Grimrock

No Portcullis?

petri wrote:No Portcullis?

You know? The bang on the head sort of portcullis, door, barn door, gate, moving thing inside of a arch way.

Ah ok, I thought it was something more serious since you said it prevented you from finishing the game.

petri wrote:Ah ok, I thought it was something more serious since you said it prevented you from finishing the game.

I think it would have been slightly counter productive to have them rusted shut on later levels, so no, this alone didn't prevent me from finishing the game, only reduced the fun somewhat.

Dandy wrote:1 - No Portcullis

Huh? Of course LoG has portcullis! I think you meant "No monster-crushing DM doors".

Dandy wrote:2 - Twitch puzzles (no option to slow them down).

DM also had no option to slow it's twitch puzzles down.

Dandy wrote:2 - Illogical puzzles.

Please name an illogical puzzle in LoG.

Dandy wrote:3 - Even though they may have caught the look of Dungeon master, they were miles short in capturing the spirit.

Here you might have a point.

Capturing the spirit of a dungeon crawl granddaddy in a different gaming universe is pretty difficult if not impossible.
Yet i found the resemblance on my first plays pretty close and a lot what felt missing was added/improved by the community in both assets and mods.

Dandy wrote:4 - Extremely unfriendly spell preparation.

Can't follow you on this one too. Differences in rune interface placement and arrangement are of course design choices. Yet compared to DM spell preparation is actually pretty similar. There you also had to know and click your runes to prepare and use spells. There were no spell lists to choose from or quick-recast options.

Dandy wrote:It simply got too frustrating and boring.

After 1778 hours as a pure player i can say that adding the editor to LoG was the right choice to prevent just that.

My goodness, it's been a very long time since I played and the details long forgotten. I do know the reasons for not finishing the game though. I don't like not finishing a game, it sort of feels unfinished.
I bought LOG1 and had my moneys worth and I will be buying LOG2 as soon as it's released, and as the saying goes "It's not that it's a bad game, it's more that it could have been so much better"

I do remember loving the game up until level 3 were the difficulty ramped itself up, and I spent more time running away to heal then playing the game. I also remember always suffering from the effects of poison without any sort of cure poison spell. It was then that the boredom and frustration started to creep in.

Dandy wrote:I do remember loving the game up until level 3 were the difficulty ramped itself up, and I spent more time running away to heal then playing the game. I also remember always suffering from the effects of poison without any sort of cure poison spell. It was then that the boredom and frustration started to creep in.

Aye, LoG's spider are actually no pets. I agree that the original dungeon brings them rather early but so they teach young adventurers to be carefull and don't bite off more then they can chew. Still level 3 is just the first of a few difficulty ramps in the game and those are also present in DM.

Regarding poison: aside from crystal use it is cured exactly the same as in DM with either a Cure Poison a.k.a Vi Bro potion or sleeping it away.

Yes there were quite a few large ramps in difficulty which did remove any immersion I had in the game. As I remember the difficulty progression in DM, was much more gentle. You know that even by today's standards DM still retains that amazing atmosphere. It must have been the small details, it couldn't have been because of mega graphics and dolby surround sound.

Dandy wrote:As I remember the difficulty progression in DM, was much more gentle.

Hahaha. You're kidding right? Half way through level 4 those purple worms appear and tear you apart. If you dare look around level 5 (the treasure stores) then you go up against some crazy ass fast flying snakes and poisonous green things and then there's that ghost running around on one level early on where, if you don't know the right spell, you're basically buggered too. Granted, about half way through the game the difficulty calms down a bit, but then, I find that with most games where stats and numbers are involved and you've done a decent job of levelling and getting equipment (because the game has to account for less thoughtful players to some degree too).

While I agree there was a bit too much square dancing in Grimrock 1, mods have shown ways to avoid that, and that people strongly desire such a change.

I don't often remember having to find hidden buttons that were 1. Mandatory and 2. placed somewhere that wasn't generally obvious.