Legend of Grimrock

Never really expected another tile based dungeon crawler ala Eye of the Beholder, least of all one with more modern mechanics, super slick graphics, and good puzzles to boot. I'll note with amusement at this time that people raging at Jerry's review has caused it to have a net positive effect on the rating of the game. tldr; BUY THIS GAME.

I've never played Dungeon Master nor Eye of the Beholder, but this game makes me wish I had. The atmosphere in this game alone can keep you wanting to play just to figure out if that plodding noise is just around the corner. And yes, this game can be difficult; but I think that's part of the attractiveness of it: you feel like your accomplishing something by solving a puzzle. It's well paced, authentic, and created with great amounts of love for the genre.

I've only had the chance to play this game for about an hour and am very happy with it. The gameplay mechanics are easy enough to navigate and the graphics are splendid. I'm still getting used to the combat style as it's similar to Might and Magic 7 without the ability to pause. I would have to agree with a another poster that I hope they come out with a turn based option in any future projects. With that said I wont have any problem playing through and enjoying this game with the current system used. I love the sound effects-very subtle and sometimes creepy. I swear I hear someone whispering at times. The character creation is simple although I would like to have more avatars to choose from or an option to upload our own. The attributes are very basic but you're not gonna really need something like charisma in a dungeon crawl anyways. There are a decent variety of skills to choose from I will have to wait and see if the skills I chose pan out as I move on. So far I give the game 4/5 stars becuase I feel that it is a truly great representation of a dungeon crawler but the combat system isn't my favorite. This could easily change to 5/5 for me once I play it more though and perhaps end up loving the combat.

This is the RPG I grew up with. This is Dungeon Master, this is Bloodwych, this is Eye of the Beholder, this is Knightmare. This is the seminal dungeon crawler. This is everything I loved about games like Dungeon Master, but with a fresh coat of paint. Increasingly large and difficult levels, logic puzzles, hidden rooms, pressure plates, hidden switches, locked doors, torches, food, weapons and armour aplenty, mysterious notes, skill upgrades, icon-based spellcasting, and a wild array of enemies to keep you challenged as you attempt to reach the bottom. If you loved these types of games but felt the style is too old school beside lushly detailed, massive open-world RPGs with hundreds of side quests, you need to give this a go. It's just one quest, and it's linear and often claustrophobic, but that was always part of the fun of the dungeon crawler. You get to focus on just the one mission, and get chased down narrow corridors and dead ends searching for that room you passed a while back where you can hide and hope the creatures chasing you can't operate the door mechanism, all in shiny new 3D paint with modern audio. I can't wait for the sequel.

Legend of Grimrock does everything it purports to do, and it does it well. The developers have really understood what makes the tile-based dungeoncrawl great. Gameplay is intuitive and smooth, and the graphics beautiful; especially the play between torchlight and the surrounding shadows creates a tangibly tense atmosphere. These games don't come along often enough.