by I might be cheating a bit here. I’ve played through and beaten Legend of Grimrock 2 long ago. Well, at least a year and a half. But writing about it now gives me an excuse to write my first actual review, gush a bit about one of my favorite games, and talk about what makes a good sequel. And if I haven’t gotten you to listen to what I believe to be one of the best theme songs of all time, well…get to it. And watch the prologue, while you’re at it.
As for the specifics on the game: It’s a puzzle/grid fighter/exploration game where you are shipwrecked on and must explore an island ruled over by the mysterious Island Master (definitely no D&D overtones there!). There are 12 distinct ground-level areas, almost all of which have at least one or two floors of dungeon. All told, there are 34 (well, 33 plus a secret) map sections you will encounter on your quest to solve the mystery of the island. You travel the island in a party of four, selected from 8 classes and 5 races that allow for such combinations as rat farmer. Being a rat farmer, by the way, would mean that you level up by eating – and if you eat cheese enough (because you are a rat), you gain stats.
Your only real objective is to solve the mystery of the island, which you think may have something to do with the glowing rocks (no, not those glowing rocks – the other ones) you’ve been picking up. While finding all the glowing rocks might seem like just a giant fetch quest, the glowing rocks are more incidental to your exploration of the island, and you don’t actually need all of them to finish the game. Communicating your goals is mostly done through gameplay and the expectation that you are here to play a game – plus a note or two from the mysterious Island Master. And some talking heads.
Before I get into what I liked, I should probably start with the things I didn’t like – and there’s really only one complaint. Some of the puzzles are just too difficult. Thankfully, there’s a website that will prove quite helpful if you have this problem. This doesn’t knock it from being a perfect game in my book for two reasons: insanely difficult puzzles are part of the charm of puzzle games evocative of the ’90s, and, when you do solve them on your own, you feel like a genius.
A Perfect Sequel
Legend of Grimrock 2 is both a perfect game and a perfect sequel. Let’s start with what makes it a perfect sequel. Legend of Grimrock (the first one) was a ten level dungeon crawl. Grimrock 2 expands on this by making the game about three times as large and adding several new environments. Between the fantastic art and level design, each area feels new and unique enough that you never get bored – and every inch is packed with secrets, monsters, and items. It’s this consistently high content density that makes it a good sequel. Going bigger can often lead to the game feeling emptier – if Portal 2 had any failings, it would be this – but Legend of Grimrock 2 avoids this entirely.
Another problem with sequels is making a second game that’s just more of the first. Or possibly several games. While that can be acceptable (or at least tolerated) in a multi-title story, a mechanics-driven game needs a compelling reason to be more than just DLC. And Legend of Grimrock 2 delivers here as well. Between vastly improved AI (the first Grimrock had an issue with sidestepping to avoid damage) and a remarkably improved engine that allowed for interconnected maps and external environments, Grimrock 2 took everything Grimrock 1 did, fixed the problems, and made everything else better. This is especially impressive when you look at how well and tightly-crafted Grimrock 1 felt.
Finally, though a sequel needs to feel different than the first, it also needs to feel like it is part of the same story or world. While Grimrock 1 was a claustrophobic and grim dungeon crawl, Grimrock 2 is a vast island of high mystery. But even so, there are times when you are crawling around in catacombs or pyramids in Grimrock 2 that feel unmistakably like Grimrock (even though the actual Mount Grimrock is nowhere to be seen). There’s a distinct tone shift from the first game, but it keeps enough of it around to still feel like the game I fell in love with – and somehow makes it even better.
A Perfect Game
There aren’t any tutorials in Grimrock 2. From the first moment, you just do what makes sense realistically and within the confines of the game world rules as you learn them. There are some signs that give you hints, a few scrolls that teach you how to cast magic spells, and recipes that teach you how to make potions – but all these are incidental. The primary method of interacting with the game is just WASDQE and the left and right mouse buttons. When something happens, it’s clear why it happened and what caused it. Overburdened characters have a snail in their portraits and a darker outline. Injured characters have a bright red glow and blood stain. In both cases, you make a distinctly different walking noise to tell you something is wrong. New mechanics are introduced slowly and deliberately, giving you time to adjust. You never feel lost or helpless – at least as far as the mechanics go. Each class is distinct and well-defined, and the skills all have helpful explanations that are there when you need them and ignorable when they aren’t. All this goes back to giving the player more information and keeping that information helpful – and here at least, everything in Grimrock 2 wants you to succeed.
That isn’t to say the game is mechanically simple or easy. Far from it – later in the game and on harder difficulties, managing health and attacks while moving can be difficult and fast-paced. Having a wizard in your party is useful, but requires good management of resources. The spellcasting system involves drawing patterns in nine runes. The first spells you learn are simple, one-glyph standards like fireball – but later spells can use all nine (in fact, the one “unfair” enemy requires the use of a nine-rune spell to defeat). Even better, the runes all have a meaning that can allow you to intuit new spells (and there’s nothing stopping you from trying the hardest spells as soon as you have the stats). Having an alchemist lets you keep an almost endless supply of potions around as long as you have the know how, so you never truly have to worry about running low on health potions or resurrections. The best part of all of this is that you don’t need to use a wizard or alchemist or fighter or rogue. You could go through the game with a party of farmers, if you wanted.
That being said, a party of farmers might be a bad idea – though still doable. There are no unfixable mistakes – even throwing yourself down a pit can lead to good fortune (and in the case of Chezni, he made a point of throwing himself down every pit he found). The game rewards exploration in every form, and lets you make mistakes that inconvenience rather than kill you: few things are immediately fatal.
I love Legend of Grimrock 2. It may be that my review is overly-biased because the combination of exploration, grid-based combat, and dungeon crawling reminds me a lot of D&D, and I love D&D. But I think you should still give Grimrock and its sequel Grimrock 2 a shot, keeping in mind that it’s a game about mechanics, balance, and that je ne sais quoi that made that second edition of D&D great.