Posted on: June 30, 2020
elbriga
Verified ownerGames: 429 Reviews: 15
"Old school" is just bad UX
Legend of Grimrock has a great atmosphere and the concept of "real time", 3D, square-based dungeon crawling is interesting enough. The story, told through very short snippets of text, is intriguing enough. It's worth playing, and it could have been great, but for me was just average. Tthe game suffers from horrendous UX problems. The combat system is very unsatisfying, as the recommended tactic (recommended by forums of course, the game doesn't explain this at all), is to take advantage of the fact that the ennemies' hitboxes update before their animation is finished, ie, you can attack them while they are switching position. This feels like cheating. It's not rewarding and combats soon become a real grind, taking forever without any real challenge if you're lucky, and if you're unlucky, better reload your previous quicksave (another recommended "tactic"...). It's not old school, it's bad design. Like corridor shooters were "old schools", and it sucked and some games improved it. RPGs had bad UI and UX, and it sucked. Embracing it is not old school, it's a waste. Puzzles vary from adequate to just unfair. It's the type of game where you have to use a walkthrough from time to time, and seeing the solution, can be sure you would never have figured it out. The UI/UX is really the main problem. This game could and should have been playable with a gamepad, whatever purists say. There could have been one inventory instead of four. Everything could have been less clunky. Just halve the ennemies health. Game wouldn't even get easier, but already it would've been less of a grind. I get it, you want me to dodge. Don't make me do it 50 times for each ennemy. I'm glad I played it and it's worth playing. But I couldn't finish it despite my best efforts, and after reading a walkthrough of the last 2 levels I skipped, I'm glad I did. Do yourself a favor and play on easy, and don't try too hard on the puzzles, they're not worth it.
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