On to level 4. And f*ck those spiders.
Came here to say exactly this. Made it to floor 3 and rounded a corner right into a spider. Nearly gave myself a heart attack.
And the Credits have rolled.
I'm not quite sure what it was but towards the final couple of levels (once I was past that very annoying bit where I was getting eaten a little too easily!) the game clicked for me, and I quite enjoyed it through to the end.
Yes, some of the design was a little limited in places (do all secret buttons look the same?!?) and the controls did take some getting used to, but I got there in the end. Some of the builds also seemed a little sub-optimal, with the weapons not really being explained too good. I also completely missed that collecting the skulls for your minotaur character is also quite important.
I quite liked the little story beats and the game didn't take itself overly seriously, which I think was to it's benefit.
I would possibly play through this again with a different approach (different character builds for example) but not for a while I suspect.
I am looking at Grimrock 2 which I picked up as part of the bundle when I got the game. Might be one for another vote in the future!
I'm in. Drowning out my post-football depression with some CRPG action.
I've never been big into blobbers, but I apparently did play 10 hours of Grimrock back in 2015. I vaguely remember it, which is slightly disturbing, because it was only 2015 but it feels like I'm trying to remember the distant past.
Made it to floor 3 and just ran into the aforementioned spider. Stomped that bug. Oh you think your quick little scuttle is fast enough to throw off my ring-around-the-rosie skills? I play online shooters with teenagers still, I can WASD circles around you, bug. I just need my 2x2 squares.
Decently fun so far. Still can't believe you all picked this over Kenshi. 
Made my way down to level 9.
I'm using the default party, with my builds focused like:
Human Fighter: Swords, Armor, a little Athletics
Minotaur Fighter: Unarmed, Armor
Human Rogue: Missile Weapons, Dodge
Human Mage: Fire Magic, Spellcraft, Ice Magic
Expect I'll be finishing it this week. Then I can get started on my club backlog.
Kenshi's on sale again right now, just to get everyone prepared for next time.
I just bought Kenshi for Q2.
Aaaaand.... DONE.
Overall opinion... meh.
I really did not love the combat. The mechanics seemed to be built around exploiting the AI when you could drag them into a 2x2 grid area. You could not effectively face-tank enemies, which is fine, but there were precious few tools to deal with them other than kiting them into an open space where you could do the you-can’t-touch-me circle dance.
Engaging multiple enemies was basically a no-go. You have no real crowd control tools, and any enemy from the side would eliminate your squishy back-liner in a hurry. Encounters with multiple enemies was typically an effort of trying to kite them one at a time into your 2x2 death circle area. When you couldn’t do that, it was an effort in trying to eliminate the squishiest enemies in a hurry so that you could do the 1-on-1 death dance with the biggest threat. Whether or not this was successful often came down to luck in terms of the AI behavior.
I hated how tanky some enemies were. Too many combat encounters gave up their novelty long before the fight actually ended. There was often a feeling of, "OK, well, I’ve got to hit this thing 20 more times just like this before I get to move on". Becoming more powerful thus mostly felt like it was removing tedium from battles.
To that end, doing anything other than picking one combat ability per character and spending most of your points in it seems like the Wrong Move (tm). I put just enough points into Armor for my front-liners to wear Heavy Armor without penalty, and in Dodge for my rogue to wear Light Armor without penalty, and the rest went into their chosen combat skill. Splitting points between multiple combat abilities would very significantly reduced my ability to deal damage in the late game. Likewise, with my mage, I focused on two spell types, leaving the other two types completely untouched.
I didn't mind the click-the-rune-sequence spellcasting. What I didn't like is that, even if my mage was holding two separate spellcasting "weapons", I couldn't have two separate spells queued up.
Enchanted arrows being one-use ammo (before reverting back to non-enchanted arrows), paired with the hassle of re-enchanting them, made their use tedious. I basically didn't bother.
The few blobbers I’ve played before did not have this kind of movement-based combat. Instead, encountering an enemy triggered an instanced combat sequence, and I would have greatly preferred that here.
Grimrock was far more interesting as a puzzle game, and trying to find and solve everything on a floor was The Game in my mind. That was the fun part, and I wish I had been more thorough on earlier floors.
I can see why I bounced off the game back in 2015. I also can see what parts got me to spend 10 hours with it before I bounced. I appreciate that I’ve now finished the game and seen everything that it had to show.
Play Grimrock 2? Eh, not unless combat was significantly overhauled.
My main takeaway from my 17 hours in the game was:
You non-Kenshi voters picked bad and you should feel bad!
Don't make that face. You knew what this was going to be before you clicked "show".
You could not effectively face-tank enemies, which is fine, but there were precious few tools to deal with them other than kiting them into an open space where you could do the you-can’t-touch-me circle dance.
That's not quite true. It's not something they tutorialize, but your attacks can interrupt enemy attacks. It's always safer and more efficient to do the 2x2 dance, and trying to do it with an ogre is a recipe for tears, but you can face off with say a crab and walk away having taken minimal damage.
*Legion* wrote:You could not effectively face-tank enemies, which is fine, but there were precious few tools to deal with them other than kiting them into an open space where you could do the you-can’t-touch-me circle dance.
That's not quite true. It's not something they tutorialize, but your attacks can interrupt enemy attacks. It's always safer and more efficient to do the 2x2 dance, and trying to do it with an ogre is a recipe for tears, but you can face off with say a crab and walk away having taken minimal damage.
Also (this is something I learned from watching a speedrun) is relying on armor is essentially a trap. Having frontliners maximize evasion is far better and actually allows you to tank.
That's not quite true. It's not something they tutorialize, but your attacks can interrupt enemy attacks. It's always safer and more efficient to do the 2x2 dance, and trying to do it with an ogre is a recipe for tears, but you can face off with say a crab and walk away having taken minimal damage.
I did pick up on attacks interrupting enemy attacks, but it didn't seem consistent enough to rely on.
Also (this is something I learned from watching a speedrun) is relying on armor is essentially a trap. Having frontliners maximize evasion is far better and actually allows you to tank.
There's such a limited availability of equipment that boosts evasion, though. Maybe you can optimize around that in a scenario where you know the game and its loot layout already (and roll your own characters knowing that you're maxing evasion from the word "go"), but doesn't seem viable on a blind first playthrough. Especially in a game without any respec capabilities.
Alright, that’s done. I enjoyed it mostly, but yeah you really need a walkthrough on hand to find the secrets and the best gear.
I might be done. Stalled out midway through L4. Not entirely the game's fault - life suddenly got so busy I've had almost no time for games for a month and my take from reading this thread is that I've largely seen all the game has to offer, so might not bother going back.
Enjoyed the time I spent with it tho. Maybe enough to install Grimrock 2 that's been languishing in my library.
I’m at level 9, can’t quite seem to find the motivation to power through.
[relocated this post from the general CRPG club thread]
I'm still chipping away at this; currently working through floor 8 or 9. I wasn't expecting there to be so much going down and back up to progress further - I figured it would just be a steady forward progress from one floor to the next. Heck, I even assumed those pits were just generic "you take damage, then get placed back where you jumped from" until I took the plunge. I wish I had invested some of my character skills differently, but I think I'll be able to make do.
After a months-long break from playing RPGs—hitting the Spider-Man games, X-COM 2 replay, Midnight Suns, etc.—I've hit a gap. So I've started in on Grimrock. Running with a tanky fighter, assassin rogue, missile rogue, and mage (too early to be sure where I'm focusing there, but I've been throwing fire and ice so far with most points going into spellcraft). I took a run at the game when it came out and spun out pretty quickly, so I've set it to Easy for this new run. So far, so good. I'm through three levels and enjoying the throwback feel to games like Bard's Tale, Eye of the Beholder, and... what was that Amiga game from back in the day? Dungeon Master?
Alright, I escaped! I went with the standard party of 2 fighters, rogue, and mage). I did end up consulting a guide for some of the late-floor puzzles. I found some secrets on my own, but Google tells me that I missed approximately a million other secrets - and no, I won't be going back in to get them.
Overall I'm pretty happy with this game. Cool game engine design, really hearkens back to the old grid-layout dungeon exploration games, while also modernizing it with real-time action. Magic was awkward to use, but overall not a terrible chore, once I got used to it; I would've liked to see a quick-cast button for spells after using them for like the 100th time or something, but meh. I also didn't come anywhere near close enough to maxing out a skill tree. Obviously there are plenty of places to grind for xp, but that sounded like too much of a chore - and ultimately, not necessary.
So... Grimrock 2 next quarter? 
I wish I could go back to Grimrock 1. I really enjoyed playing it (about a decade ago) but the narrow FOV just made me too nauseated to finish it. I could only play for about 10 minutes before getting too sick to continue.
I'm getting down to the final levels now (am through level 10). It hasn't been super challenging playing on Easy, but that's what I wanted, a breezier experience. I've been sporadically using guides with each level either to help on some of the trickier puzzles when I get stuck or to make sure I haven't overlooked any secret areas, which has made for a nice balance of exploration versus not smacking my head against things for too long. There's just been one area (level 9, I think?) that I haven't been able to do because it requires two rocks, and I only have one. I went traipsing through some earlier levels to try and find any I'd left behind with no luck. It's a dungeon. Rocks should be coming down from everywhere, fergodssake! Alas. 
Hoping to wrap it up this weekend!
And done with Grimrock. After...
grabbing all the wrong parts from the basement level for the machine, I finally broke down and went back to the guide. Am rather glad I did, as I would've beat my head against that one for a while, between the parts and the need to go up back up a level to get the disruption doohickey thing to pull the parts back out again. As it was, I still kept getting caught between Death Cube and either monsters/pits and getting squished, but eventually, I got it done.
A fun play that didn't outstay its welcome!
Managed to get through the end earlier today. Fun romp through the dungeon that took a bit longer than I thought it would, but was very enjoyable. It's been a while since I've completed a game for this club.
I finished this about a month ago, mentioned it in the main cRPG thread. Not sure if I was supposed to post it here though.
I finished this about a month ago, mentioned it in the main cRPG thread. Not sure if I was supposed to post it here though.
Ah -Sorry, looks like I missed you completing Vampyr as well. It's best if you post in the appropriate game threads as that's where I look, and once we get into a voting round the main thread tends to move along quite quickly.
I will update the main thread with your achievements!
On the topic of missing things…
Alright, that’s done. I enjoyed it mostly, but yeah you really need a walkthrough on hand to find the secrets and the best gear.
There's just no pleasing some people........
kstress71 wrote:I finished this about a month ago, mentioned it in the main cRPG thread. Not sure if I was supposed to post it here though.
Ah -Sorry, looks like I missed you completing Vampyr as well. It's best if you post in the appropriate game threads as that's where I look, and once we get into a voting round the main thread tends to move along quite quickly.
I will update the main thread with your achievements!
Okay, so to be clear, I should announce completion of a game for the club not in the club thread but in the game-specific thread? My apologies, I was not aware of that. Thanks!
Right, you’ve got just over 24hrs left to complete this before needing to refer to the retirement home, if anyone is still playing.
Eh? What was I talking about when I posted this? You have until the end of Friday to complete this if you are still playing. However, from the lack of response, I guess nobody is.
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