Anyone play this yet? It went live on Steam on October 15. I bought and installed it, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I loved the first one. It was so obviously a homage to the old Dungeon Master game that I found myself solving puzzles in Grimrock using solutions from Dungeon Master. I watched the preview video of Grimrock 2 and it looks like they are expanding the term “dungeon crawling”. There are outdoor areas, I see some areas with grass, there’s an open sky. I hope they will borrow some from one of my other favorite dungeon crawlers, Lands of Lore, but I won’t know until I get around to this game in a couple of months (lots of other things to play first…)
I played but never finished the first Legend of Grimrock. I actually played it directly from spoilers, because I don’t have time to pay that kind of attention to such a game anymore. Arguably, I didn’t way back in the day either.
I didn’t play the original Dungeon Master, I played some of its successors such as Eye of the Beholder and The Black Crypt. Back in Eye of the Beholder days, the game didn’t generate an automap for you. You had to get out graph paper. Then when something you stepped on caused a shifting wall, you had to cry yourself to sleep. Well, some of us did. cough
I believe there were outdoor sections in Eye of the Beholder 1 + 2, though they were still quite squarish. I also played Lands of Lore which was an excellent late example of the genre and Menzoberanzan, which was not. But I still tell the anecdote about finding the chilling story of finding the ring of regeneration in Lands of Lore to gamers who never played this particular game. And my wife and I still, more than a decade later, occasionally still respond to discoveries with the strangely chipper “Ten gold crowns!”
But I think I can wait on Grimrock the Second. Frankly, I can scarcely hope to re-pick up the first one midstream, and so I’ll probably never be done with it.
Play a dungeon a night, or half of one. I really believe its a terrific dungeon crawling experience. You owe it to yourself to finish it. I still have to play through it again and get all the achievements, as there are secrets I wasn’t able to solve on my own. I’ll probably play through it again before I start part 2. And if I can dig up my old copy of Dungeon Master somewhere and get it to work…
I’m playing LoG2 and it’s awesome - basically my only complaint is the fact the area is so large that despite shortcuts that open from the other side and teleporters, it is sometimes a bit hard to remember where you have unexplored locations and a bit of a slog to get to them. Other than that they’ve kept all the good stuff and added a lot more - more enemies, more spells, better skill system (IMO), improved alchemy, firearms, improved enemy movement … the list goes on. Metacritic score of 86 reflects how good is it quiet accurately I’d say.
I’m 13 hours in and based on statistics I’m maybe 35-45% done. At that price point (around 20e for us EU folks, I guess it’s 20-25 USD right now for US people?) it’s not only an amazing game, it’s also great value.
I haven’t played that one. Can’t really think of anything similar I’ve played lately, really - the mixture of one-square-at-a-time -combat and constant puzzles with very dense maps (no filler, every room has a meaning and there’s secrets everywhere) is fairly unique IMO. Assuming the kiting/jousting combat style and the squares aren’t an instant turn-off (and I can imagine for some people they are) I’d recommend this to any dungeon crawler fan. After D:OS, this is the second best game this year so far for me.
