Legend of Grimrock resonates with powerful nostalgic vibes for gamers of my generation, and I don’t regret my time with it one bit. Its lazy monster design encourages the worst kind of tedious, mechanically abusive player behavior, though, which is a grave offense in the world of party-based RPGs. I love it for respecting my brain as a puzzle-solver even as I rage at its failure to recreate the kind of tactical combat that made me fall in love with PC RPGs in the first place. Which side of that scale you lean toward should tell you whether this is going to be a good investment of your $15.
Sounds like the puzzle aspect and dungeon design was great, but the monster design and combat system is lacking that relies more upon exploiting AI then strategy... Which is pretty unfortunate... Any possibility of patches or mods that would improve how combat is handled?
Last edited by Soulmancer on Wed Apr 04, 2012 8:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Stay cool. Depends on what you use to compare the combat mechanics too. And there were non-grid-based RPGs out (like gothic3) who had absolutely stupid combat. Even in games like Oblivion or Skyrim you can climb up cliffs and stuff and shoot monsters down with ease.
Just look at the gameplay videos and trailers. If u combine the monsters (they have skills like charge and stuff) with traps and the narrow space, then i am sure u ll have alot of trouble.
And least but not last some people think combat is stupid if u can dance around monsters to take em out. Hey, this might actually be more difficult (especially when more monsters are around) than blocking or other things they suggest. So relax! I bet combat will be great. And if its too easy to abuse, play it on hard...i am SURE we will have alot of trouble.
i can only say i enjoyed DM combat more than alot of stupid modern rpg combat types who got praised much.
Its lazy monster design encourages the worst kind of tedious, mechanically abusive player behavior, though, which is a grave offense in the world of party-based RPGs.
but then he says:
...as I rage at its failure to recreate the kind of tactical combat that made me fall in love with PC RPGs in the first place.
How can he hate the mechanic he has been grown to love in the first place? strange ...
What's the problem really? To me it just seems that the reviewer didn't like the combat in LoG. It's perfectly ok really. I would be more worried if all reviewers would be complaining about it but so far this has been the only review that critiques the combat in a major way.
juho wrote:He scored it 7.25/10 and so far that's the lowest score. I'm not complaining a bit. With this sort of niche game, the scores could be a lot worse.
Heck, Alan Wake got lots of worse scores.
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Wu Tse wrote:I don't understand the argument here.
The author says:
Its lazy monster design encourages the worst kind of tedious, mechanically abusive player behavior, though, which is a grave offense in the world of party-based RPGs.
but then he says:
...as I rage at its failure to recreate the kind of tactical combat that made me fall in love with PC RPGs in the first place.
How can he hate the mechanic he has been grown to love in the first place? strange ...
Wu Tse
Not all old school RPGs had a combat system like this. In fact I would say turn based was probably more popular.
Wu Tse
To me it just seems that the reviewer didn't like the combat in LoG. It's perfectly ok really. I would be more worried if all reviewers would be complaining about it but so far this has been the only review that critiques the combat in a major way.
