Legend of Grimrock

[Jakanden]

I have mentioned this game a few times on the board, but now that it has come out, I want to make sure people who would be into this genre play it. I have been following it closely since I first heard about it months ago and it even prompted me to install a windows partition on my Linux box because I wanted to play it so much. If you are a fan of old PC games like Daggerfall, Wizardy and Eye of the Beholder, you WILL love this game: http://www.grimrock.net/

It is an old-school first person dungeon crawler in every sense of the phrase. It uses a grid based combat system, dungeons and dragons style character generation, food management, weight restrictions and so on. If you want a truly hardcore classic experience, you can also disable the automap so that you have to map the game yourself on grid paper (I did NOT do this).

Although the game starts out rather easy, once you hit the third level of the dungeon, the puzzles start getting downright evil. I was stuck on one last night for about 45 minutes and I am currently stuck on another that I will have to tackle when I get home. I have seen videos of some of the later puzzles and it looks to get even more insane. According to one review, this game has some of the best puzzles ever.

I put about 4 hours into it last night and all I can think about is getting out of work today and going home to play. The game is only 11 bucks on steam (it will go up to $14 once the sale ends) and it is worth every penny. If you even remotely enjoy games like I mentioned above, check this game out.

[Zeiram]

I only finished the first level last night due to some busy times at work, but I second Jakanden's recommendation.

[Jakanden]

aaand of course I am stuck at work until 7p tonight (12 hour shift for the win).

[Ekkebus]

Yeah, I've read a couple of reviews and this game sounds like it would be right up my alley. I'll probably wait a bit since Witcher 2 comes out on 360 next week but my eye is on this.

[Jakanden]

Made it down to level 5 last night and this game definitely likes to kick your ass.

[Zeiram]

I finally got through TOO MANY SPIDERS this morning before work, and am at the start of Level 4.

[Jakanden]

I got poisoned so many goddamn times on those bastards. I ended up going down to level 4 with the ingredients left to make only one more anti-venom potion

[Gadolf the Absolute]

I made it to the 5th floor on my first run last night. I've had a few close scrapes so far,but it sounds like I'm not having as hard a time as some other people. I think I only made three or four anti-venoms and just slept off one or two poisons.

I do feel like it's missing some depth with the lack of random enchanted or otherwise special items and the linear no-prize bonuses that skill levels give. I'm using the default party so I don't know if making my own lets me choose skills or if both of my fighters having the exact same skill set is the game going "You're a fighter,these are your fighter skills,you don't get to choose". The magic system is a bit too clunky,my wizard taking his turn always seems to slow the action down while I run in circles trying to juggle runes. I'd hoped to subvert this a bit by giving my wizard a legionary spear to attack with in emergencies,but with my rogue now using a bow I had to put the wizard on torch duty so he doesn't have a free hand for it anymore.

I'm also having trouble with the controls,which feels odd for a game with so little to control. Specifically I'm having trouble with unresponsive movement. I'll release a movement button and my party will keep moving,or I'll press a turn button and the party won't turn or will turn twice. I was doing a puzzle to get a secret in the floor 4 scroll pit room and I lost count of how many times I had to reload because my party simply would not do what I wanted them to. I really don't understand how the game is reading me letting go of the forward button as "walk two extra steps". I was having some fun up until then but gods be damned if that didn't just irritate me to my core to know I had to continuously reload the same puzzle because of poor controls rather than my own lacking abilities.

It definitely has some satisfaction to solving puzzles and finding secrets,and the enemy death effect is pretty great,but I do have some concerns about the lack of variety robbing the replay value.

[Jakanden]

So the game is a lot longer than I thought - I have put about 14 hours into it so far and still not at the end. Well worth the price of admission for sure.

[Ekkebus]

So, good news: the game has already sold enough to cover its production costs several times over.

[Jakanden]

Awesome! They are going to be releasing expansions (new dungeons) so this means they will have the resources to make them great. This is easily one of my favorite games of the year so far and I can see it being in my top 10 by the end.

[Gadolf the Absolute]

One of you who's much farther along then I,hopefully someone who finished this,humor me. Do these speed puzzles continue being a normal thing from floor to floor? My progress has hit an absolute wall since I hit floor 6 and I've been very tempted to abandon the game. It's only by sheer force of will that it survived my recent wave of rage uninstalls brought on by me hitting my patience limit with Skyrim's constant failure to actually run.

After some fumbling around in one of the other rooms to get me away from that GameFAQs-bait teleporter maze I realized I've hit another speed button puzzle and the controls only seem to have gotten worse since I first noticed the lagginess. I cannot seem to control this in a way that is agreeable with a puzzle type that requires both speed and precision. Someone please advise me on whether or not it's worth continuing to invest time if floor 6 has already halted my progress. I was interested back when the focus was more on combat and exploration with light puzzles,but with the last few days I've just lost that interest along with my progress.

[Jakanden]

I finished up the game last night and there are indeed a few timing puzzles left, but most of the hardest ones are behind you.

[King wiL]

I watched the Giant Bomb quick look (thanks, youtube player on xbox, made it look super shiny on bug HD TV and I could actually read the text )
Made me wish I had a decent PC cause this is definitely a game I wanna play.
Failing that, maybe someone I actually give a shit about will do a let's play, you never know.

[Jakanden]

I would do that if I had the equipment....or skill....or desire.