Legend of Grimrock

[sea]

You can discover spells you are capable of casting by experimenting with the Rune interface.

I have one human fighter, one lizardman rogue, one human mage (earth magic, spellcraft, staff) and one insectoid mage (fire, ice). Dunno if I made a mistake with having one rogue as frontliner, but so far I've been doing fine. Rogue is evasion max, fighter is protection max (and a lot of HP).

Evasive characters are totally effective as front-liners as well. A Fighter with Unarmed Combat and a Rogue heavily invested in Dodge will be near unkillable. I'd say it's actually better than going for sheer HP and armour, but you probably want a tank on hard difficulties to avoid party wipes against tough enemies later on.

 

[Jaedar]

I've played for about an hour, reached the third floor. Game is very pretty, especially the light created from the torches on the walls. Combat feels a bit shallow so far and the main challenge for me has been the rapid actions required, moving, turning, hitting and firing spells, all at the same time. Got missile weapon skills with my rogue, but so far no bows(that I could find), so I started spending my points towards assassination instead, and just unlocked the "make melee attacks from back row" talent. The character creation is very barebones and it seems to me that the optimal mage will always be an insectoid. At least for rogues and warriors there's the tradeoffs between power(minotaur), accuracy(lizard) or something in between(human).

It's a cool game though, lots of hidden stuff to find, and the only loot that isn't scarce is food. Puzzles so far haven't been very hard but I did feel pretty accomplished with myself when I solved the teleporter cells.

I haven't found any air spells either.

 

[sea]

I'm pretty sure the game doesn't tell you all the spells. Read the manual and look up what the different runes represent, and try to come up with spells on your own based on that - for instance, ice spells will always have an ice rune in them.

 

[Eyeball]

So, no autoattack button or keyboard shortcut then? Fagniggerballsuck. How hard would it be to do the 1-4 keyboard command thing? Is that really too much to ask? Even the famously clunky Ravenloft games let your team attack enemies by right-clicking them.

I do like the "find out your damn spell combinations yourself, noob!" thing. Guess I'm off to experiment. If I can stomach the combat system, that is.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Human fighter BLOBERT, minotaur fighter Skyway, human rogue SMA, and human wizard Meltdown begin their adventure.

 

[Peter]

I feel like I know which portraits you used for them.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I feel like I know which portraits you used for them.

Just did dungeon level 1. So far the combat doesn't really bother me, but it does seem like they should let you hotkey it anyway. Most difficult battle was against that group of mushroom men because Skyway cannot into avoiding damage, but I was able to move SMA to the front and keep fighting. While it's more efficient to try to dodge attacks by shuffling around, at least in dungeon level 1 it wasn't required. Party's all level 1 (Well, Blobert hit 2 just before dlvl2) and doesn't have the talents and skillpoints and equipment yet. Both fighters and the rogue are using weapons they're not skilled in. Not surprised I'm taking so much damage from snails and mushrooms.

 

[made]

Well, the first two levels were rather uneventful. More like a tutorial to introduce people who've never played this type of game to the mechanics. Hoping it gets more complex from now on.

Combat's downright tedious. Especially against the legionnaires with their slowass walking animations. Group of 4 = two mins of circle strafing fun.

Char system otoh seems decent compared to the likes of Black Crypt (which didn't have a char system worth speaking of) and leaves some room for customization, but is kinda wasted on the combat as circle strafing trumps all.

 

[Whisper]

Well, the first two levels were rather uneventful. More like a tutorial to introduce people who've never played this type of game to the mechanics. Hoping it gets more complex from now on.

Combat's downright tedious. Especially against the legionnaires with their slowass walking animations. Group of 4 = two mins of circle strafing fun.

You playing on Hard, right?

 

[Zed]

Strafe-combat sucks but the rest of the game is pretty fun.

 

[CorpseZeb]

So... so who do map manually, by hand, using provided empty map blankets?

 

[Whisper]

Strafe-combat sucks but the rest of the game is pretty fun.

They designed combat with this in mind. No way you will win vs 3 skeleton warriors on lvl two on hard difficulty, without strafing (which is hard in small room with 3 enemies).

 

[Peter]

Honestly, I don't mind the combat. Not yet, at least. Yes, strafing makes the game much more of an aRPG than some might like, and it might get repetitive later on, but I quite like how there's a rhythm to the dodging and attacking. Combat does get quite easy if you're facing one enemy in a 2x2 area, but I guess there's really no way to avoid that without completely revamping the AI. At least I can't think of any ways to resolve the issue.

Again, keep in mind that this is my first RT-blobber.

 

[Syril]

Moar liek 'Legend of Grimcock' amirite?

This game is absolutely terrible ive been playing it for about an hour now and im bored as hell. The character customisation is really lame,no content to it at all. Its the same thing over and over,its boring as hell. It doesnt even have randomly generated maps,this crap means,when you die,you have to do all that **** again if you dont get to a save point.Puzzles are tedious and you will be repeating same level switching for the next 20 hours.There is no story, no romancable characters, there is no C&C like in Mass Effect.This kind of game does not work in 2012,no matter how pretty it is

 

[Kaol]

Its ok but nothing special tbh. i'm not sure if its even fun.

 

[Ulminati]

Minotaur fighter BROBERT, Lizardfag rogue Wyrmlord, Human mage Crooked Bee (fire+ice) and Insectoid Mage Prosper (earth+air). Just reached level 5, playing on hard
Had a couple of tpks until I got the waltz timing town. And sometimes end up getting cornered and horribly raped. The fact that everything can kill you dead if you fuck up is definite incline and helps make exploration far more interesting than it'd otherwise be. Found a few secrets so far, but both secrets and puzzles have been quite simplistic. I'm not sure why every reviewer is raving about them.

Also slightly dissapointed that old school mode doesn't have your party take damage when you walk into walls :D

 

[Notorious]

You guys never played Dungeon Crawlers did you?

I'm having a blast with it. I expected a game like EoB and I got one. It could have used some NPC's, i'm at the 5th level and still met no one. The combat could have been better, did we really need to run around enemies in order to beat them? Still it's fun enough i guess. Can definitely recommend it if you are into Dungeon Crawlers, and yes they were really monotone.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Still having a blast. Liking the game system fairly well, too. All the classes seem viable and can be reasonably varied via skills. Also maybe you hard difficulty bros being annoyed by the waltzing should play on normal and don't waltz. Thus far I've been fine doing that with occasional rests and moving Skyway back when he takes too much damage. Haven't been in a situation where multiple enemies can attack me at once, though. Had a room with 3 skeletons in it but I ran back to bottleneck 'em.

Assuming this doesn't go off the rails in to shitland the more I play, I'm looking forward to seeing what DLC dungeons they release and what gets made with the toolset. This is my "Played for a couple hours" feeling so we'll see how it changes by the time I beat the game, but definitely thumbs up so far.

 

[Eyeball]

Fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking spiders.

That is all.

 

[Nattvardsvin]

It is enjoyable.
The overall design of the dungeons are good, the puzzles are interesting.
However, I do not find the combat at all as enjoyable as in Eye of The Beholder 1 and 2. There is just too much running around in circles to avoid getting hit and/or backed into a corner.
It just feels a bit too frantic for my tastes.

 

[Metro]

I expected a game like EoB...

Same. That's why I'm waiting on a sale. Not a big fan of those type of dungeon crawls.

 

[Eyeball]

Guys, how do I reanimate my dead party members if I already spent the blue glowwie crystal on the level? Is there a spell that does that for you? Come to think of it, are there any healing spells at all? All the spell scrolls I find seem to be for spells in schools I'm not leveling.

This game has inspired me. Inspired me to play Anvil of Dawn again, a vastly superior dungeon crawler.

 

[Nattvardsvin]

Guys, how do I reanimate my dead party members if I already spent the blue glowwie crystal on the level? Is there a spell that does that for you? Come to think of it, are there any healing spells at all? All the spell scrolls I find seem to be for spells in schools I'm not leveling.

This game has inspired me. Inspired me to play Anvil of Dawn again, a vastly superior dungeon crawler.

There are no healing spells. The healing crystals recover their power after a while, at least the one on the third floor always did for me when I had some big trouble with spiders and came back to it once every 10 minutes to revive my dead party members and heal up.

 

[MMXI]

Also, top seller on Steam

It's nice to know that a real-time blobber can make more money in a day than Knights of the Chalice has in three years.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Guys, how do I reanimate my dead party members if I already spent the blue glowwie crystal on the level? Is there a spell that does that for you? Come to think of it, are there any healing spells at all? All the spell scrolls I find seem to be for spells in schools I'm not leveling.

go to crystal on previous level or wait for recharge (not sure if they recharge with time or enemies killed, prolly time). you find pestle and mortar to make healing (and other pots) from flasks and herbs on level 2.