Megami wrote:It's a great feat, don't get me wrong. Had to cost you a lot of patience and frustration. On the other hand it is also a proof that the door trick and 2x2 tactics are just way too powerful and should be dealt with in the upcoming patches (+ let monsters heal up while the party rests).
I'd be interested to hear what you think they could actually do about the 2x2 'trick' as you call it that would still make the game reasonable to play?
I felt like they've already done a much better job of making the enemies less predictable, spiders are a good example of this, in that they will often stop following you for a few seconds or will change direction at random to keep you on your toes. Also they've added enemies that can side step making it more difficult to tell which way they will move. There are still some enemies that are a bit dumb and will just follow you round and round in a circle so perhaps they could improve those ones, however, in some cases this actually helps add personality to slower and dumber monsters. Perhaps a diagonal attack for some of the larger monster such as the Ogres would work, it would feel intuitive enough that they might have a very large reach with their clubs (obviously you should see a club smashing into your screen) and there would usually still be enough room to avoid them. (which of course would not have affected my ability to solo run the game)
I guess they could make all the enemies as fast as the flying bugs so that they can permanently stick to you and you can never run away, but how would that be any fun?
As I said, I didn't use the 'door trick' except for about 1 or 2 fights with the flying bugs and I'm certain I could have done those fine in the open if I'd just used my bombs more liberally instead. Unless you are suggesting that any act of running away and closing a door to rest for a bit after killing a bunch of enemies shouldn't be allowed?
The only enemies in the game that would have been any different to me with regenerating health would have been the slimes as every other enemy could be easily killed without having to retreat. Further more I still feel (even with a full party of 4) that the areas were it seems they just threw in almost as many slimes as would fit the dungeon tiles were some of the weaker designed areas.
The way I see it, dancing is just going to be an inevitable consequence of the game being a tile based dungeon crawler and the most obvious ways to over come this limitation would be to follow the same evolution of the genre that happened over the last 20 years or so from the likes of Ultima Under World and Arena to modern games like Skyrim, Bioshock or Deadspace* which moved to full freedom of movement. Or, alternatively, to devolve back to the turn based gameplay of the Gold Box games or older JRPGs in which combat becomes locked into turn based battles. I use the terms evolve and devolve just as a measure of past and present game design and not as a qualifier to the validity or entertainment they offer. It's all dependent on the game and all styles are valid when done right. This is why I enjoy Grimrock, it's using a style that is seldom seen these days and does it well in a way that has crafted a compelling game.
That doesn't mean there isn't room to improve
(as I said in my OP to the devs, I think there is plenty) and I would be most interested to see the ways the genre could possibly have improved by going in a 'sideways' direction rather than the way it historically evolved. I make this post not so much to try and defend myself to you
(I had fun playing this way, if you don't think it's fun then that's your choice) but because I genuinely would love to hear any suggestions that you, or anyone else, may have for improving the gameplay without compromising what make the tile based dungeon crawler the unique beast that it is.
*Deadspace may not seem the most obvious example of a modern dungeon crawler at first glance but is actually one of the most clearly traceable back to the old school games. It initially began development as a continuation of the System Shock games, the orignial of which was built upon an improved version of the Ultima Underworld engine and was very much a sci-fi dungeon crawler. Horror has also always been a big part of the genre, just look at the spider threads on these forums.
Few modern games provide such depth and customisation to make this kind of thing possible - another sign that Grimrock resurrects things long forgotten and sorely missed from the games industry