I could just skimp this review, you know; mutter a few lines about the graphics, touch on the gameplay, talk some drivel about character abilities, add a stale joke and then round it off with a totally obscure and incomprehensible illustration as a conclusion. If I did this, then I would be taking the same attitude toward my work as the developers of Grom; starting with good intentions but cutting down to basics in so many areas that the result is rather unsatisfactory. This game tries to achieve success like RPG heavyweights Baldur's Gate II or Neverwinter Nights, but shoots itself in the foot too many times by removing vital ingredients of the formula and adding unwanted elements that both degrade the game and hamper your enjoyment in playing.

You follow the story of Colonel Grom, a native of Poland who was captured when trying to defend his country against the Nazis. He escaped from his prison camp and has been trying to find a way to take his revenge on the Nazis ever since, mainly because they killed his family. The evil Germans have now descended upon to Tibet, searching for an ancient treasure that will guarantee them world domination. It's up to Colonel Grom and his companions to stop them. Not exactly the most compelling or original storyline, but it would suffice if fleshed out and livened up enough. Unfortunately, Grom fails dismally in this regard and manages to remain blander than the boiled potatoes I had for dinner earlier. The whole game is full of dull conversations that fail to entertain and give little incentive or motivation to continue playing. One commendable feature is the fast forward button that you can use to rapidly accelerate the interminable in-game cut scenes, relieving you the tedium of sitting through hours of boring waffle if you reload an earlier save. The problem with this feature being that it refuses to work on certain conversations for no apparent reason, forcing you to manually skip each line of speech yourself, which is rather frustrating.

The graphics are a mix of 2D rendered backgrounds and 3D animated models. The background renders vary in quality, but are usually quite good, which unfortunately only serves to emphasize the inadequacy of the 3D graphics. The game characters also have an unnatural tendency for having snow shoe sized feet, which doesn't do a lot for their looks.

The learning curve too is somewhat enigmatic. As the game starts you will be told in great detail such trivialities as how to select your character and how the game system works - the most basic of details to cater for RPG newbies. Yet in the very first fight you enter, it is so difficult to win without dying that I needed a good few reloads to get past it. Newbies would have great difficulty here as it expects you to have reasonable fighting skills already. Then, the game puts you in a variety of precarious set pieces, which you have to battle out of and is basically a lazy way of extending the game's life by forcing you to play certain levels and areas repeatedly until you succeed.

There are numerous other flaws and annoyances that can leave you frustrated and jaded. Take character possessions for example, Grom and his companions have a certain number of carrying slots that they can fill with the objects and treasures they collect on their travels. That's fine, no problem there, but the trouble comes when one of your characters decides to leave the party briefly to pursue their own interests, which happens periodically throughout the game. When they rejoin you, everything they were previously carrying has been erased from their possessions, sometimes your best weapons and most expensive items. This is frankly ridiculous and can lose you much of your hard-earned material wealth.

Another problem that can cause you much grief is the inexplicable and sometimes suicidal attitude displayed by your characters in various levels. To illustrate I'll recount what happened when Grom, Petr, and Hans approached a customs checkpoint one time. A cut scene took control of the characters in which a border guard demanded identification in order to pass. For no particular reason, Grom continues walking past the checkpoint unhindered and disappears into the town while the other two argue it out with the guards. The guards suddenly reveal themselves to be enemies and attack Petr and Hans. They are dangerous to fight and take a lot of swift manoeuvring to overcome. The trouble is that Grom is also attacked at the same time by similarly deadly opponents and you can't control fighters in two simultaneous battles, so at least one character kept dying, often instantly, resulting in game over. This meant it took countless attempts to even keep my characters alive, let alone win their respective battles. This whole situation was caused by the entirely mysterious insistence of Grom to wander off into town during the cut scene, which made absolutely no sense.

Not all is bad news though; Grom does manage to implement some reasonably successful and innovative ideas as well. The biggest of these is the ability to bargain with various NPCs (non=player characters) throughout the game. Bargaining takes the form of a card game in which the opponents lay down mood cards that can either increase or decrease prices depending on how successful they are. The moods include proud, angry, offended, apathetic and many more. So if you lay an angry mood card in a bid to try and make a merchant decrease his selling price, he might lay an offended card, which would tip the odds in his favour. It's actually fun to bargain with people and you'll acquire new mood cards as you travel, giving you a wider array to choice from. This is a commendable idea and adds a bit of spice to the otherwise bland recipe.

Another feature of note is how characters can be knocked unconscious. You have a health bar and a condition bar, both of which go down as you receive damage, but the condition bar slowly regenerates. If the condition bar falls to zero but the health bar doesn't then you will fall unconscious for 30 seconds or so. This can be quite handy if you are fighting a hard battle as opponents assume you are dead and will turn their attention elsewhere.

Sadly, a few good ideas don't make up for all the obtrusive flaws this game is littered with. It is a soulless title that adds virtually nothing to the genre that hasn't been done already, and done a lot better that this. Grom: Terror in Tibet has no convincing raison d'etre and so it ends up as an unwanted muddy droplet floating around in the glistening RPG ocean.

Reviewed by Adam Shirley for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).