Grimrock

Preface, I am a huge fan of Legend of Grimrock and will most likely do all the achievements of Grimrock 2 as I did with the first one. It is still a fun game and a good addition to an old school type of game.

That being said I see a few problems with the game. I played Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back back in the day and I see some of the same flaws with Grimrock 2 that I did with Chaos Strikes Back.

Since the game is non-linear, if you miss something important, you may have to go through an annoying amount of terrain and checking to see what you missed. This was the case on my first playthrough, where I failed at lvl 6 characters which ran out of food before I detected a plate which I was supposed to throw something onto to go forward in the game. My latest attempt consists of lvl 12 characters which are almost out of food and I have no idea how to progress.

The second problem I've seen is overly complicated puzzles. Some of which are related to very obscure notes and others are related to notes not related to anything close to where they are picked up. This reminds me of Chaos Strikes Back where you had to be holding some obscure item to progress past a certain point. Apparently Chaos Strikes Back added a feature where the game would give you hints if you loaded a certain disk, with GrimRock 2 players can use the internet for this. Both of which are a poor excuse for bad game design. The point of games should be fun, not endlessly searching for random missing things or trying a bunch of combinations to figure out insanely complicated puzzles.

In short, I think the basic structure of the dungeon in Legend of Grimrock 2 suffers from a bit of navel gazing and doesn't focus on the gamer that they should be focusing on.

From what I've seen it's still a good game, but I make no apologies for my observations.

This may sound crazy, but did you know that you can have fun with a videogame without actually completing it?

GabulaX wrote:This may sound crazy, but did you know that you can have fun with a videogame without actually completing it?

AMEN!

So the game holding your hands and giving you no challenge at all would be a better game design?

1) When out of food go hunting or fishing. There is plenty of respawning stuff on the island.
2) Hard puzzles or non-linear game structure are not bad game design.

Dr.Disaster wrote:non-linear game structure are not bad game design.

That is true, but I think here the 'non-linear' part hurts the game. For the first time player, it does make the game seem huge. Especially when they split puzzles up, they force a first time player to go to a different areas, to find out how to solve a puzzle in the first area. Good examples of this is going to the Cemetary to figure out the 'Silent One' puzzle, and going to the Archieves to figure out how to get INTO the Cemetary, having to explore ANOTHER puzzle, to figure out how to unlock the Archieves. For a first time player, that game isn't very 'non linear'.

You get to Sleet Island and your told 'Here are 4 areas, you can explore them in any order!.... But the Ruins will be too hard and big for unprepared first time players, the Pyremid you need to an item in the Bog and is very very hard for new players, the Bog is very very short, and if you haven't explored going into water yet and notice a later you miss out on part of the zone and if you don't explore EVERY inch, you'll miss the actual 'dungeon' that's hidden. And to get into the Cemetary, you have to complete or do most of the Ruins. 4 areas to explore, but to even unlock 2 you have to go to the other 2 first. So very 'non-linear'.

Now, if you have beaten the game, you know all the tricks and the solution to all the puzzles, the game IS non-linear, as you don't need to go to other places for hints, you already know the answer to advance forward. But at that point, what IS the point of the Non-Linear style? You already know how to do everything, so already know all the shortcuts, where everything is, and how to get to them.

And do you have done fisching?

Dr.Disaster wrote:1) When out of food go hunting or fishing. There is plenty of respawning stuff on the island.
2) Hard puzzles or non-linear game structure are not bad game design.

1) Out of food when you can't complete the game without it is annoying. I don't want to spend my time farming things. It is much more fun playing the game.

2) Hard puzzles are fine. Illogical puzzles that require either looking it up through the internet or randomly trying combinations till it works are bad. Also, I explained why the non-linear game structure is bad in this case.

Jirodyne wrote:

Dr.Disaster wrote:non-linear game structure are not bad game design.

That is true, but I think here the 'non-linear' part hurts the game. For the first time player, it does make the game seem huge. Especially when they split puzzles up, they force a first time player to go to a different areas, to find out how to solve a puzzle in the first area. Good examples of this is going to the Cemetary to figure out the 'Silent One' puzzle, and going to the Archieves to figure out how to get INTO the Cemetary, having to explore ANOTHER puzzle, to figure out how to unlock the Archieves. For a first time player, that game isn't very 'non linear'.

You get to Sleet Island and your told 'Here are 4 areas, you can explore them in any order!.... But the Ruins will be too hard and big for unprepared first time players, the Pyremid you need to an item in the Bog and is very very hard for new players, the Bog is very very short, and if you haven't explored going into water yet and notice a later you miss out on part of the zone and if you don't explore EVERY inch, you'll miss the actual 'dungeon' that's hidden. And to get into the Cemetary, you have to complete or do most of the Ruins. 4 areas to explore, but to even unlock 2 you have to go to the other 2 first. So very 'non-linear'.

Now, if you have beaten the game, you know all the tricks and the solution to all the puzzles, the game IS non-linear, as you don't need to go to other places for hints, you already know the answer to advance forward. But at that point, what IS the point of the Non-Linear style? You already know how to do everything, so already know all the shortcuts, where everything is, and how to get to them.

Thanks for the feedback, seems like everyone is a fanboy that will defend the game to the death without reading.

first,i am not yet through the game but definatly deep in. And I play on normal.

to 1: I am not out of food. Basically I have to create a cache to store exessive food because of wheight issues
to 2: every puzzle I come by now (shipwreck, twigroot, forgotten river, sleet island, bog) I could solve without try and error(one I am missing because I yet do not now how to cast lightning bolt)