Legend of Grimrock 2

[HoboForEternity]

'zumg i'm dumb and game sux'

'no, you're actually just dumb'

'U FUKKIN WOT M8 WOW U SO BUTTHURT'

Had you been playing this game legit, you probably wouldn't have even realised that there's an obscure puzzle to solve to access the pyramid before finishing the game. Sounds to me like you should go back to a more casual experience like disco elysium.

fanboys are so dumb. i am legitimately expressing criticism while praising the other part you just go "waaaaaah you insulted this game waaaaaaa you insulted me honor".

 

[V_K]

To be fair you did express praise to Unavowed and Disco, so maybe you should stay away from the more puzzle-heavy games.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

You know, I really liked this game. The second one was an improvement in my mind over the first for its more open feel. I would have liked another Grimrock game.

What happened to this company? Anyone know?

 

[HoboForEternity]

You know, I really liked this game. The second one was an improvement in my mind over the first for its more open feel. I would have liked another Grimrock game.

What happened to this company? Anyone know?

Tjey made turn based divinity original sin clone iirc and it received lukewarm reception.

 

[cvv]

You know, I really liked this game. The second one was an improvement in my mind over the first for its more open feel. I would have liked another Grimrock game.

What happened to this company? Anyone know?

Tjey made turn based divinity original sin clone iirc and it received lukewarm reception.

You mean Druidstone? It's absolutely nothing like DOS. It's actually a nice little game but yeah, a notable decline of both ambition and accomplishment, sadly.

 

[Jaedar]

What happened to this company? Anyone know?

Grimrock 2 sold a lot worse than grimrock 1, so they decided to make something else instead of grimrock 3. The new game had some troubled development and wound up not so good.

Afaik there has been no news at all since the release of druidstone so it could be the entire company is effectively bankrupt.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Yeah, I remember that about Grimrock 2 selling worse (like 150k or soemthing vs 400k) but that's sequelitis. No surprise. I think after Pillars 2 we had that huge discussion about sequels and VD commented about sequels doing worse than the originals, etc.

Anyway, I'm going to check up on teh company then and see what's what.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Well, nothing. Looks like they're dead.

 

[garren]

One of the main programmers seems to be making some sorta gold boxy looking RPG for vic-20 atm:
https://twitter.com/petrih3

 

[CryptRat]

Yes, this game is probably just a little project but for the rest I have little doubt this guy will make more cool games.

 

[felipepepe]

Yeah, I remember that about Grimrock 2 selling worse (like 150k or soemthing vs 400k) but that's sequelitis. No surprise. I think after Pillars 2 we had that huge discussion about sequels and VD commented about sequels doing worse than the originals, etc.

They had an extra issue: the first game was the first big blobber in like 20 years, with really great graphics, and in a time indie games were still novel. They got A TON of free press, and a lot of people who never player a blobber before tried the game. Then they found out they don't like it very much...

Anyway, they were a 4-man studio, and Grimrock 1 sold over 900k copies. They made a truckload of money... I think LoG2 still had decent numbers, ~200k is definitely not bad for a niche RPG from a small studio, but this was during the "indieapocalypse", right after Steam Greenlight began, I guess they were still expecting big indie titles to sell millions. inXile would give an arm for 200k sales on release after the Bard's Tale 4 & Tides of Numanuma...

 

[HoboForEternity]

well at least we have vaporum if you want RT dungeon crawler

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Hmm, I wonder. Could they sell a Grimrock style blobber in a post apocalyptic or cyberpunk setting?

 

[luj1]

Any good mods for LoG 2?

I tried The Master Key for LoG 1 and loved it (better than vanilla)

 

[cvv]

a lot of people who never player a blobber before tried the game. Then they found out they don't like it very much...

Plus many former blobber fans realized they have moved on and went back to playing Skyrim and Witcher 2 and never bought the sequel.

It's like me being hyped out of my brain by Tesla Effect, since Pandora Directive was one of my most beloved games in my youth, and 30 minutes into playing Tesla Effect I realized I actually don't like playing adventure games anymore.

 

[Nyast]

well at least we have vaporum if you want RT dungeon crawler

You can also check out Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon. Its development is taking forever but it's almost finished now. When I played it a few years ago when it entered early access, I thought it was pretty decent.

 

[Whisper]

Any good mods for LoG 2?

I tried The Master Key for LoG 1 and loved it (better than vanilla)

Lost City and The Guardians.

They are made by professional game dev (one who made Eador and Gremlins).

In many aspects it is better than LoG2.

 

[luj1]

Any good mods for LoG 2?

I tried The Master Key for LoG 1 and loved it (better than vanilla)

Lost City and The Guardians.

They are made by professional game dev (one who made Eador and Gremlins).

In many aspects it is better than LoG2.

Thanks for that

I played The Master Quest for LoG 1, its superior to the original as well

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Any good mods for LoG 2?

I tried The Master Key for LoG 1 and loved it (better than vanilla)

Lost City and The Guardians.

They are made by professional game dev (one who made Eador and Gremlins).

In many aspects it is better than LoG2.

Based on this I gave "Lost City" a go.

EDIT from 2022: Review updated considerably.

In many ways this mod is simply brilliant: It has a branching map which expands in several directions simultaneously and yet are interconnected, and during this time it feels like Grimrock-heaven. Particular praise goes to the effort of creating underwater areas that are interesting and yet challenging. There's a Water Breathing-spell in the mod to help out on that front, but it's bugged in more than one way, so don't rely on it. The highpoint of the mod is the central hub of Livingrock found right at the start. It offers teleporters to remote parts of the map (provided you can activate them), a Gold Key-depository of neat items, and a Quest-system that rewards the player for completing certain tasks. Of particular note is the 'Creation Room', which is a series of vendors that provide services priced on gems - meaning there's an economy up and about! (More on that later.)

Exploring the immediate surroundings of Livingrock is probably the highpoint of the mod for me. These opening maps are done quite well - you spot places you have to return to later, but otherwise can always find a new path to explore. The best map is 'Underground Passage' beneath 'Whispering Forest' - what starts out as a short series of connected passages, soon reveals itself to be several short series of connected passages - and then later on other underground maps connect to this one, to make it an underground hub of sorts! Very cleverly done. One change from vanilla Grimrock that I found strange, was that there are no respawning monsters. At first that doesn't sound like a problem, but that changes...

As I progressed the late game-content starts to seep in, and glaring flaws in the design become too apparent. The boss fights, for example, where every advantage of the player is stripped away and the monsters given every advantage. (the Water Essence-guardian is a textbook example of this - see the Hints for more). You WILL want an Alchemist in this mod, and you WILL be making far too many Ice Bombs. The overall balance of the mod is also off. The author repeatedely stated that the mod is split into two parts - everything you do before entering the pyramid, and then the pyramid itself. That's for good reason, because the difficulty of the mod jumps up a couple of notches then, especially since there are no healing crystals in the pyramid itself - meaning that the first (and obviously most frustrating) task is to secure an exit from the pyramid once inside.

But by far the worst culprit of this mod is the most interesting (and sadly, most disappointing) change from the original game - the gem economy. Gems come in three scales; red gems are the most valuable, green in the middle and then blue. What you get out of the vendors depends on which type of gem you put in. The services available include buying lock picks (because there are far more chests in the mod than there are lock picks), XP, ammo, herb supplies, and lastly food. Here's the problem: Gems are a finite commodity... meaning the economy can only run for so long. It doesn't help that many later puzzles require gems to be solved. And with "Lost City" having done away with respawning monsters, that means that the player is On The Clock. Take too long navigating the land and solving all the puzzles (the mod has 100 secrets) and eventually you'll have to use the gems to buy food - until you're out of gems, then you're Shit Out Of Luck. Considering that many puzzles and many points of exploration take time, this runs counterpoint to half the mod itself! Fortunately the difficulty level helps here - play it on Normal and this problem is barely noticeable. Play it on Hard and you'll feel the pinch.

I've also heard many people praise the mod for creative puzzles and traps - I cannot agree with that. The mod gets top marks for hiding things in the scenery, but some of the puzzles leave something to be desired. One notable example is a "Path of Suffering/Torment" in the Mausoleum. This is a gauntlet of trials where the player is asked to dodge fireballs along a corridor, fight some monsters, then circumvent a room full of levers, gates and projectile launchers, before getting into the 'climax' of Outrunning the Lightning. This is a corridor where the lightning starts striking in one square, then the next, and so on, until it catches up to the player and starts zapping him. One single clue is provided, but it changes nothing because the puzzle ultimately boils down to Trial and Error. Abusing the Save/Load-mechanic is NOT how one is supposed to progress in LoG2. Later on riddles appear which require commonplace items, such as (racial) foodstuffs, and players might get hosed by having eaten them all. It gets really bad at the end, where large puzzles are thrown at you right at the very end of the mod. And as for the traps? Mostly monster closets where the monsters conveniently block all the exits. (The traps actually get worse in subsequent mods, so if you're bothered by it here, you're not in for a good time.)

Conclusion? To date this is the best overall mod for Grimrock 2 that I've come across, but I still put a "Let the Gamer Beware"-warning on it There's fun to be had here - but there's also lots of frustration at the end.

Some hints

# There are five ways to complete the mod: Finding the exit at the top of the tower but not the elixir, and finding the 'real' exit but not the elixir. Then it's a matter of using those two exits after finding the elixir.

# The fifth and final method involves not using the Gear Key given at the start, to unlock Livingrock and all its services. Persist in the Mausoleum until you emerge from the Fire Guardian boss fight, and you should have the other key needed to reach the end. The mod will be a little harder overall as a result, but the upside is that you can skip the Pyramid, it becomes completely optional.

# When creating your party, do NOT create a Lizardman with the Poison-immunity trait. There's a (optional) puzzle in the mod that mandates that your entire party gets poisoned, but it counts as one of the hundred secrets.

# Firearms receive no special love in this mod, so they're not really recommended unless you want the cannon.

# But if you're after the other four endings, you're looking for the MacGuffin on the bottom level of the Pyramid. As strange as that may sound, that is NOT the toughest fight in the mod. (That is a dead guy named Necrus in the Mausoleum. You have been warned.)

# To find the elixir (and the real exit?) you need to find all 27 Golden Keys. It helps to make a note of where you find each one.

# Barbarians are not a good idea for this mod. While there are lots of skulls (I counted 16, though there are more) many of them will be needed to solve puzzles - and you won't get most of them back. Collect at least 10 of them, regardless of your party configuration.

# Racial foods are a thing in this mod, but for puzzle-solving reasons I recommend saving at least one piece of each food item (racial or otherwise) - you never know when you might need one.

# Don't save up on the Gold Keys - use when as soon as you get them. Unlocking all the items in Livingrock is actually needed for the endgame.

# To give people an idea of how the boss fights are in this mod: The Water Essence Guardian. The game puts you in a 5x5-room where the innermost 9 squares are water. The 'guardian' is a lone Medusa who flies, so she doesn't care about the water. There are no light sources in the room, meaning the Medusa is only visible to you when close - but she can see you perfectly under all circumstances, and she packs a powerful ranged attack. All advantages taken from the player and all advantages given to the monsters. This is the norm. Get used to it.

One would think that the optimal strategy here is to use ranged attacks blindly. That's not true. The optimal strategy is to learn the Medusa's AI and use it against her. In other words, stay close to her. When you're diagonally next to her, she tends to pause and weigh her options. Be patient. Only strike when she moves, or exposes her flank. You may have to back off sometimes to avoid her attacks, but get back in as quickly afterwards. This is actually one of the easier boss fights in the mod.

# The Water Breathing-spell requires Water Magic 1 and Air Magic 3. You'll want to strive towards that early on so you can traverse the deeper parts of the Murklands and the Sunken City (and later areas). The scroll is located in the far north of the Murklands-map, so save all the deep diving until then.

# Keep in mind that the Water Breathing-spell is bugged in the following manner: It dispels immediately if you leave the map it was cast on, and if you imported a party into the mod the spell will crash the game. It works by creating a 'gills'-like effect on your party so that they constantly receive stamina while underwater, but even then their stamina can run out and they take drowning damage.

# There's also a Heal-spell which requires Water Magic 2 and Earth Magic 3. Unfortunately it "only" restores hit points, it doesn't heal injuries.

# The sewers-map is full of little things, of which only some worship the Horned Rat. There's a sewer grating in there which appears to have a light source in it. Stick a fish in it and see what happens.

# The Burial Grounds will lock you in at the start and the exit won't present itself easily, so weak parties may want to hold off going there until later.

# Much of the Mausoleum area underneath the Burial Grounds-map will have to be approached via the Murklands-map, so don't worry too much about it in the early game.

# In the fight against Torturilla, the poison plant at the top has roughly the same amount of hit points as the boss itself, which is LOTS. Focus on the boss first, then take out the plant later (if you feel like it). Poison immunity may be required here on your spellcaster.

# The Cheesemeister-fight can be cheesed. Normally you'd be fighting Big Rat and three little rats - except the little ones don't engage unless you move close to them. So the trick is not to. Immediately upon entering the room, move to the east portion of it and stay there. You'll be able to engage the boss for a bit before only one of the ratlings is engaged, so deal with him quick. If you stick to the eastern part of the room, the other two won't ever get involved.

# The Necrus-fight is hard because the room is designed to have no easily defensible position, and that Necrus spawns ghouls instead of the regular skeleton warriors. You'll quickly be overwhelmed. The best tactic is to use a Force Field on the square where the door is, then park yourself next to it and face-tank the damage. You'll need lots of (Greater) Healing Potions for this one, and Lightning Bombs will help as well. Once Necrus goes down, put up a Force Field in the square he was in, and try to make it to the door square and out. After that you can pick off the horde of ghouls from a defensible position.

# The Ogre-ambush is not as hard as the Necrus-fight, but still a challenge and can be beaten with the same tactics. Trap one Ogre inside a Force Field, then unleash death upon the other. Poison bombs work a treat here. Don't forget that there's a third Ogre outside the room!

# If you could take down the Ogres and Necrus, then the Warlock isn't gonna be a problem. Might wanna trap him in a Force Field a few times while you sort out his minions.

# The only other remaining fights worth a mention are the Three Avatars and the Infernal Prisoner. The Three Avatars puts you in a sizeable room against a Medusa, a lightning-spitting Crowern and an Ogre, all at once. I recommend moving constantly and taking out the Medusa first and then the Crowern, before picking off the HP-bloated Ogre last. Hold off on the Infernal Prisoner-fight as long as you can to get as much good equipment and XP as possible. You'll need Fire Resistance and mobility, the arena and spawning monsters will try to deny you these elements. (Though the Wizard's Virge is available by the time this fight rolls round, so there's always that option.)

# To get the Virge you need to show both restraint and charity in the Halls of Legends in the Pyramid.

# More than one secret involves dropping an item/weight down a pit that the player can't access themselves. This rings especially true for the mines.

# You'll need the Ethereal Blade more for its uniqueness, than for its Elemental-slaying ability. Learn to be without it.

# Some puzzles require the unwitting assistance of Ogres to be solved. Check your surroundings carefully before committing to ogre-cide.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Odd that article popped up.

 

[Whisper]

But by far the worst culprit of this mod is the most interesting (and sadly, most dissapointing) change from the original game - the gem economy. Gems come in three scales; red gems are the most valuable, green in the middle and then blue. What you get out of the vendors depends on which type of gem you put in. The services available include buying lockpicks (because there are far more chests in the mod than there are lockpicks), XP, ammo, herb supplies, and lastly food. Here's the problem: Gems are a finite commodity... meaning the economy can only run for so long. AAAANNNDD... there are no free-range respawning monsters. Vanilla LOG2 had some monsters respawn at timed intervals to give the player both access to a trickling amount of XP, and to provide the player with sustenance so that the party won't ever be without food. "Lost City" does away with all that, meaning that the player is On The Clock. Take too long navigating the land and solving all the puzzles (the mod has 100 secrets) and eventuallu you'll have to use the gems to buy food - until you're out of gems, then you're Shit Out Of Luck. Considering that many puzzles and many points of exploration take time, this pretty much runs counterpoint to half the mod itself!

This is game about both exploration and survival.
Infinite respawning mobs in both LoG1 and LoG2 make food meter pointless. Here actually your decisions matter.

Best addition to original game.

 

[Whisper]

A few pointers I can give to masochistic players:

# One of the secret ways of beating this mod is NOT to enter the hub at the start. The key to that door is the Gear Key, which coincidentally is the same key used to unlock the portal found at the end of the vanilla game. If you can ignore that door and still reach the top of the Warlock's tower, you're good to go!

Do you get items like Shovel later?

How did you learn this? I want to give a try for this but need more information.

 

[V_K]

I thought I've seen everything on the Codex, but people defending walking dead scenarios is something new.

 

[luj1]

Vanilla LOG2 had some monsters respawn at timed intervals to give the player both access to a trickling amount of XP, and to provide the player with sustenance so that the party won't ever be without food. "Lost City" does away with all that, meaning that the player is On The Clock.

Catastrophic indeed

 

[Unkillable Cat]

This is game about both exploration and survival.
Infinite respawning mobs in both LoG1 and LoG2 make food meter pointless. Here actually your decisions matter.

Best addition to original game.

No, dimwit. It isn't unless you make it clear right at the start. In the readme. Which this module doesn't do, in a clear enough manner.

Go home. Redo from start.