In 2007, Nippon Ichi Software published a game developed by the creators of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Vanillaware, titled GrimGrimoire. A realtime strategy game for the PlayStation 2, GrimGrimoire starred Lillet, a student at a magic academy.
On her fifth day at the academy, Lillet wakes up to find everyone at the academy dead, and is transported back in time to relive the past five days over and over again until she can solve the mystery and prevent the deaths from happening.
Like Vanillaware’s other games, GrimGrimoire was directed by Vanillaware president, George Kamitani, and also like their other games, it was a standalone title with no sequels developed. The difference is, GrimGrimoire was the only Vanillaware game that Kamitani wanted to develop a sequel to, which is something he has mentioned in various interviews conducted during 2007. Online play is a feature Kamitani has cited as wanting to include in a potential sequel.
This brings us to a certain company, who are a studio that handle localization and voiceover aspects for a plethora of videogames, ranging all the way from mainstream shooters to JRPGs. As you’ve probably guessed, they also handled voiceovers for GrimGrimoire. This is the interesting part.
On their credits page, the studio mentions voiceover not only for GrimGrimoire, but also for a GrimGrimoire 2, listed as a PlayStation 2 game.
Naturally, this isn’t an indication of how far along GrimGrimoire 2 was in development, but it does tell us it was under serious consideration… to the point that a studio had been contracted for help with localization work. Nippon Ichi are listed as the U.S. publisher for the title, too.
