Legend of Grimrock II

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So I got Legend of Grimrock II as well a while back and been playing it ever since, as time allows with kids and the job.

I played the original, and liked that one a lot, and the sequel did not disappoint. It takes many of the good points of the old game, and improves on them. The basics are the same, grid-based combat, heavily reliant on dancing around opponents, to hit without getting hit too much. Still four guys (or gals, of course), which you control with the keyboard, using the mouse to click on the weapon icons to attack, or to rummage through their inventory to get some healing done.

The skills are quite different, though. Rather than having a different set of skills available depending on the class you choose, everyone gets access to all the skills. The differentiation of the classes now comes more from some bonuses that different classes get, and the distribution of health and energy (mana) at level up. The biggest improvement here (imo), is that you no longer have to dump ~50 skill points into one tree to max it out. Instead, you need only 5 skill points to max out a tree, though this is offset by getting only a single skill point at level up, rather than 4. While this may not sounds like much of an improvement, it means that you can actually max out several skill trees, making the characters more versatile, and more varied to play, whereas in the previous game you could only max out one tree and have some small change left for anything else. If you wanted to wear armour without penalties, you could forget about maxing out your main melee / damage skill.

The gameworld is also much improved, in my opinion. No longer crawling a single dungeon, you now have a whole island to explore, with wide, open areas for a change of pace. The rope to avoid fall damage when going down a pit is also much appreciated, especially now that they introduced injuries, which you have a high chance of getting when falling down a pit. The combat is still quite a decent mix of player skill and PC progression, and the puzzles are mostly neither too easy nor too difficult. A little thinking is required for most puzzles, but it's rare to get stumped by a puzzle. Some of them are pretty obnoxious, though.

My party was pretty powerful, I think.

• A barbarian minotaur for all the melee damage. All strength all the time, with the high base strength of the minotaur and getting more strength with each level up for being a barbarian. Using heavy weapons, of course. He had 50+ strength by the end of the game, and could hit like a truck. I've seen him hit for 840 hp (crit with a fire weapon on a fire weak creature, but still).
• A lizardman as alchemist for the potions. The alchemist has a special ability that multiplies the herbs / ingredients for the potions. Very powerful, especially considering that now you can make potions that increases stats as well. Damage-wise only so-so, but quite decent with a bow and arrow. There is a perk in the missile skill tree that allows you to ignore 20 pts of armour, which is pretty decent against enemies with high protection values.
• An insectoid battle mage, that benefits from the higher base willpower for more energy for spells. In retrospect probably should have gone with a normal mage, as he ended up not wearing armour and didn't really do anything but fling spells.
• And a farmer ratling. The farmer class is a bit of a joke class, they don't get any skill points at character creation, they get pretty low hp and energy, and, most importantly, they don't gain experience from combat. Instead, they get experience from eating food. Sounds pretty iffy, but this guy was lvl 7 when the rest was lvl 3, he reached lvl 12 or so when the rest was still at lvl 7. A human farmer would have gained xp even faster (they have a base trait for their race, and you can select another trait so that they get 20% extra xp), but the ratlings can select a trait called mutation, which gives them a boost to a random stat at every level up. And he was able to reach lvl 20, which is designed so that normally people will not reach it during normal gameplay (the rest only reached lvl 16, which is a difference of around 250k xp vs 1 mln xp), so the xp boost for a human would have been not overly useful (xp progression goes up very steeply above lvl 19). He used light weapons, favouring dex rather than strength.

I've finished the game now, getting both endings, though it pains me that I have only 76 out of 77 secrets. And I have no clue where is the one that I missed. I even made notations about where I found the secrets (most of them, anyway).

Mostly, I enjoyed the game a lot. There is some show (but don't tell) to illustrate some background for the story, which lets you figure it out for yourself, much like the puzzles. Most of the dungeons are short and interesting enough to not get tedious, and there is a definite feel of progression as your characters get stronger (though this is as much through the gear as the level ups, but that is par-for-the-course for most RPGs, anyway).

It felt a bit disappointing that there were not that many dex-based light weapons, and not that much of a progression in them, either, though I suppose the same could be said for the missile weapons. By contrast, the heavy weapons are many, and pretty much all of the epic item weapons are heavy weapons.

Like Snook, I was very impressed with the Barren Desert. It feels truly epic, something that I'll not forget lightly. And cleverly done, too, like how the location you are teleported to is at a slightly elevation compared to the middle of the almost completely open map. When you arrive, you just stare and look for a moment, looking at the hordes of enemies in a slightly undulating and completely open map. And then dancing your way through it, taking out groups here and there, then running again for safety as the big guys home in on you. I don't know if they timed it that way, but it starts during the day, and by the end it was evening, it struck me as perhaps designed that way, as it happened to me and in a LP of the game that I watched in almost the exact same way. A long day and a job well done. For both the player and the designer, I'd say