Legend of Grimrock 2 is a dungeon crawling role playing game with a modern execution but an oldschool heart. A group of four prisoners have shipwrecked on the secluded Isle of Nex. The island is filled with ancient crumbled ruins, mysterious shrines and a vast underground network of dungeons and mines. If the prisoners wish to make it out alive, they have to overcome the challenges devised by the ominous mastermind of the island. Powers of perception and logic are more important than sheer force is, since Legend of Grimrock 2 puts a heavy emphasis on exploration, survival and challenging puzzles. Discover powerful ancient artifacts from hidden secret chambers and buried treasures. Arm your champions, cast spells and craft enchanted potions and bombs to aid you in fighting the dreadful monsters in highly tactical real-time combat.
Game Discussion
Steam User 31
Build your own party. Have at least one spell caster. Pay attention to what you see, read, and hear. Study the map attentively. All puzzles are logical and can be solved without any meta guidance. There are more golden locks than golden keys: take what you need only.
Steam User 12
So far very enjoyable with the slight exception of gawking at all the walls trying not to miss any secret switch :D
Steam User 9
Legend of Grimrock 2 is a puzzle game masquerading as a real time, first person, dungeon crawler RPG.
The combat is fairly hard at first because you are not supposed to stand still trading blows with the enemy like in most games but instead you need to treat it as grid-based boxing and never stop moving. Characters may have an evasion stat but the only way to get 100% is to dodge attacks yourself so it's important to know what's around you at all times, also known as having spatial reasoning.
Besides that, the RPG systems are straightforward. You only have 4 stats to worry about, 1 of them is only useful for magic users and out of the remaining 3, 2 of them are pretty much interchangeable so messing up a character build is hard, but not impossible. It feels weird to say this but don't bring guns to sword fights.
That being said, the default party is trash. Make your own.
Puzzles make up the majority of the runtime and they come in 3 flavors: The first one is purely logic puzzles that you need to figure out by recognizing patterns and such. These were my favorite and it's nice to see when games do stuff like this and let you find a solution using your very own monkey brain rather than handing you the solution.
The second kind is puzzles that require a clue you need to find somewhere in the game world. These aren't my favorite but they reward exploration so I understand.
And, finally, you have complete bullshit "puzzles" that you solve either by staring into walls looking for a hidden button or through complete trial and error. I'm not a fan of these, no.
That being said, in order to beat the game you only need 16 out of the 20 power gems scattered through the game world so you don't need to solve every puzzle and find every secret. You only need to do so for the true ending so there's some mercy.
To conclude, Legend of Grimrock 2 is great. I think anyone who likes RPGs and puzzles can enjoy it if they give it a chance, but it has to be both things, not one or the other.
Steam User 6
This easily places among the best dungeon crawlers I have ever played and is a must-have for any fan of the genre. I really can't recommend this game enough. It is absolutely amazing. I already thought the first game was pretty good, but the love and care that went into creating the sequel is just staggering. You really only see games like this once in a blue moon. Grimrock 2 is something special.
Steam User 7
I didn't grow up with Ultima, Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, etc., but I still like this game. It's just so addictive and fun. It has just the right amount of difficulty and finding secrets (hidden treasure and areas) and solving puzzles is really rewarding.
Steam User 7
Even though I haven't played any classic dungeon crawlers, like Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master, one of the most notable games of my childhood was Might & Magic 8. So the idea of party-based first person role playing game is generally familiar to me. The reason why I decided to try Legends of Grimrock 2 was exactly the nostalgia for this type of gameplay.
And it turned out, that Legends of Grimrock 2 is exactly what I was looking for and even more, because it utilizes the mechanics that I love.
First, this game utilizes the idea of progressively unfolding open world, which reminds me of the first Dark Souls, where locations eventually connect with each other.
Secondly, the game has an extremely well-crafted party building and character progression system. There is a strategic approach, where you need to carefully plan your further game already at the character creation screen, as resources, experience for character progression and equipment in the game are limited. A viable party needs be very diversified. The slow progression in character level makes every skill/stat point very valuable and rewarding, especially in the early game.
And, perhaps, I have not seen any other game, where careful exploration is as rewarding as here. There is no random loot generation, and item placement is relatively smart, supporting the stages of progression. Which also means that an experienced player can also rush to quickly get some of the items in the early game. Like I said above, the resources, equipment and enemies (which grant experience points) are limited, thus you are eager to look up every corner and spend time solving puzzles. Also, I really enjoy the golden keys system: the most valuable pieces of equipment are hidden in the vaults unlocked by the golden keys. But there are more vaults than keys, and keys are extremely hard to find, so you need to carefully choose, which items do you need and at which stage of the game.
On the other hand, taking all the above into consideration, even at the Easy difficulty the game is extremely hardcore. A poorly assembled party will quickly become incapable. The lack of attention will leave valuable items behind. And further you proceed through the game, the more challenging in becomes. The development team surely does not have any mercy. There is a misconception that Dark Souls and other From Software games are hard. No. Try Legend of Grimrock instead.
There a few things that I do not like:
• A lot of backtracking while having almost no quick travel options. This again reminds of Dark Souls 1, where we got limited teleportation options in the second half of the game. And even with it, you still need to run a lot by foot.
• Real time gameplay with turn-based mechanics. Well, it's controversial. It makes the game kind of unique, and allows "dancing" around the enemies not to get any damage. But the combat itself is still rather turn-based, with extremely long cooldowns, which is still not very dynamic.
• While all the damage dealing skills are more or less viable, Firearms look extremely undeveloped: the damage does not scale with increasing of the skill level, and ammo is extremely limited with no way to farm or craft it.
To summarize, this is a unique game in the modern gaming industry, a representative of the oldschool genre, which caters to sophisticated players, who are tired of the modern AAA industry.
Steam User 7
Grimrock but wider
more build variety
more unique gear
more puzzles
more mechanics
more grimrock
you can beat it under 100 hours with all secrets, give it a try
often cheap as dirt at 75% discount makes this an easy recommend