Well, it seems Jasede is the end boss... Funny, but ruined my immershun.
I don't get everyone (especially Codexers) praising the game so much. It's the definition of "good for what it is". Combat system is shit, combat is banal, shit, boring™. Atmosphere is great, puzzles are awesome, graphics are good, everything else is bad to mediocre. Basically an "artsy" platformer, from another perspective. Just because it plays like an old game, doesn't make it good.
I will never understand how you can work on a game for years and manage to make such a shitty RPG system. Not even ambitious, but flawed, just shitty. Ranged weapons always hit, really?
How sad, I wish someone more eloquent had replied to this before I got a chance to. I don't have the right words to properly defend or elucidate my arguments.
Let me begin by asking: Why do people enjoy 80's music? Or 70's music, especially the songs that weren't all that good, but quite catchy? Well, it's because they associate memories with those songs. More often than not, it is nostalgia that can make a pop song more timeless than it could be on its own merits. Rarely, but wonderfully, sometimes nostalgia will accompany a work that was actually good - that is a lovely feeling or experience to be exposed to.
Now, let me talk about Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore- they are all of the same genre as this game: the Dungeon Crawl Blobber (DCB). Distinct from the traditional CRPG Dungeon Crawl (CDC), these games play in real-time. Their focus is not on building your characters or on deep combat but rather on the challenge of your wits and reflexes. Much effort was put into testing you in the setting of various dungeons: your perception, your dexterity with the mouse and keys, your sense of direction, your mapping, your organisation skills, and so on. This is different from what the CRPG Dungeon Crawl tests: tactical and strategic thinking and planning. Often these two blend together. In other games, they are very distinct. Dungeon Master is a DCB, Wizardry would be a CDC. Later Might and Magic games are CDC, though they share DCB elements.
In any case, you might be tempted to think that DCBs are stripped down and primitive forms of CDCs- and that is one way of looking at it. Another is that they are an evolution- but into a very different direction, testing a different skillset: puzzle solving, reflexes, and so on. They are enjoyable in this discipline in their own right. Therefore Grimrock is indeed a good game because - if you judge fairly - you always judge a game in the context of its genre - or the genres it borrows elements of. And in the context of being a DCB, Grimrock is a very good one. It scores in all the important categories: dungeon layout, puzzles, secrets, atmosphere and lacks in the less important ones: character development. The combat being real-time is no issue as that is simply part of being a DCB. Similarly, the lack of good character development - while a grave flaw for a CDC game - hardly matters in a DCB as the focus has never been on character building in the first place. It's just a cherry on top. Unfortunately in Grimrock, the cherry tastes slightly bitter.
This game
does not have a shitty DCB system. If you are going to judge it from the likes of a CDC game you would be no better than someone who only reviews Flight Simulators for criticizing Civilization 5 for not supporting a Force Feedback Joystickl and rating the game poorly because it doesn't have a display of the current speed of your craft. Oh, and there is no plane you can fly with your input device, at least not into all three dimensions.
The term RPG can't just be bludgeoned around. You have to be aware of its different sub-genres and respect a game that tries to fit into one of them on those merits. Else- well, else why shouldn't we hate Painkiller and Doom for not having a cover system? After all, a cover system and regenerating health are staples of modern FPS games, and they lack those. Therefore they are deeply flawed- except that they are a different kind, a different sub-genre of FPS and that logic doesn't apply.
Well, that was a lot of drivel to say "It's good for what it is, you'll have to deal with people missing an old genre that isn't being made anymore. Plus, what RPG these days comes with puzzles?"