Legend of Grimlock

[Kaerika]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPuzj1xhlQ8

Anyone else playing this? I can't recommend it enough, if you're into old-school first-person dungeon crawls.

[Tgo01]

That game looks like it wants me to use my brain while playing it. I thought video games were moving away from that?

[Celephais]

Based entirely on what Tgo said I decided to buy this game and played it this weekend. I binged on it a little too hard, it's about 15 hours of gameplay. The story was pretty cool too. For the cost it was certainly worth it, but I had a few issues with the game.

I'm going to list a lot of "bads" but I really did enjoy the game, I liked the party system and the style, I hated 1st person grid RPGs as a kid (they felt claustrophobic), but I enjoyed this one, the puzzles are clever, and the combat was fun (except for as I mention later).

There are no random creatures or treasure, so a second playthrough doesn't really appeal to me. The equipment dropped is also forces your party layout (which is good for preventing you from just having all the same guys, but you pretty much have to have two warriors, a rogue and a mage), and your warriors pretty much have to use different weapon styles, you're only going to get one 'epic' weapon of each type.

I got to level 14, and I spent some time farming some of the non-stop guys (getting to level 15 or any higher would take a lot of time). Each level you get 4 skill points (and I found two 5 point books, used both on my mage). Each class has 5 skills, and each skill goes up to 50. So that means if you want to get the coolest skill from a tree, you have to get none of the other trees. That means you can't get the double attack speed for swords and get armor training.

The dumbest is the mage "spellcraft" skill, I didn't know the game was going to end so low, so I got myself improved lightning bolt (27 or so skill points in air magic?) and then focused on spellcraft, because mana was such an issue I thought the level 50 spellcraft "cut spell cost in half" would be great. Didn't get there. In order to get 50 spellcraft you could probably not have more than two or three spells. Awful.

When you start the game there's a dropdown to select a dungeon, there's only the one, so maybe expansions will fix this. I don't mind that you can't get too powerful, I just wish I knew before I tried to get a cool skill and learned that I did so at the cost of not learning many fun spells.

Combat near the end of the game kind of sucks too, it becomes about abusing terrain and just finding an area where you can isolate and then run in circles never taking hits. The damage your mage can do can be very strong, but I found that most battles he just sat doing nothing, because he'd run out of mana too quickly, and mana takes so long to regain, near the end of the game I would have him burst DPS and after each fight I'd have to find a safe place to rest. Or if it was something who I could not have hit me at all, my mage would just do nothing as I kited.

TL;DR: Fun game, good story, worth the cost, but the mechanics unraveled near the end, and they need better/more endgame, but expansions seem to be a possibility.

[Taernath]

^ What he said. I enjoyed it, the style is refreshing but the mechanics and controls are a bit weird. I think I heard somewhere that LoG devs are planning free DLC in the form of more dungeons, but I could be wrong.

[SHAFT]

The title is Legend of Grimrock

[RSR]

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2009/05/weekend_diversion_what_really/grimlock.jpg

[Jace Solo]

Enjoying it for sure.