Finished insane ironman on hard, my 2 cents about the modes

[Ante]

First of all, I must thank Almost Human for making a great game once again with so much more of everything compared to the predecessor! As an EoB I and II fan I was surprised how much this gametype can still provide with creative design. I enjoyed the game from beginning to the end, and even though I played this on every mode on and with hard difficulty, there was ultimately only one place that had me banging my head on the wall for a few hours. But to the point - About the modes affecting gameplay, with pros and cons:

Hard difficulty:
Well, since I felt first game was not too difficult AND having beaten first two Beholder games I had no choice but to choose hard. Any step easier would have made the game just rediculously easy (I presume this affected only monster damage and HP)
+ With hard mode every monster was a threat and two monsters in a small room could mean a party wipe with single badly planned sidestep. I like when games have battles with tension and high stakes
+ The traps were very very deadly, and it is how it should be. Why would someone build a dungeon with traps that you can just run over? There was though one trap that was way too deadly and made me lift my hands in the air with a situation that nothing could be done. I think I managed to survive > 90% of all those veeery bad situations, but they all made me use loads of bottles, items, etc. Adrenaline rush combined with panic is actually a great feeling!
- I think monsters scaled bit strangely towards the end. My party was ultra deadly, but so were the monsters. Basically it meant no-one wanted to get hit and I was back to sidestep dancing familiar from all games of this type. Dunno know can there be any solution for this
- Because of deadliness and sidestepping it meant most of the time that I didn't have time to use special attacks or anything too fancy. They took way long time to activate and longer cooldown just killed my barbarians DPS. So I just danced with basic attacks and some spells through the endgame
- And because of monsters having loads of HP, I decided to discard firearms in the very beginning. Depleting ammo? No thanks. Difficulty affected my party gear choices pretty much.
- Wizard run out of energy all the time, always needed gazillion spells to kill anything

Oldschool (no-map):
Dunno about this one, didn't affect too much anything. Most secrets I found anyway without staring at map or anything.

SpoilerShow

Had to calculate meteorite position manually by running through dungeons

And the most game affecting combination:

Ironman + Single use crystals:
Oh yes, it made everything so much meaningful, especially with the hard difficulty. I wouldn't recommend these modes unless you are experienced enough and comfortable with old arcadestyle gaming that sometimes you just need to play the 5 levels again if you die. I have played some amounts of Path of Exile with hardcore and onslaught so I knew what amount of frustration this could mean, but at least I wont have to start everything again if I die. Actually this was very similar feeling as playing through Dark Souls.
+ "Should I press this button? Hmm, maybe I'll try to find the next crystal first" I had to actually ponder my decisions, which means the world to me in games, not just save and press the button to see what happens. Immersion++
+ Horror from realizing that I'm running out of supplies (food and ingredients) in the most hostile place in the game with no savepoint in sight. Once I had to play over two hours before finding the next savepoint. Amazing feelings for just finding food, healing supplies or total relief for finding the next savepoint.
- I could still try places out near the savepoints. I would have liked something like in Dark Souls that you lose at least something for loading from crystals for the millionth time. I could just try a bossfight for so many times that no-one died and had to use as little amount of bottles as possible
- Some places were just rediculous to try out with this. The one trap that made me play over an hour of very frustrating fights and traps by just killing my party with no possible route to safety.
- I don't think the crystal singleuse should have affected saving. Healing part consumability is totally fine, but had to run once or twice across the whole island to just save the game in a place where I left a crystal unused
- This combination is not for everyone. Frustration is real.


Uh, that was all about the modes, other things:

My party:
Human alchemist - must have, huge amount of spawned ingredients and bottles saved everyone. Did a little amount of DPS and had high prot. Tanked in front row
Minotaur barbarian - MUST have, killed basically 75% of enemies alone, usually dealing more damage in battles than everyone else together. Fast paced sidestepping also meant that usually only one partymember got to hit enemies with anything, so this guy whacked everyone.
Lizardman rogue - only character that had only a little use thorough the game, built him very badly and only could backstab some enemies in big battles. Luckily you can manage the game with one flawed character as the three others are doing so much already that you won't even notice this guy doing nothing.

SpoilerShow

Was effective killing elementals with Ethereal dagger though

Human wizard - as casters are in MOBAs, she killed everything in the beginning, and killed big groups as spells hit everyone, but did all the time less and less towards the end. Drank 95% of my energy potions.

Why did I play this through with everything on?
Well, EoB's and LoG 1 were not replayable so I knew I would be playing this game only once through - so why not play with everything on then? These games are all about the secrets, puzzles and going to unexplored places, so if you know anything at all beforehand, the game gets easier than it is. That's why probably people would play with insane ironman hard playthrough much later, but for me it wouldn't have had the same meaning. I wanted to face difficulties and go for the real feeling. And I did. And I'm very happy for it! Call me a masochist if you want

And short summary about my playthrough, HIGH spoilers!

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Early game, easy. Went to sewers after bog ( I managed to fail to open the serpent doors, shot the statues, not the door ), then found wargs on beach, ran back to cemetery. Died so many times in there, but got out with Bane in hand. Went back through sewers, cleared mines too. THEN went to pyramid, it was so easy at this point... then castle, then bossfight, that was toooooo easy. There was way too much room on the roof so I could just run a circle and kill stuff one by one. And then the first and only time of spoiling myself with a walkthrough - where the heck is the fifth shrine. I knew the spell and possible location. Went through whole shrine of gluttony and got nothing. If I understood right, there was somekind of hint about the right location for the spell, but I had missed it. So after fifth ball, death of Island master. That was the real fight, and I was happy. The dragon was too easy, but a wizard in a tight dungeon? Oh yes, had to use 5 respotions and 2 res crystals. Only one question remains? What the heck is the relic achievement? I have found zero hints about anything related to it in the game...

I'll be happy to answer any questions.
For me, LoG II goes to my top 10 games of all time.

[antti]

This was on your first playthrough? Wow, I'm seriously impressed. I'm not sure if even I would be able to complete the game with these options on

And thanks for your insight into the different game modes, too!

[Ante]

Thank you very much!

My friends said that I'm totally nuts for playing my first playthrough with everything on, and I was very afraid that at some point I just would have to give up for it being too difficult - and it came close once. I've had my share of older, non-forgiving games, so I have enough understanding of importance of patience and calculating your decisions, and in this type of games you really want to find all secrets and items, because that will get you through the game.

In the end, even though all modes with hard sounds overkill, it was quite balanced. It was quite hard at some point, yet it didn't get too easy either.
Dunno, stubbornness is a finnish virtue (or flaw?)

[petri]

Holy cow, I'm impressed! Like Antti, I don't think I'm able to finish the game myself with Insane Ironman mode on Hard.

Congratulations!

[Luj1]

just wow wow wow

[Balcombe]

[quote]- I could still try places out near the savepoints. I would have liked something like in Dark Souls that you lose at least something for loading from crystals for the millionth time. I could just try a bossfight for so many times that no-one died and had to use as little amount of bottles as possible

I know - the Souls series has nearly ruined gaming for me as well. Unless there are steep risks to go along with the rewards, most gaming just feels too simple and easy nowadays. That being said, yes, you are a masochist. No way I could play this game like this. I swear, I OCD check every tile as is, I'd go crazy doing it more than once

Ahem, anyway, yes, great game though. Love Grimrock 1 and 2 so far - love the updated twists on heaps of nostalgia!

edit - stuff and junk

[sapientCrow]

Congratulations indeed!!

Very impressive and moreso because of the time frame you accomplished this within.

I am planning to run the game through on that mode. I always play old school mode regardless and am playing it hard now and working my way up.
I want to master the layout and timing and plan before I do it. That is just my style. first play is fun exploration and the rest is mastery.

So did you just move from crystal to crystal and then reload to enact your planned course after seeing where to go and what to pick up?

Or did you literally just quasi random it and save at each crystal and hope by the next crystal you would be good?

again major kudos for a well played challenge!

[Ante]

Congratulations indeed!!

Very impressive and moreso because of the time frame you accomplished this within.

I am planning to run the game through on that mode. I always play old school mode regardless and am playing it hard now and working my way up.
I want to master the layout and timing and plan before I do it. That is just my style. first play is fun exploration and the rest is mastery.

So did you just move from crystal to crystal and then reload to enact your planned course after seeing where to go and what to pick up?

Or did you literally just quasi random it and save at each crystal and hope by the next crystal you would be good?

again major kudos for a well played challenge!

I had bit of a free weekend so most of the playthrough happened on sat-sun. Ended up having ~22 hours of gametime which includes one hour of gametime in the beginning of rerolling party after realizing it didn't work at all, and 1-2 hours of AFK. Yes, I just went forward through by just exploring and saving always after around 1 hour of gametime, didn't plan too much, and only reloaded when in dire situation overall. That's why always seeing a crystal was a major relief. In the beginning I wasted some very important crossroadcrystals, that could have helped me later in the game very much.

There was only one place where I had major problems with survival:

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In cemetery I ran out of food AND healing supplies, nowhere to get more of them (though later on my friend pointed that the turtles respawn, dunh). Then when I got in the crypt / catacomb I immediately saved the game when seeing the crystal ending up having a save with 4 skeletons ready to whack my skull open next to me. Well, couple of bombs and spells later I managed to survive that with just mediocre damage. From that on it was painful and I had to kill those skeletons every time I tried something over again. Went first to check all areas, then just saveloaded many times to perfect out the bossfight before second area of catacombs. I ended up lightningbombing the guy fast. Second area, yet no food. I wonder why graveyards don't have fridges... Survived that place pretty decently, had to load couple of times, and the bossfight was quite similar, though this time he died before even summoning anyone. From then on, at bastillion and pyramid, I was drowning in food and supplies, and with my mino having Edge, it was much easier.

[sophismata]

I also started out Hard/Insane/Ironman, and while I enjoyed the challenge I was rapidly stonewalled by character build issues. There is not enough ammunition for firearms, and no warning about item and spell prerequisites. My Battlemage was too spread out (I'd opted for a few points in many skills, not realising it'd lock me out of equipment and spells), and my Alchemist did not have the ammunition to maintain reliable damage.

I'm about to remake it with a more informed party, but the skill requirements on spells/items was kind of frustrating. Skills are useful enough without the forced restrictions. In general I do not think enough information is supplied during character creation, and some of the information provided is incorrect (I regret giving the Battlemage willpower when he would have been better served with concentration, which is ALSO a prereq for staves and orbs).

[st3rv1s]

Would love to see a more detailed party build from you.