Ways to Improve Grimrock 2

[minmay]

Grimrock does offer mouse movement. Check "Enable Arrow Icons" in the options. But the pseudo-queueing behaviour is really clunky with a keyboard (which I suspect >90% of players use), yes.

[Sir Tawmis]

Some cool points. Going to toss in my two cents here and there. (Pretty much because that's all I can afford these days!)

• Combat

Weapons
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".

Interesting. I didn't feel this way. The beach you land on, and Sleet Island, all had a low variety of weapons. But once I got into the sewers, I found magical shields, swords, and staffs that I found to be of great 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.

See, I took it as Firearms were something new to the world of Grimrock itself. (Not just the game, but the world!) And thus knowledge on using them would not be all that high. So yes, there was a chance to jam. But there was also your secondary weapon slot that you could easily switch to. So you could switch to another gun, or another missile weapon (bow, crossbow, sling, poison darts, shurikens, etc). The jams did not last very long at all. So you'd only be switching to a secondary weapon for one or two rounds. The backfire, while annoying - I didn't mind. It reminded me of Wizardry when spells would sometimes backfire.

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?

I didn't mind the lack of snares and the like (you must be an MMO player? Snare and kite?). My problem with the spells is remembering the runes, and what order they go in, in order to successfully cast them. While it's an interesting concept, in a big boss fight, trying to cast three or four powerful spells that are different rune combinations (and a specific order) can be a nightmare. That's why I wish you could hot key like two or three spells.

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.

I think one of the devs addressed this elsewhere; the chance of injury happens to where ever the mob is hitting. I don't know if the game is "smart enough" to know a Warg probably is not going to be tall enough to hit your head (I never got a head injury from one - was always leg, arm or chest). And to me that makes sense. It was striking within range. We assume combat is going to just happen as we see it - Mummy swings, and it looks like it's aiming for the center chest area on the screen. But suddenly you get a leg injury? While it's just the mummy's hands moving in the animation, might stand to reason that in actual combat the mummy may also kick, which is what hits your character's kneecap just right. The dev had said the better the armor, the less chance of that area actually sustaining a wound. See here.

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.

Starvation, thus far, has not been a concern for me. I have two crates full of JUST food.

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.

Couldn't you just note it as a dead end though?

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.

I never "queue" up for walking... that just seems overly dangerous in any RPG!

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.

Again, I had no issue. Was extremely easy. I mixed and matched and it told me if that combination was going to make something or not. And if it did, I just dragged it into my inventory. Very simple, I thought.

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.

I had brought this up in another thread. Something Wizardry VIII did is that there was a chance of someone "spotting" something that is not immediately visible. (So in LOG, there could be a spot skill). This would spot items not initially seen (invisible until a successful spot check, obviously for non critical/quest items), as well as a chance for spotting "buttons" on a wall would be nice. Like you said, there were times I'd finish an area, see a caged area near by - and I walked all around the dungeon looking left, then 180, to look right, no button; step forward, look, 180, look left, no button, step forward...

[any6]

Only going to comment on the secret buttons because I'm not pro enough to comment on some of the mechanics.

Having only 2 secrety button styles is actually a rather good thing imho. When playing grimrock 2 for a few hours (as most of us probably do), I usually have strained eyes from scanning walls all the times. If there were 20 different types of buttons, finding secrets simply wouldn't be doable.

Now I usually have a hunch "this is a good place for a secret switch". Scanning the walls is a secondary mechanic.

I understand why it seems lazy to have only 2 types but that's for the best. The game simply wouldn't be fun otherwise.

[notreally]

Weapon variety could be better. Plenty of heavy weapons, I don't think anyone disagrees that these are the most powerful weapons in the game.
Really dissapointed for everything else though, light weapons, mage staff/orb, missile, and guns, all lack some good variety.

I only found one mage orb in the game, and only one staff that increases magic damage (poison). Staff attacks are pointless since you might as well cast the spell. Some seem more useful since it casts something you don't have, but you only get like 8 shots of lightning bolt for example, whats the point when you can only use it on about 2 monsters before running out.
The best light STR based weapon isn't very unique, special or powerful (especially since you can find 2). Haven't tried a dex light weapons build, so that could be better.
I only found four guns, including the cannon and that crappy flintlock pistol.
There are 3 bows, one requires magic (concentration I think) and one crossbow.

Maybe I didn't find everything, but I found more than 60 secrets and I'm at the final boss.

Maybe I'm just spoiled by other RPG's though. But its still odd that one class of weapons is much better and offers way more options.

[Sarumorpheus]

I would definitely like to see more utility spells (Air scholars could cast attack speed increase, for instance), just to have variety and more fun things to play with. However, someone brought up an interesting point which is that it can be difficult to manage the numerous rune combinations if there were an excessive amount of spells, especially during a nasty fight, and taking into consideration that you have other characters to take care of as well. Something to consider.

It does seem that Heavy Weapons have a heavier presence in Legend of Grimrock 2 than other weapon types, though there are also some pretty nice Light Weapons, such as the Moonblade or Sickle Sword. Nonetheless, it would be good if all weapon types had the same amount of attention to help encourage people to try different playstyles. For example, I have only found about four different missile weapons throughout the whole game (dart shooter, short bow, crossbow, and magic bow in Crystal Mines), and I've just gotten to the castle's terrace. If there are more I either haven't found them or can't remember. Compare those with the best Heavy Weapons LoG 2 has to offer, like Maul, Bane, Ancient Claymore, Meteor Hammer, and that's excluding the regular ones such as the Flail, Poleaxe, Battle Axe, etc.

These are just some observations. I still believe Legend of Grimrock 2 to be a great game.

[thunderfunking]

>"i would remove most or all magic skill requirements"

Why? I suppose you mean concentration skill point prerequisites. Do you want every character to be able to cast every spell? That would lessen the importance of having a mage. It would make torches completely redundant.

You've taken the quote out of context - it was specifically in reference to special abilities on weapons. It's not good design to require a point in Fire Magic just so a character can cast a low damage Meteor 7 times, and then be completely bereft of a special attack on an end-game weapon.

>"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."

I can honestly say that i don't know what you're talking about here. Every time when i came back to a mob in this game after amassing loot and experience on my party, that mob was easier to kill. I could only see your scenario happening if you only gained levels, but did not find any loot / new spells at all for your party. In which case i'd say: blame the player.

Rip to shreds was an exaggeration, but this actually ties into my gripe about injury rate. Halfway through the game, the wargs in Twigroot were still causing injuries to my front line fighter and knight that were both decked in heavy armor - even while the wargs were only dealing ~5% damage. That is really frustrating.

>"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."

What are you on about here? The spiders make sense to me, medium to fast mob with a poisonous attack. The poison mechanics make perfect sense, you take some damage over time (based on your poison resist) and lose HP regeneration, or trade away an antidote potion in order to cure it prematurely. A fair mechanic in my eyes. Please explain what you think is "infuriating" here.

"Make sense" and "fair" has no relationship to what is fun and interesting - which are what I play games for. If you enjoy repeatedly creating and quaffing antivenom potions, then I think we may have different ideas on the nature of enjoyment in video games.

>"Injury rate was way too high."

I can't agree. Your characters have a chance to take random injuries when they lose a massive chunk of hitpoints. It usually happens when the player makes a mistake: Falling into a pit, being hit by spike traps, taking hits from strong, lumbering enemies. The point of bringing an Insectoid fighter is to make injuries slightly less frequent, and works well in this regard. The random nature of injuries is fair to me, as there are ample ways to cure them: Health potion, healing crystal, crystal item, or just wait some time.

Again, "fair" has nothing to do with fun. On many occasions, I found it necessary to quaff health potions on characters that had taken less than 5% damage but still sustained injuries. If this doesn't bother you, then again, I think we have different concepts of fun.

>"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?"

You just described the final boss fight of the game, interesting

Which is specifically why I said the final boss fight was delightful.

>" The rewards for achieving 3-5 ranks in various skills were overwhelmingly minor, never giving you anything of significance or real excitement."

When i read this, i wonder if we did play the same game. Almost all the 5-point "skill-trees" give you one or two interesting perks at different levels that sometimes change the way you play. Throwing 5 makes you throw with both hands. Light 3 lets you dual wield. Heavy 5 lets you hold a weapon and a wand for spellcasting. The entire alchemy specialization nets you unique boosts for each point placed in the skill.

Do you get excited about increasing your carrying capacity? Perhaps a meager 10% faster cooldowns causes your heart to palpitate and palms to sweat? Do more potent healing potions bring you to scream with joy? Does increasing your energy regeneration while resting give you a raging boner?

I'm being facetious, but I would strongly recommend looking at talent trees in other RPGs. Good trait/talent systems are about specialization, and specialization means building around a specific set of stats, introducing new strategies into combat, and adding complexity as the game progresses. There is very little to build around in Grimrock's talent trees. Again, if you don't agree, then we simply have different concepts of fun.

>"Traits were generally very weak because few of them scaled."

Traits that scale well through the entire game: Mutation, Increased Metabolism, +7 Accuracy trait, +10% Xp trait, Quick(10% speed), Endure Elements, All the different +25 resistance traits, Evasive, Endurance.

Scaling does not mean "is still sort of okay at the end of the game".

>"Food consumption is just such an annoyance."

Again, you find something "annoying". I can agree partially though, food management becomes a problem because it's very much a finite resource. It's possible to rest too much, run out of food, and not find any in the parts of the game where enemies respawn. If that happens, your party is bound for starvation. I noticed though, that it only happens if you get stuck on a puzzle for a very long time. If you keep powering through all the areas of the game, you should never run out of food. It's not "annoying", but i agree it could be more interesting than just keeping a sort of upkeep, to be able to keep playing.

But what does it add to the game, aside from more items to pick up? It doesn't add challenge, strategy, or intrigue - it's just a nuisance. My issue was not that I ran out of food (I think the only time I came close was in Crystal Mines after searching for the damn platform in the darkness for eons) - but that I just grew bored of feeding my characters and came to resent the "...IS STARVING!" message.

>" 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."

This i think is a problem with the player and his playstyle. On my second playthrough of this game, i found 71/77 secrets. I NEVER went along the walls of a dungeon to scan every single wall piece for secret switches. I have come to realize that most dungeons are very cleverly designed in regards to secret switches. Say there's a corridor in a dungeon, that just leads into a dead end. That makes me think... I check my map: This "dead end" is very near a room i have seen from another part of the dungeon, a room that was closed behind bars. Aha. I check the walls in this "dead end" and bam. A secret switch. This is almost always the case - secret switches are hidden near interesting places, dead ends, entirely empty rooms with seemingly no purpose, in dangerous places such as the flooded dungeon, on spike trap floors, places where scanning the walls for secret switches presents a risk of danger or death to your party! Never in this game have I come across a place where a secret switch is just completely randomly placed on a wall, discoverable only by scanning every single wall as you describe doing.

I really feel like you didn't read what I wrote. I specifically mention that you can hazard a decent guess that a secret button is nearby most of the time. But there are buttons that really are just pure luck. Consider the button for the Rogue chestpiece - that's in a short dead-end that only opens after you've passed by the area, and there are a dozen identical dead-ends like it in the immediate vicinity. There's no hint of any sort to indicate that it might be there, other than my own obsessive-compulsive instinct to check every area that was previously not accessible.

>"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,"

That's your own fault for "save scumming", no one forced you to play in that fashion. Exploring pits is "annoying"? I find it exciting and rewarding (I fell down a pit, and my magicians foot was injured, dang, but hey theres a gold key on the floor here! Totally worth it). I'd like to add that at the start of a game, you may fall into a pit and discover something awesome, and realize that going into pits is a good thing. And then later in the game, you find the rope, which lets you explore pits without chance of injury, i think this is an exciting type of progression the players understanding and enjoyment of the game.

No, you're not getting it. I'm not "save scumming" - whatever that means - I'm reducing the amount of time I spend by non-trivial amounts. If it takes me 60 seconds to return to the beginning of the puzzle by the intended route (which I'll always do at least once just to make sure I've seen everything), versus 10 seconds to reload from a save, you can bet that I am going to press F9 every single time. Besides that, most of those pits don't contain something awesome - they're frequently just small dead-ends with a fire bomb or some crossbow bolts. And regardless of whether I failed the puzzle or not, I would always climb down and check because heavens know I'm not going to miss anything. Save the player the trouble of quick loading on some of these puzzles and just use teleporters.

[thunderfunking]

I agree with OP on his point. If you move your party by taps of the forward button, the movements make sense. But if you hold the button, your party will queue up one "forward" command, even as you release the button while on the square you wish to stop on. It's as if you always move on tile too many. For this reason, i always move by tapping when i play.

That's default keyboard behavior.
If you release your movement key on the tile you wanted to end up on, the keyboard has already buffered that you want to go ahead so you will take one more step, overshooting your target. To end up on a specifiy tile with a held down movement key you have to release that button BEFORE you reach that tile.

It's not default behavior. Here, in the forum post text input, just hold down "W". The second that you lift the key, no more characters are added. If that's not what happens, then your computer is a potato.

The correct behavior is that the game should ignore continuous input until the current move action is fully completed. Discrete taps are a different matter - those should be allowed to queue. Continuous input should not queue.

[Rithrin]

I agree with OP on his point. If you move your party by taps of the forward button, the movements make sense. But if you hold the button, your party will queue up one "forward" command, even as you release the button while on the square you wish to stop on. It's as if you always move on tile too many. For this reason, i always move by tapping when i play.

That's default keyboard behavior.
If you release your movement key on the tile you wanted to end up on, the keyboard has already buffered that you want to go ahead so you will take one more step, overshooting your target. To end up on a specifiy tile with a held down movement key you have to release that button BEFORE you reach that tile.

It's not default behavior. Here, in the forum post text input, just hold down "W". The second that you lift the key, no more characters are added. If that's not what happens, then your computer is a potato.

The correct behavior is that the game should ignore continuous input until the current move action is fully completed. Discrete taps are a different matter - those should be allowed to queue. Continuous input should not queue.

It's definitely a game mechanic, and not a keyboard mechanic. Even if you are using discrete key strokes, if you press W (or S,A,D) to move your party forward, and then press it again before your party has stopped moving, it will queue up your next move and there is nothing you can do to prevent it from happening.

I understand why the developers have it this way. If the game wouldn't accept movement input until your characters had finished moving (that is, had reached the center of your destination tile), then it would make it much harder to manage during combat. You would have to wait until you stopped before being able to press the next key. Human response time would leave just a slight delay between possible moves which may mean life or death, and if you pressed too soon then your input would be ignored entirely! So these combat benefits unfortunately have negative side effects when trying to travel longer distances. A true fix would probably be very complex, but I would really like it if the game would at least allow you to 'replace' your queued up movement command by pressing a different direction. There are times where I know that I am going to fall into a pit or water that is entirely avoidable, but I didn't release the W key fast enough and, even though I'm a tile away, I know my party is going to reach the safe tile and then continue moving forward again. In those cases, it would be nice if I could press A or D to change my queued up W and save my party.

[Dr.Disaster]

I agree with OP on his point. If you move your party by taps of the forward button, the movements make sense. But if you hold the button, your party will queue up one "forward" command, even as you release the button while on the square you wish to stop on. It's as if you always move on tile too many. For this reason, i always move by tapping when i play.

That's default keyboard behavior.
If you release your movement key on the tile you wanted to end up on, the keyboard has already buffered that you want to go ahead so you will take one more step, overshooting your target. To end up on a specifiy tile with a held down movement key you have to release that button BEFORE you reach that tile.

It's not default behavior. Here, in the forum post text input, just hold down "W". The second that you lift the key, no more characters are added. If that's not what happens, then your computer is a potato.

The correct behavior is that the game should ignore continuous input until the current move action is fully completed. Discrete taps are a different matter - those should be allowed to queue. Continuous input should not queue.

Seems I have to explain better so you understand what i wrote.

If you want to end up on a specific tile, you have to release your movement key BEFORE you did step on your target tile. Otherwise the game interprets your still held down key correctly as you wanting to do another step.

Regarding your comparison: outside of LoG your "W" key does not have to complete a complex animation before it can write itself again.

[minmay]

If you are holding down the 'W' key and release it before stepping on the target tile, the game still moves you one tile beyond the target tile. This is the behaviour that people are complaining about.

Regarding your comparison: outside of LoG your "W" key does not have to complete a complex animation before it can write itself again.

LoG is capable of accepting keyboard input while the party is moving. Try pressing "esc" while moving. You'll notice that the pause menu comes up immediately, not after you complete the move.