Legend of Grimrock 2

I've played part 1 and can't really remember to be bored at any time. I'm into part 2 now for 11 hours and will stop playing. The games start nicely on the beach and all but there is just no storyline to be found. After 11 hours I still don't know what I'm doing and how what I'm doing contributes to a story. Ok, I would not mind that so much if the gameplay was ok. But I'm currently in the serpent pyramid and it is just soo annoying. All the time you do the same things over and over, especially annyoing: You have to find the right plate combination. OR you have to solve crazy cryptic puzzles like the tomb treasure puzzle in the pyramid from which I had not clue at all it was a puzzle at all! (– until I looked it up. Also the game just becomes so confusing because of the large maps. You can make notes on the map, which is cool feature all games should have, but still, because there is no story, you have no idea where you actually should go and just feel lost half of the time with 20 question marks all over the place. That's why I quit playing now. As I wrote, the puzzles just become a pain after you did some of them and I don't see how the game could become any better.

The island is a nice little world to explore. The puzzles are good, inventive, but not terribly hard. I didn't have to look anything up until almost at the end, and it was an optional puzzle anyway. Could have used enemy AI that was a little more coordinated. And it would have been nice to see a few more cute tricks out of monsters. But there were improvements since LoG 1. Speaking of: better performance! Outdoor areas that feel remarkably wide open! Puzzles that span multiple areas! ELEVATION! Swimming! The gold keys offer some player choice. On the other hand, like LoG 1, I'm not sure I would play it again. I kind of got what I needed to out of it.

This game improves on the first, and is best game of its kind: a grid-based dungeon-crawling RPG. It opens up with a fairly big world with dungeons, forests, cemeteries, and even underwater action. And it is packed with puzzles. And those aren't lightweight puzzles you often get in RPGs either. You deal with obtuse word clues, environmental clues, and tiny hard-to-see switches in dimly-lit rooms. The puzzles are so advanced that you can call this a puzzle game. Combat is similar to the first LoG game, which is mouse-heavy, very clicky action. Like LoG1, you play a group of 4 escaped prisoners who are chained at their feet, so they all have to move together and fight as a group. The 4 characters happen to be melee, ranged, and magic attackers. Even though the game supports resolutions up to 3840x2160, this game must be played in 1920x1080 or under, as higher resolutions will render the user interface too small because it doesn't scale. Since combat is very clicky, mouse control on a tiny interface in the heat of battle is next to impossible.

Everything works in the same way as in Grimrock 1, but there is more of everything. More races, classes, items, enemies, secrets, puzzles and more themed levels. The enemy AI, spell rune system and the character development system are improved from the first game. The non-linearity, water pools and multi-height dungeons makes the grid-based gameplay more varied. And also, the main menu theme is awesome. This sequel still has the same minor issues as in the predecessor. When you move and you release a movement button, the party still takes one more step. This is not good at all, especially when you have to tread carefully, but it is tolerable. And when the game gets fast-paced, the eyes are focused on the bottom right of the screen most of the time. The user interface is quite problematic. The tooltip texts are too tiny and the font is too thin making all reading hard regardless the game resolution. And I don't like how the alchemy system is different from the first game. Now you need to put your mortar and pestle in your hand slot and the alchemy happens in this little slot making the ingredient icons and the buttons so tiny to click. The game is quite heavy to run in my system. As long as the game takes place in the dungeons, it runs pretty well, just like the predecessor. But in the outdoor areas the game gets laggy significantly, especially if there are lots of trees around. Even so, the game experience is highly positive and less straightforward compared to the predecessor. Thus the replay value is also better.

Legend of Grimrock 1 was good, this game is just amazing. They did exactly what I wished for, ie move away from having just dungeons. Legend of Grimrock 2 adds plenty of different outdoor scenes, with stunning graphics and animations. It's pure magic! The game starts with an easy-to-moderate difficulty level, but becomes rather tough after a while. While the opponents are never really much of a problem (in Normal level), the puzzles are not always easy to solve. As far as I recall, I could finish the first part with no or very few hints, but not this time...expect that you won't be able to solve everything, at least not all the hidden stuff. The game world is large and will keep you busy for many hours. Only negative thing about this game is that you don't want to ever go back to old dungeon crawlers once you played this. Hoping for Legend of Grimrock 3!