Grimlord Is An Awesome Dark Souls VR Game
Have you ever wanted a true Dark Souls VR or Elden Ring VR experience that didn’t rely on janky mods for games not really built for VR? Well then look no further, because Metalcat Studio has just released a Dark Souls VR game that is built from the ground up for Virtual Reality. It’s called Grimlord, and wow does it have everything you might want in a Dark Souls VR game. Here we’re going to talk about how Grimlord takes inspiration from Dark Souls and how it plays in VR. This is Grimlord, the best Dark Souls VR experience out there.
Dark Souls VR - Grimlord’s World
If you like the intricate world building and cryptic mysteries that accompany any Dark Souls game, then you’ll find that all over Grimlord.
A cool view in Grimlord
The oppressive feeling of decay that accompanies any of From Software’s Dark Souls titles is just as obvious here in Grimlord’s take on Dark Souls VR. Everything is old and crumbling. Most of your enemies are gross zombies that look like they’re a thousand years old, though not all of them are. Especially as you go further on, you’ll see a lot of very normal looking archers and knights, who as you might guess are a lot quicker and deadlier than the dusty zombies you’ll also be fighting a lot.
Axing an enemy in this Dark Souls VR game
The lesson that Grimlord takes from Dark Souls in this Dark Souls VR game more than anything else is the sense of scale. In the first location, a huge castle with a large keep at the top, you can see the very top of the map even from where you spawn in outside of the walls. Just like in any Dark Souls game you can see the places that you can head towards early on, and you can go to those places.
A keep in the distance in Grimlord
The further and further you fight your way through the castle then the closer you can see the keep become. You can even look back on the first areas of the castle and see far you’ve come. It’s a great effect, and made all the greater from how decayed everything looks. That sense of ancient wonder and grand but old things even comes to the dialog.
This guy is very cryptic… but he does reveal some things
The characters sound cryptic and almost not human. Even the woman who sells you upgrades to your character sounds like she’s reading an old poem every time you talk to her to get a new upgrade. Characters talk about old heroes, some of which you end up fighting, and the conflicts that you have somehow found yourself a part of. It’s great, and feels just as strange and otherworldly yet familiar as the setting of any Dark Souls game.
Dark Souls VR - Grimlord’s Progression
Just like in Dark Souls, this Dark Souls VR game has a similar sort of progression system, or at least the progression accomplishes the same feeling that Dark Souls games do. If you perish then your “matter” is where you were where you fell, ready to be picked up. You gain “matter” like you would souls in a Dark Souls game, by defeating enemies and bosses. Though if you perish again while your matter is sitting on the floor it is gone for good.
You, of course, need matter to buy upgrades and forge new weapons. So it’s important to not lose.
Picking Matter back up in Grimlord, the Dark Souls VR equivalent of souls
This is the classic Dark Souls formula, now in VR. This is what makes each run feel so tense and difficult. The penalty for failure can be pretty large, and you’re also encouraged to spend your matter on character upgrades or new items as soon as you can. If you’re stuck on a boss, then you can farm enemies until you have enough matter to get a level or two and try the boss again.
The first boss in Grimlord
The progression of weapons that you can use is one of the key differences between Grimlord and Dark Souls. You do find some weapons just laying around, but mostly you find pieces of paper with weapon plans on them for new parts. It could be a new handle, or a blade, or anything that you could put on a weapon. Bosses even drop unique weapon pieces.
Getting a unique weapon piece from a boss
Finding these scraps of paper means that you can go back to the blacksmith and use those new pieces to forge a new piece of equipment, which is a fun system. The only downside is that the act of finding a piece of paper for a new crossguard or handle isn’t exactly as exciting as finding a whole new piece of gear.
Sure it’s more manageable than having to lug about a ton of different weapons in Virtual Reality, but it’s certainly not as exciting. You have to find materials for equipment as well as the knowledge of the parts to make up that new piece of equipment. Forging a new axe or sword or whatever you want to make is a great feeling though.
Forging a new axe in Grimlord. There are a lot of customization options in this Dark Souls VR game
There is magic too in Grimlord, and to use it you’ll need a magic staff that you can craft as well as knowledge of what runes you can draw to do that magic. Yep, instead of just hitting a button to cast a spell, you need to physically draw the rune that casts that spell. This is not only very nerve wracking when you’re in the middle of combat, but a great way to incorporate Virtual Reality controls into a magic system in Dark Souls VR.
Casting a spell with a magic staff in Grimlord
There’s archery too, but it lacks the excitement of the other systems since archery has been done to death in VR, though without archery it would feel like Grimlord is really lacking a key system.
Shooting an arrow at a dummy
Dark Souls VR - Grimlord’s Combat
The progression, of course, feeds into the combat of Grimlord, and just like in Dark Souls, combat is the core of this VR Dark Souls game. There are a lot of VR fighting games out there, and Grimlord does have a different feel to a lot of those.
Blocking an attack with a shield
While there is occasionally some jankiness with collisions of weapons and enemies, it’s overall a very well done system. More than anything else it feels different because Grimlord encourages a more thought out and formulaic approach to combat encounters that rewards clear thinking and strategy. Just what you would expect from a Dark Souls VR game that takes inspiration from the From Software titles.
Axing another zombified enemy in Grimlord
Enemies and Bosses have preset moves and animations that you will recognize over time, and so can learn to dodge or block as they come at you. Fighting a single enemy is rarely difficult, with the exception of bosses because of their large health pools and devastating attacks. A lot of the difficulty comes from fighting groups of enemies.
Just swinging your sword around haphazardly and not concentrating on defense as well as offense will not end well for you, and you need to carefully pick your opportunities between enemy attacks to get some swings in. The only downside is that the game, for now at least, lacks enemy variety. There are some interesting enemy types that get mixed and matched well in the different environments of the game, but the same enemies are repeated so often that they eventually start to get boring.
Finding a complete new weapon in Grimlord, a rare event
It can be easy for a Virtual Reality fighting system to devolve into a hack and smash fest where you can win by swinging your arms very fast, and Grimlord rarely has that problem. So overall it’s a good combat system, though some more development time will be needed to get the variety of enemies that can make it really shine.
Dark Souls VR - Grimlord Conclusions
While Grimlord clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the Dark Souls and Elden Ring games, which we’ve repeated here a lot, it is very much its own experience. It is differentiated more than by just the fact that it is in Virtual Reality. Grimlord has its own world and lore which is cryptic but interesting, and the encounters and enemy variety not only incorporate Virtual Reality well, but aren’t simply carbon copies of other games.
If you’re a fan of VR fighting games, or a fan of the Dark Souls series of games, then you’ll be happy with Grimlord. Even if you’re not and just want something to swing your arms at in exciting combat, then you’ll still find a lot to enjoy in Grimlord, which has a story and progression focus that most VR fighting games lack. Unlike a lot of them, Grimlord is not yet another sandbox in the vein of Blade & Sorcery.
A Virtual Reality fighting game that doesn’t rely on you to make your own fun and presents you with carefully designed combat encounters is, for now at least, a rare gem, and deserves to be enjoyed on its own merits as such.
Grimlord is available on Steam for PCVR, but does have a Quest release planned for standalone VR gamers. Enjoy!
