Legend of Grimrock II

My first thought was. I'm getting in a high school girl slap fight with these things.

I really like that they have added boss/unique mobs. An obvious but surprisingly fun addition

This game is gorgeous.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

This game is gorgeous.

agreed! I had forgotten that if you hold the right mouse button you can freelook all around. I was annoyed that I couldn't look up at the sky until my brain reminded me.

It's amazing how nice to look at the game is yet it was such a small download

Good grief, the Dev's have outdone themselves with some right a***ole-ish bad guys 0_0

The toads...BEWARE THE TOADS!

Also something else I'll not mention. Wouldn't want to ruin the moment.

Is this a lot harder than the previous game or is it just that I'm currently having to play with a wildly inaccurate roller ball mouse?

Combat certainly feels a lot tougher. Part of which I think is due to them trying to vary up how things attack to try to mitigate the whole sidestep dance (some flip 180 on the spot, others attack to the side, or leap forwards two squares at the time. Somebody thought giving ratmen firearms was a good idea. Others (like the swarms of normal-sized rats or the TOADS, the terrible, TERRIBLE, TOADS) have special attacks that can take you unawares.

I'm kneedeep in this one right now and enjoying every second of it. I really need more games in this genre cus man did I miss it.

That said, holy crap the %^%$ing toads. I ran away with my tail between my legs to come back when a bit stronger.

I may simply not be remembering the first one correctly but this one seems to encourage that you move a lot during the battles. It seems like the forst one allowed you to go more toe to toe with the bad guys. Of course it might just be that my guys have crap for armor so far.

i'm having the same experience. One thing I'm slightly disappointed in is that they've kept the mechanic requiring you to invest points in the armor skill in order to be able to wear light or greater armor without taking evasion penalties. The evasion penalty might be meaningless when your evasion is already low anyway, but it sticks in my craw enough that i've just been letting my barbarian fighter wear scraps rather than saddle him with stacks of evasion penalties.

Steam currently has this with a 10% discount. $21. Well worth it.

I hope that isn't an indicator of how well it's selling.

Is it worth getting number 1 first, which I haven't played at all ?

davet010 wrote:

Is it worth getting number 1 first, which I haven't played at all ?

The first one is well worth playing on it's own, but it's not necessary for jumping into the second which is a completely disconnected story (there's minimal actual story in both anyway)*. The main difference are in some of the mechanics which have been subtly changed between the two of them but really you could play them in either order.

*Unless there's some plot twists later on in the game. So far it seems mostly unconnected save for the fact you have the option of importing your LoG1 characters off the bat.

It seems like the forst one allowed you to go more toe to toe with the bad guys.

My experience was that this was a very bad idea. I'm not sure if I was just low skill or what, but it seemed like hacking toe-to-toe was almost never a good idea.

I'm about 30 minutes in, and they've definitely made keyboard dancing at least somewhat harder. The little lizard guys, just after the turtles, have an interesting pattern.

edit: and wow, it's so beautiful. You wouldn't think a 2D isometric game could look that good.

JC wrote:

Is it really 2d isometric though or is it really 3d with just a locked view? The game gives my video card a hell of a workout. doesn't seem to use SLI, but my one gpu is definitely getting a workout as the temps are in the 70s. I wouldn't expect so much use out of a "2d" game.

It's a proper 3D world, just that all movement is set to a grid. At any time you can hold down the right mouse button and look around at any angle. The 'dungeons' are more complex in layout this time around as well since you have multiple 'depths' in certain areas (you can drop into a river or gully and swim around, for example). No real load times either once your in the game.

Is it really 2d isometric though or is it really 3d with just a locked view? The game gives my video card a hell of a workout. doesn't seem to use SLI, but my one gpu is definitely getting a workout as the temps are in the 70s. I wouldn't expect so much use out of a "2d" game.

Edit- Duh. I realized this could be due to high FPS but I've got vsync on

JC wrote:

Is it really 2d isometric though or is it really 3d with just a locked view? The game gives my video card a hell of a workout. doesn't seem to use SLI, but my one gpu is definitely getting a workout as the temps are in the 70s. I wouldn't expect so much use out of a "2d" game.

Edit- Duh. I realized this could be due to high FPS but I've got vsync on

Sounds like my laptop would struggle with it then.

davet010 wrote:
JC wrote:

Is it really 2d isometric though or is it really 3d with just a locked view? The game gives my video card a hell of a workout. doesn't seem to use SLI, but my one gpu is definitely getting a workout as the temps are in the 70s. I wouldn't expect so much use out of a "2d" game.

Edit- Duh. I realized this could be due to high FPS but I've got vsync on

Sounds like my laptop would struggle with it then.

I think it would be fine. It may be fully 3D, but it doesn't "behave" like a full 3d game. I'd point to some weird utilization quirk before I claimed this thing was truly taxing.

Recommended specs:

OS: Windows 7
Processor: Quad Core 2.66 Ghz Intel or 3.2 GHz AMD
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Geforce GTX 660 Ti or AMD Radeon 6850 or better (1GB graphics memory or more. Shader Model 3.0 needs to be supported). Minimum supported resolutions 1280×720 and 1024×768.
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 2 GB available space

Geforce GTX 660 Ti

A 660 is (still) a good desktop card; you'd need to have a really powerful laptop to match it. I'd consider that strong evidence that it's constrained 3D, not isometric.

Your typical laptop with just Intel graphics might have real trouble with this one.

One tip I'd really recommend - make sure to make copious notes on the map whenever you find something you need to refer to later. The auto-map is handy but the overall play area is HUGE and it doesn't highlight points of interest - it's REAL easy to forget where an unopened gold lock or unsolved puzzle lives!

I have been doing exactly that since I've been coming across a lot of locked chests I don't have lockpicks for.

I was pretty excited to discover that one of the pre-made portraits looks a lot like a 90's-era David Spade. I may have to make a custom portrait "Tommy Boy" party complete with Spade, Farley, Hopper (huh! That was actually Brian Dennehy, not Dennis Hopper - who knew!?), and Ackroyd.

Found some rat men.

Don't like them.

Quick little bastards aren't they.

Wow, giant toads really do suck, don't they?

Malor wrote:

Wow, giant toads really do suck, don't they?

Literally AND figuratively!

By the way, for those reading along at home, I'm definitely having fun. It's freaking gigantic, and I don't know if the later stuff will get unreasonably hard, but so far, the challenge level has been pretty good. They're definitely mixing stuff up, in that you can't just do the hit-and-sidestep tactics from Grimrock 1 (which is, pretty much, the major tactic of the Dungeon Master genre); many creatures have ways of making that difficult or impossible. With some of them, it's actually better to stand there toe to toe.

Malor wrote:

By the way, for those reading along at home, I'm definitely having fun. It's freaking gigantic, and I don't know if the later stuff will get unreasonably hard, but so far, the challenge level has been pretty good. They're definitely mixing stuff up, in that you can't just do the hit-and-sidestep tactics from Grimrock 1 (which is, pretty much, the major tactic of the Dungeon Master genre); many creatures have ways of making that difficult or impossible. With some of them, it's actually better to stand there toe to toe.

All good points.

If you want to estimate how big the game is you can check the play stats to see how many secrets, levels and what not you've found/visited. I kind of wish I hadn't looked now though. WRT the challenge I've found the difficulty curve is very nicely pitched, anytime I've found somewhere was too hard there is usually some other level/region you can go off and try instead. That said I've found some of the later boss mobs to be a bit imba and that's resulted in my using fairly cheap tactics, which has felt unsatisfying.

edit: the toads are ok once you work out where to step when they jump

This is also a very valid option