Grimrock

Jirodyne wrote: LoG 2 tho, is set to be 'non-linear' and it can't be that if some enemies in areas were just too strong and out leveled you. So instead from what I have seen, everything levels with you. Or most of the enemies do anyways. Enemies that are hard at level 1, with a rock as your weapon, is still hard at lvl 18 with wearing heavy armor and throwing out bolts of lightning.

I noticed the exact opposite of this - a lot of opponents that were pretty nasty at lower levels became jokes at higher levels with better armor and weapons. For what it's worth. I am actually pretty surprised that this was your experience, it seemed so obvious that you could get more powerful than some monsters with enough levels.

The benefit of Ogre's grip is to wield Twohanded weapons in one hand. There are both light twohanded and heavy twohanded weapons that this ability applies to. Since light weapons at LV 5 is dual wield ANY "light" weapon, this implies that you could dual wield two "light" twohanded weapons. So if it only took you two levels to get twohanded in one hand, that would mean you could put the other 3 skill points into different skills to add more variety to your class.

The new system would not be as bad if we had 2 skill points per level rather than 1 per level. So by LV 15, you would have a total of 30 skill points or 6 maxed out skills. In the old system you could max out a tree with 3 skill points OR less. So you would have had 5 to 6 maxed out skills in the old system.

I wouldn't describe the game's difficulty as Skyrim. I would describe it more akin to an easier version of Ancients I: Deathwatch. Dungeons of the Unforgiven is FAR harder than this game and I loved it far more.

Puzzles and exploration makes the game essentially Myst, with a tacked on combat system. Most dungeon crawlers and D&D games past mid-90s were less about puzzles and more about loot, combat, spells, and good level up systems. Games like Ancients and Dungeons of the Unforgiven (the tile-based dungeon crawler basically died off by 2000s). Also D&D is only about puzzles IF AND ONLY IF the Dungeon Master wants to do puzzles. D&D was primarily a combat-heavy and roleplaying heavy game, and less about puzzles, unless the DM knew how to make good ones. This may have been different for 1st Edition or AD&D, but once we got to 3rd and 3.5 edition it was definitely less about puzzles.

And you are right THIS game is about Puzzle Solving and Exploration, and not combat. If I had known that I would not have bought it. I had assumed that all the extra effort being done on the skill system that was SUPPOSED to fix all the problems in Grimrock 1 would be in the game. I was wrong. It would be nice for them in the future to explain when they scrap features that they explained in a blogpost that wouldn't be in the game anymore.

Unless of course someone can point me to that blogpost explaining why they axed the system?

6 maxed out skills? There are only 16 skills in the game, that would be far too much. You'd end up with a simple choice between melee, ranged and magic. All the finer details of character generation and development would get lost since you could for example simply create a mage that has maxed out all four spell schools plus concentration plus alchemy. No need to ever create a different character, that's everything you'll ever want from a mage. As it stands now you can max out about 3 skills in an average game, which is quite ideal imo.

What is hard about Grimrock are the puzzles. Combat in Grimrock 2 is certainly harder than in Grimrock 1, but then again combat in Grimrock 1 was a joke.

Puzzles and exploration make the game an old school dungeon crawler like Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder. That's how the game was advertised and that's what it is. Only because you missed those essential (!) games doesn't mean they never existed. Those games are simply the quintessence of the grid based dungeon crawler with real time combat. The genre was more or less dead when you started playing it, I remember how even Stonekeep was considered quite outdated when it was released in 1995 because free 3d movement was quite established already. And Stonekeep was the last mainstream 'AAA' title that used the grid movement system.

If you really hate the puzzles so much you'll certainly enjoy mods - there is nothing easier than creating a dungeon/map that has no puzzles, just an endless horde of monsters you can kill to level up your party to level 37.

thufir wrote:

Jirodyne wrote: LoG 2 tho, is set to be 'non-linear' and it can't be that if some enemies in areas were just too strong and out leveled you. So instead from what I have seen, everything levels with you. Or most of the enemies do anyways. Enemies that are hard at level 1, with a rock as your weapon, is still hard at lvl 18 with wearing heavy armor and throwing out bolts of lightning.

I noticed the exact opposite of this - a lot of opponents that were pretty nasty at lower levels became jokes at higher levels with better armor and weapons. For what it's worth. I am actually pretty surprised that this was your experience, it seemed so obvious that you could get more powerful than some monsters with enough levels.

It was with most enemies I battled, not all. Some enemies, like the Turtles, Mosketios (I totally butchered that spelling), And... That's about it, did get easier when I leveled up. They seemed to stay the same, or at least had the same HP. Other enemies like the Fish Men, Frogs, and mummies. When you start the game and fight your first fish men, they are easy, probably only having 50-100hp. When I came back later at lvl 12 and desided to clear out the last of them in that area, I did only 200+ dmg before they would die and they were hitting me for a lot harder than at lvl 1, even with my 2 front rows wearing Meteor and Crystal heavy armor with a LOT more protection. I pay attention to how much dmg I do to enemies, and how many hits to kill them. And the dmg needed to kill enemies at low level, even if you rush into a 'high leveled' area, like the Crystal mines at lvl 4, is a LOT less than if you go back to them at a higher level.

There is some kinda scaling from what I have seen. I don't know how it works, but it IS there.

Jirodyne wrote:

thufir wrote:

Jirodyne wrote: LoG 2 tho, is set to be 'non-linear' and it can't be that if some enemies in areas were just too strong and out leveled you. So instead from what I have seen, everything levels with you. Or most of the enemies do anyways. Enemies that are hard at level 1, with a rock as your weapon, is still hard at lvl 18 with wearing heavy armor and throwing out bolts of lightning.

I noticed the exact opposite of this - a lot of opponents that were pretty nasty at lower levels became jokes at higher levels with better armor and weapons. For what it's worth. I am actually pretty surprised that this was your experience, it seemed so obvious that you could get more powerful than some monsters with enough levels.

It was with most enemies I battled, not all. Some enemies, like the Turtles, Mosketios (I totally butchered that spelling), And... That's about it, did get easier when I leveled up. They seemed to stay the same, or at least had the same HP. Other enemies like the Fish Men, Frogs, and mummies. When you start the game and fight your first fish men, they are easy, probably only having 50-100hp. When I came back later at lvl 12 and desided to clear out the last of them in that area, I did only 200+ dmg before they would die and they were hitting me for a lot harder than at lvl 1, even with my 2 front rows wearing Meteor and Crystal heavy armor with a LOT more protection. I pay attention to how much dmg I do to enemies, and how many hits to kill them. And the dmg needed to kill enemies at low level, even if you rush into a 'high leveled' area, like the Crystal mines at lvl 4, is a LOT less than if you go back to them at a higher level.

There is some kinda scaling from what I have seen. I don't know how it works, but it IS there.

I can only say that this does not match my experience at all and I am playing hard/ironman/singleusecrystal. The fish men in particular were a great example of a monster that was way way easier when I fought them again later on near the pyramid. They climbed out of the water and I would destroy them with a couple of hits, and their feeble attacks barely pinged me. Mummies were the same. I haven't the faintest idea what you're doing to make things different.

There is some scaling it seems, but its done pretty well. Otherwise certain monsters would be way too easy late game, or way too hard early game.

Palandus wrote:I've played many a dungeon crawler (ie Ancients, Dungeons of the Unforgiven, Moraff's World, Might and Magic, Morrowind/Oblivions/Skyrim, Malevolence, etc...), and this is the first to have puzzles, unless of course you are including the Elder Scrolls games; although, Elder Scrolls puzzles are not as annoying.

You must have missed true classic crawlers like Dungeon Master (which this game is heavily based upon), Eye of the Beholder, Ravenloft, Mezzobarrazan (or how it's spelled correctly), Black Crypt, Lands of Lore, and countless others, all of them using ortogonal square based movement and similar puzzles with levers, trapdoors, gates and buttons.

LOG was inspired a lot by Dungeon Master. I started with Eye of the Beholder series. Both are classic and when I think of LOG I think of these two. I don't know if later dungeon crawlers omitted the puzzles, but it was a main part of the classics I know. And not only that, but some of the puzzles in those two old games really didn't make sense even after you had seen the solution (the special quests in eye of the beholder 1). In fact, as I said before, LOG series managed to be a bit more casual in that aspect, making puzzles that not to extreme and illogical, but still you have a breeze solving them with some more patience and little effort to think about it. I find the balance of the puzzles just right, much more logical and easier than the classics and I even have hardcore adventure friends who would find them rather easy, but anyway they are moderate or at worse hard imho. It's not MYST. I never liked MYST and never finished, and also found riddles from many adventures illogical (and I do love adventure), but first time in LOG series I found puzzles so parallel to my logic and still needing the exact amount of additional thought to make me feel clever and not need 95% of the time to look at the solution (I only got a hint once, but I could have thought that, or they could have one more note for a hint at that case).

As for the levelling, it's true. Like in LOG1. You couldn't grind after a while. Impossible. But unnecessary for that kind of game. They maybe wanted to get us away from grinding, to get the focus away from being obsessed about leveling up all the time, and just focus on gameplay. Even the classics had a limit and you usually didn't reach. Although in EOB 1 and 2 I found spawn tricks for endless leveling, but EOB1 locks your level at 11, but your character still gets XP that don't count (but do when you transfer party to EOB2). EOB2 has spawn trick again and I think locks at 13 level. And EOB3 locks at 20 which is final in D&D I think, but you can never get it in EOB3 alone I think. Unless you do spawn trick for hours in EOB2 and transfer party to EOB3. Haha.

Ok, actually you miss maxing all skills just like LOG1. I understand that, frustrating a bit. But I just love to play a new party next time and try to max out different sets of skills next time. In most modern RPG based games after all I can never max out everything (from Skyrim to Borderlands, you need to play hours and still you can't just max out everything usually)