Legend of Grimrock 2

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.

I don't know if I am going to be in the minority over this but in my honest opinion... the first one was better.
Yes, I know. The environment is a lot better than in the first game, it's longer, there's more enemies, there's more loot, so... technically the game should have been improved, right?
Well, not really. While the game does shine in those categories, it has problem from a technical and gameplay standpoint that I felt like the first one did better. From the technical standpoint, the game has longer loading times than the first game, for some reason? And sometimes it will crash when you try to load the game. Now it seems this is a problem due to the lack of optimization for the newer system, so hopefully Almost Human Games (I am not sure if they are still around at this point) can make some kind of remaster to make the game run better on modern systems.
Then there is the big part: The gameplay. Genuinely the game feels harder than the first game, but also deaths feel cheaper. My biggest gripe with the game is the new system where your character can have wounded body parts. This happens randomly and it is absolutely annoying. So imagine you are in a room full of enemies, and one enemy hits your party from the back. One of your characters suffered a foot injury and now not only the movement is slowed down, but also his carry limit is reduced, which makes the entire party immobile. There is no avoidance to this, this happens randomly and there is no strategy against it. You have to either use the blue crystals which are very valuable or go to the nearest crystal to go back at full health. I hate this, it doesn't bring challenge, it's just a cheap RNG disability that they give you randomly.
Another problem is scaling. Some of the mobs that I encountered from the early game are also encountered in the late game, and even though my party is stronger and has better armor and weapons, somehow the enemy is scaled so they take equal amount of hits and if surrounded they can still kill your party. One such example are the mosquitoes. I also hate this, I never was a fan of enemy scaling in Oblivion, and neither am I a fan in this game as well. If you are stronger, you should be able to one shot weaker enemies. It's absolutely unnacceptable that a crab I fought from the first dungeons takes the same amount of hits in the last dungeon.
Some of the puzzles don't make sense, and I had to look up a guide to actually solve them. I never used a guide in the first grimrock game.
Even though I enjoyed the first one more, I am still giving this game a thumbs up. I think it's still fun and you could still enjoy the new environment and new mechanics. I kind of wished they made a third game though, but we will see.

So far very enjoyable with the slight exception of gawking at all the walls trying not to miss any secret switch :D

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.

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.

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.

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.