- Combat
There were relatively few exciting weapon upgrades in Grimrock 2. The progression of numbers was extremely gradual, so individual upgrades often felt like "oh, okay, I guess I'll use this".
Missile weapons were comparatively very weak early on and had rather low variety. Adding an interface option to auto-collect ammo even if the ammo isn't currently equipped would make them a lot less tedious to use.
Firearms seemed like a very weak option all around. Any weapon with the potential to jam or randomly deal significant damage to your entire party is basically unusable (at least until you hit Firearms 5 - a huge investment just to avoid that outcome), but the cannon was kind of cool.
For all types, the best weapons were only marginally different from each other, and none of them encouraged any change to how you actually behave in combat - you're always just charging up the special or swinging as you tile dance. I'd like to see more weapons with fun special conditions, even if they're overpowered. I would completely remove charges for special attacks with spells, unless there's a reliable way to recharge. I would also remove most or all magic skill requirements, given that most characters will only reach level 13-15 by the end of the game - individual skill points are just way too valuable to ask to commit for relatively mediocre specials (I think the Crystal Shield might be the only one really worth it).
Spells
I would consider this to be Grimrock's greatest weakness. The spells that do exist are fairly bland, but more problematic is the huge lack of them. I made the mistake of hoping that there would be a reward for maxing Earth, and I was really sad to find out that only three Earth spells exist - and one of them is just poison damage absorption (not even a resist increase!). But the other elements aren't much better. There really needs to be more variety. Healing and cure spells are really a must-have, even if that means adjusting the balance of the entire game. Trap or mine-like spells would be extremely well-suited to Grimrock, as would more directional versatility, such as a spell that creates a projectile ahead of you and can be pointed in a direction before firing. Where are the status effects - snares, movement and turning slows, attack slows and disarms, petrification, vulnerabilities, confusion, or mind control? Where are the spell combos - blast them with water than get bonus damage from lightning?
Scaling
Again, going non-linear makes this choice understandable, but scaling is controversial, as RPGs go. Personally, I have yet to see a game do it correctly. Grimrock 2 is not an exception. It just feels really shitty to circle back into an area a few hours after gaining a bunch of new equipment, only to watch the same old mob rip you to shreds. It makes leveling up feel a lot less exciting, because you know that you haven't really advanced in relation to the world. But, there are ways to fix this. One is to make equipment more powerful and scale better. Another is to freeze mob strength once the mob is first encountered. You could also provide more permanent skill/attribute rewards for puzzles - in total there are relatively few stat potions and tomes, especially if you don't get Alchemy 5.
Enemies
I loved that many dungeon layouts were set up in (seemingly) direct consideration for the mob types. E.g., I really got a kick out of seeing that there was a clearly optimal path for kiting the crabs, with trap corners if you stepped too far back. Good stuff.
In terms of the AI, I was glad to see more enemies that were built around the assumption you would be tile dancing, with some of them automatically attacking when you moved into an adjacent tile, and others turning/moving at the same time. Do more of that.
Increasing mob variety is expensive and difficult, but I think it would help to at least add minor variations of existing mob types. Games have done this since time immemorial, and it's just an efficient use of resources. No one's going to balk at seeing the turtle model again if you slap a red hue on it. Better than seeing a model once and then never again.
There were only a small number of enemies that ever felt genuinely annoying or obnoxious (I'm looking at you, Spiders in the Crystal Mines). Please, learn from every RPG ever made that makes this mistake over and over - no more poison shitshows. That, or come up with a less infuriating poison mechanic.
Enemies need more spells. I want to see mobs that are warping around. I want to dodge fireballs and avoid freezing traps. I want to see mobs make skeletons out of corpses. Give them more tools to play with.
Injury rate was way too high. Should be occurring at about 1/4 the rate that it currently does, and should probably be limited to specific mobs. It shouldn't be a random body part - make wargs likely to damage legs while mummies are likely to damage heads. Be consistent and predictable with mechanics that have the ability to really screw players over.
Bosses
It feels great to tile dance against enemies, but it feels stupid be tile dancing against a boss. Bosses are supposed to be scary, and watching them fumble back and forth as I slowly whittle them down just doesn't feel right. I would recommend making boss fights more synchronized and puzzle like. Utilize spike and projectile traps with strategically placed buttons every now and then, eh?
Adds are a great way to add extra challenge to a boss fight, but in general they should have less HP if they're spawning continuously. Would have liked to see more fights with adds introduced in phases or as triggers, rather than just there from beginning to end.
Final boss was delightful - I really had to pull out all the stops for that fight, even on Normal. Next-to-last boss was repetitive.
- Characters
This was a major weakness. The rewards for achieving 3-5 ranks in various skills were overwhelmingly minor, never giving you anything of significance or real excitement. Too many skills were nothing but minor stat bumps, offering no additional abilities or equipment options. Where are the stats that really change how you play the game? Why not a speed trait for lowering charge times and increasing movement/turn speed?
Stats
The main gripe would be that evasion is clearly inferior to protection 1:1, but from a numbers standpoint the equipment and traits value them equally. This is primarily an issue for anyone attempting to run a dex-based character in the front row.
Not enough traits and equipment utilize crit.
Traits were generally very weak because few of them scaled.
The lack of stat growth beyond very slight health/energy bumps made leveling up not very exciting.
Classes and Races
Some of the race-specific additions were great - like the food stat bonuses, the return of Minotaur skull collecting. But overall, the races really aren't that different from one another, and neither are the classes. The bonuses are convenient at best, with some of the negatives really turning out to be a nuisance.
Food consumption is just such an annoyance. I understand it has utility in stressing out carrying capacity and inventory space, but I would rather see lower values for those than have to deal with starvation over and over - especially when there are so many ways that food consumption can be sped up by items, traits, etc.
- Interface & Controls
Grimrock keeps things minimal and small, which is really important and necessary for a game that involves high attention to detail. But during combat and exploration, it is frequently necessary to keep the inventory open for throwing items, quaffing potions, and reading scrolls. This inventory consumes the entire right third of the screen, which introduces a large amount of tedium with constantly opening and closing the inventory screen - especially if you utilize sacks/boxes to organize individual character inventories. Although I like the way that fast interface use becomes important to doing well in combat, especially when you're ambushed/panicking, but overall this results in a tiresome level of repetition and management. I would recommend allowing for a more minimalist view of a character's inventory without all of the character sheet tabs and buttons for sleeping/viewing the map/etc.
Similarly, it would be really helpful to allow the player to keep one (or several!) notes open without the inventory screen open. Currently, you can't even read notes held in a character's hand.
Interface Animations
I'm a web designer so this one is a bit of a nitpick, but adding animations as well as transforms (with an appropriate easing function) for the interface would go a long way towards making it easier on the eyes and providing emphasis on numbers as they come and go. Currently, when you deal damage or take damage, the numbers appear instantly over the character and disappear soon after. If instead, they faded in rapidly over .2s and grew from a 50% font size, increased to 150% font size at .15s, and then normalized to 100% at the end of the animation, this would help draw attention to the numbers as they come and go.
Map
Overall, this is a well done map. I like that it isn't really a primary document for puzzles or secrets - it only tells you what you already know, and it makes it very easy to add notes along the way. My only nitpick is that early on, I found it to present a lot of red herrings with its representation of certain kinds of walls/obstructions. For example, any caved-in tunnel represents on the map in a way that makes it appear special compared to normal stone walls.
Walking
Given the non-linear nature of the game, there's a lot of walking back and forth to do. Being a tile-based game, that means there's no fudging to be done with movement, it all has to be precise, especially since you're frequently on narrow paths where falling off means a lot more walking. As such, I found the queueing of movement input to be rather frustrating when walking longer distances. If you hold down one direction, you'll notice that even if you release the button as soon as you begin to enter the next tile, you will still queue movement into the next tile. This is correct behavior for individual key presses, but for continuous input it means you frequently overshoot your target, forcing you to rely solely on discrete taps. Just annoying.
Alchemy
Yikes. I really don't see the value in forcing a character to hold it in order to create potions. Cramming the formula interface into that little box makes it extra hard to use, and it's unclear what the buttons do at first glance. Just make a proper modal dialog for this.
- Dungeons & Puzzles
Secret buttons
One of the first joys in Grimrock 1 was discovering those secret buttons. They're very rewarding to find. But there's a very specific limit to how much "fun" they add to the game, and Grimrock 2 was guilty of surpassing that limit. There were, what, at least a hundred of these things in the game? It's insanely tedious to be checking every single wall over and over just to be sure that the answer to the current puzzle isn't a secret button. In most cases, there are decent indications that there's a button nearby - such as the stone heads, or maybe you see a locked gate or a distant treasure - there's a good chance that there's a button in the vicinity. But some buttons are just pure luck to come across. I would strongly recommend a high-level spell or item (such as a type of compass) that helps indicate the existence of nearby buttons. It would remove so much tedium.
Streamlining failure
Most of the puzzles in Grimrock 2 use either pit traps or spikes as the primary mechanism for "failure". Step on the wrong tile, you drop into the pit. Avoid the spikes or otherwise you die. These are understandable mechanisms to use, since being in first-person you have to allow players to see past the obstacles, and full visual blocks would be difficult to reason with from a first-person perspective. However, too frequently it was vastly more efficient to quick save at the beginning of a puzzle and reload over and over so as not to deal with the consequences. Spikes dealt upwards of 40% damage to everyone in the party, while falling into pits would most often induce injuries. Pit traps had an added annoyance of needing to explore the area they dropped you into, which were frequently just small rooms with one or two mobs and trash items. Why not just use teleporters? Less frustrating by far.
Warping / Fast Travel
The addition of The Hub was great - but it was clearly necessary since it's a non-linear game. However, it doesn't address the problem of wanting to go back and check something deep in a dungeon, and still having to walk all the way back up. There are two possible solutions here: add a recall item or warp home spell, or just take the full dive and allow warping between any save crystal. Or do both. I favor both, personally, because then you'll be able to add as much detail as you want to every area of the game, and not have to worry that players will only ever see it once.
Tilesets
Good variety overall. Would like to have seen more use/expansion of the Pyramid tileset, particularly given the frequency of the same stone and castle tilesets.
Thanks for your time!
