. This was quite good and it’s nice to see a new game mechanic.

The music is incredibly frustrating and irritating too. Actually I’m going to labour on this point. The music and sound effects are imbalanced in a lot of these games but it became really apparent here. The music was so irritating during certain sections that I turned it down. But it’s connected to the in game dialogue which means turning the sound down turns the dialogue down. It means that subtitles are a must which makes having dialogue redundant.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 13 Achievements

It’s another standard set of Artifex Mundi achievements here, but they are slightly reduced from some of the other titles. You only get one achievement for completing the game – two if you played on expert. I think this is also the easiest game in terms of an expert playthrough without any hints. The puzzles were not as advanced as some of the other ones I’ve played and the structure was a lot more forgiving this time round.

In addition to the main game and typical achievements, you need to collect Kestrel symbols which are hidden in the standard one per scene, however there is a difference this time which caused me to miss a collectible for the first time in a long time.

In previous Artifex Mundi titles, there are sections where you have to use codes to find routes through forests, mazes and the like and Lost Grimoires is no different in that you need to navigate through a dark sewer. In previous titles, these areas did not contain anything for you to collect that was missable and this is where Lost Grimoires differs. There is a Kestrel symbol in this section and due to my past experience with the game, I didn’t even think to look for it. This meant a partial second playthrough was required in a game where you don’t need to do one. That was annoying.

But not nearly as annoying as what happened to me when completing the game. So after completion, there were three achievements left to unlock. The Kestrel one I knew about and apparently I wasn’t quick enough to complete a hidden picture scene in less than a minute either. But the third one, for completing six hidden picture scenes in a row without using hints, had not unlocked despite the fact that I had done the whole game without using hints.

After replaying the opening to get the kestrel, the six scenes without hints unlocked and just seemed to be delayed. However, the one for doing a scene in under a minute refused to unlock even then. In the end I had to uninstall the game, delete my save data and start again. This worked for me but there are reports of other achievements not working and doing this didn’t address it either. It’s hard to say whether it’s the developer or Microsoft at fault here though.

Downloadable Content – N/A

 Lost Grimoires is the weakest title of the series thus far. It’s not a bad game, it just feels a bit rushed in how it was put together. Unfortunately, I am most likely to remember the game for the glitched achievements and I did write to Artifex Mundi about this. They pointed me in the direction of the True Achievements website and told me that loads of people had unlocked it... nothing like shifting focus away from you!