A day or so in, what is your general impression of the game?

[bkawcazn]

I think it is absolutely fantastic so far!

Pros:
I love the grid! Traversing a diabolical maze of traps, monsters and riddles does not exist outside of RPGs, boardgames and computer games, so I really feel much more immersed in the whole experience when moving around on the grid. I've never played EotB, DM or anything like that but I still feel that this is the best way to represent a dungeon on the computer.
I really like the real time combat! When fighting more than one enemy I am put just at my limit for how fast I can move around, swap potions and stay on top of my characters attacks refreshing.
I love the puzzle distribution! I appreciate the mix between hidden secrets and secrets that stare right in your face, mocking you.
Really, really good models. The enemies look great. Great lighting, great wall textures.
Thank god for holding back on the elves, dwarves, gnomes, hobbits, etc. And thanks for making finding a warhammer a big accomplishment instead starting off with serviceable weapons and ending up with every character decked out in mithril. Fighting with cudgels and machetes and eating snail slices and roast maggots the first few levels makes this game stand out.

Cons/Gripes:
Only two secret buttons per tileset. This really should have been 4 or 5.
I'm on level 6 of the dungeon (out of 10 right?) and so far almost all of the monster types have been spoiled by the manual and official trailers! I still haven't seen the fire spirits so I wonder if almost all of the monsters will turn out to be in the manual.
I have 2 mages in my party and I just figured out that the spells

SpoilerShow

are all pretty much the same. There should be many more of these.

At first I thought it was cool that male/female was just portrait selection, but I wish they had different "ouch" noises. And why does my insectoid make human noises? They should have recorded a few more sound effects here IMO.

SpoilerShow

Throw a rock on a switch

-type puzzles are starting to get repetitive. I hope they don't do many more of these. Plus you always know when this is the right solution because they give you just what you need to solve it.
I can't drink potions in the hand slot! Or am I doing it wrong? Grenades work this way so why don't potions?
Ok, when you take a torch off the wall to put it in the hand on a character it should generate as much light when it is moving with the cursor as when it is held. It just looks stupid that the dungeon goes from lit to unlit to lit again everytime I pull a torch from the wall. I really think they should patch this.

Neutral/Unexpected:
Mapping isn't really necessary. I've only mapped twice so far,

SpoilerShow

trying to find the right pit to drop in "Time and Tides" to drop past the iron gate on the level below (it doesn't work, for the record) and finding the intersection of the two dragon statues

and only once was it needed (to solve an optional puzzle).
Brewing potions during combat to cycle through a limited number of flasks is very... intense.
I originally intended to save only at the blue crystals, but that became too hard for me on level 3 when the combats became very difficult.
Slower weapons seem better for players who aren't that great at combat because you can get comparable damage with fewer clicks, so more mental energy can be focused on dodging, casting, quaffing and speed brewing potions. For this reason if I were starting over I would have an axe fighter and a mace fighter instead of a sword fighter and mace fighter. I figured in a "classic" RPG swords would be more plentiful but this does not seem to be the case.

Overall the game is very, very immersive and compelling. I am hooked and can't wait to get to the bottom!

[Norpser]

P.S. I think I might be one of the few experiencing this but for the love of my sanity please either reduce the % chance to get poisoned or reduce how long it lasts from spiders. I have gone through the first area you find them 4 diffrent times now and only once have I not gotten poisoned on the first hit. I dont know if its a bug or not since my friends playing say they havent been poisoned more than once or twice.

Having the +50 to poison resist ( i think thats what it was) did absolutely nothing to help the poison lol. In fact, he was probably the fist one to be poisoned during the fights. It was annoying, especially the backtracking part, but Its all part of the experience I guess. Perhaps in the future it can be something to look at.

[Arkhan]

P.S. I think I might be one of the few experiencing this but for the love of my sanity please either reduce the % chance to get poisoned or reduce how long it lasts from spiders. I have gone through the first area you find them 4 diffrent times now and only once have I not gotten poisoned on the first hit. I dont know if its a bug or not since my friends playing say they havent been poisoned more than once or twice.

Having the +50 to poison resist ( i think thats what it was) did absolutely nothing to help the poison lol. In fact, he was probably the fist one to be poisoned during the fights. It was annoying, especially the backtracking part, but Its all part of the experience I guess. Perhaps in the future it can be something to look at.

I think it just reduces the damage taken by the poison, as opposed to stopping it from infecting you

[Radioman970]

Will anybody read this? lol

I'd like it to hurt when I bump into walls with my party. DM had that. I'd like to be able to drop a door on these crazy creatures they've populated this thing with!

Otherwise, I feel this game was priced much too low. Either that, or they already have Grimrock 2 and 3 in the can, and this one is kind of like a pricey demo for those "sequels".

See? Radioman ain't no stupid head. :p

Short answer: this game is a hell of a lot of fun. Already, several unexpected surprises. During one, I was saying "they didn't have THIS in Dungeon master!" lol I really LOVE this. Should be the next game I actually finish. And new content can't come out soon enough for me. And I'm only on level 2! I went with the default party and NORMAL difficulty. I have no doubt I'll play this through again on the hardest level with a different party.

[Dandy]

P.S. I think I might be one of the few experiencing this but for the love of my sanity please either reduce the % chance to get poisoned or reduce how long it lasts from spiders. I have gone through the first area you find them 4 diffrent times now and only once have I not gotten poisoned on the first hit. I dont know if its a bug or not since my friends playing say they havent been poisoned more than once or twice.

This.

This for me is when the game turned sour. I only had to see a spider from the corner of my eye and I was poisoned, it got very tedious, and I lost interest..

[stubbie]

This for me is when the game turned sour. I only had to see a spider from the corner of my eye and I was poisoned, it got very tedious, and I lost interest..

I was worried about being poisoned at first but now I don't mind as much.
It probably would have been a game breaker for me too if anti venom potions were the only way to cure it.
But the effect only lasts a couple of minutes and it is easy to counter the hp drain by resting till the effect wears off.
If any party members die from it I just make my way back to the resurrection crystal.
As I'm in no hurry to finish the game it isn't a big deal for me.

Though I do understand your frustration Dandy.

[lowzei]

Spoilers ahead

The first level didn't get me this excited and i still don't like the snails (i also don't like their materials) but i really like the herders and level 3 was great fun then. I liked the level design as well as the spiders there, those were creepy and they got me a few times. One torch placing riddle on that floor didn't make sense to me and i only solved it accidently. It's impossible to pass the beam field passage with framerate issues. I had quite some problems with the green slime monsters, took me some resources (food through sleeping) to pass this secret area but i'm fine with that if they are supposed to be this hard or i missed a trick. The combats feel fine too, although sometimes monsters get stuck in a weird way. You can sense quite some quality and thoughts between the lines in this game. I miss that you don't need to drink as well. Inventory management can be cumbersome, especially when dealing with potions and chests. ...

I started with a rogue and trained him in fighting withouth weapons which can be good if he does a critical hit. A minotaur fighter which is less impressive than i thought, as he also often misses and two mages in the second row (fire and ice). After some time i only found new scrolls for earth and therefore i experimented on my own and found the ice bolt, or whatever it is called, which i uqsed a lot. I hope to find the fireball soon, from my tryouts i suspect that it's a three rune combination.

Anyway the music grew on me and i liked it a lot more than when i heard it for the first time. I sometimes miss some bard's music&magic. The atmosphere is good (sfx and the earthquakes) and i enjoyed the game. In some areas the geometry of the walls was too simple. A dungeon crawler like this really could benefit from hardware tessealation. It's strange fun looking for special bricks in the walls after so many years again. The game is definately worth its money.

Looking forward to the OS X port, hopefully a performance optimised version as well.

Btw. whilst doing a few tests before starting with my party i saw that by clicking on the map an entry gets made even if you don't enter any text.

[Radioman970]

Are you guys using tactics to avoid the spiders and poisonous creatures? Try side stepping...

I'm playing on normal and have yet to be poisoned at all, even after a far amount of knock down drag out (not to mention icky as HELL) spider and whatever that poison lobbing mushroom thing is fights.

It's all part of the challenge. Not to dis, but this game is like DM and the like, and it's about how you advance and not the number of creatures you take down. At least it seems that way to me. Find ways to get around these things and maybe close them behind you or something.