Kahlis
Cipher
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2012
- Messages
- 408
I'm experiencing a similar situation (bought Grimrock when it was discounted on Steam a few days ago, currently around floor 10). I think it's simply that Owyn's spells are more utilitarian in nature, and if you prepare your other party members well enough it's not a particularly big deal if he doesn't do any spellcasting during the more mundane battles in the game. At least earlier on in the game. As you said, I think there was some appeal to developing Owyn's full range of abilities, especially in helping to justify why I should be protecting him instead of just letting him be a meat shield for the first rounds of the battle. Casting spells at varying levels of magnitude also seemed to make their applicability to all sorts of combat scenarios more appreciable as well. Every spell in Grimrock was relatively weak and insignificant, and you'd sort of mindlessly throw them at most enemise as though they were weapon attacks.
One thing I don't like about the spells in Grimrock (but I guess this goes for the loot in general) is how everything gets spoon-fed to you sooner or later in the game. It almost aggravates me that the developers seem to have envisioned only so many successful party builds that can get one through the dungeon. I'm not going "boo-hoo, chargen is hard and it's possible to make gimped characters" (if anything the individual distinction of a few points between attributes seems almost insignificant, to a point). But I am noticing that throwing weapons are near-useless, and there are three swords for every axe/mace weapon I find in the game, and for some reason the first set of light armor I encountered offered a greater protection bonus than any heavy armor set since. There's some certain sense of inevitability (due to all the hand-placed loot I guess) that every spellcaster is going to get all of their spells eventually, and there really isn't much freedom of choice. There's many puzzles and traps in Grimrock where you're almost required to use certain shield spells unless you want to lose your back-line characters after two hits. I almost fail to see the point in the rune system when there's so few spells overall and you really don't get much by going out of your way to find the few obscure ones.
Far different from when I decided to use Owyn's "Invitation" spell on the fleeing Moredhel warlock outside of Krondor in Chapter 1, after having completely ignored it for most of the chapter because I could originally only pull enemies one tile with it. I ended up casting the fourth or fifth level and pulling him across the full vertical length of the battlefield. Now that was a satisfying moment and compelled me to keep searching for other spells.
One thing I don't like about the spells in Grimrock (but I guess this goes for the loot in general) is how everything gets spoon-fed to you sooner or later in the game. It almost aggravates me that the developers seem to have envisioned only so many successful party builds that can get one through the dungeon. I'm not going "boo-hoo, chargen is hard and it's possible to make gimped characters" (if anything the individual distinction of a few points between attributes seems almost insignificant, to a point). But I am noticing that throwing weapons are near-useless, and there are three swords for every axe/mace weapon I find in the game, and for some reason the first set of light armor I encountered offered a greater protection bonus than any heavy armor set since. There's some certain sense of inevitability (due to all the hand-placed loot I guess) that every spellcaster is going to get all of their spells eventually, and there really isn't much freedom of choice. There's many puzzles and traps in Grimrock where you're almost required to use certain shield spells unless you want to lose your back-line characters after two hits. I almost fail to see the point in the rune system when there's so few spells overall and you really don't get much by going out of your way to find the few obscure ones.
Far different from when I decided to use Owyn's "Invitation" spell on the fleeing Moredhel warlock outside of Krondor in Chapter 1, after having completely ignored it for most of the chapter because I could originally only pull enemies one tile with it. I ended up casting the fourth or fifth level and pulling him across the full vertical length of the battlefield. Now that was a satisfying moment and compelled me to keep searching for other spells.