Legend of Grimrock II Review
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Most of the loot in the game comes from solving puzzles. Enemies, if anything, tend to drop food. Grimrock II has an almost entirely new selection of gear over the original game, and it even has some new types of equipment. For example, there are now firearms available, which either shoot pellets (which disappear after being used) or cannonballs (which don't). There are also equipment sets now, where wearing the whole set gives a character a small bonus.
Finally, in a nice change, after you defeat the final boss, the game doesn't end. If you find yourself (like me) missing a few secrets and whatnot, then you can continue to explore the island and search for them. The final boss even drops a "master key," which unlocks all of the doors on the island, making your travels easier.
Graphics and Sound
Grimrock II is a budget-ish title, so it shouldn't be surprising to learn that it is limited in what it does with graphics and sound. The sound in particular is bare bones. There isn't any spoken dialogue, and there are pretty much only the required number of musical tracks and sounds effects, with no more and no less. I'm mostly fine with this -- I'd much rather Almost Human spends time and money creating clever puzzles rather than hiring somebody to narrate the letters you find during your explorations -- but more ambient noises and some variety to the other sound effects would help to make it feel like you're exploring a real, breathing world rather than just playing a computer game.
The graphics, on the other hand, impressed me a little, probably because I was expecting more of the one-tone drabness from the original Grimrock. But the beaches, rivers, and forests are colored vividly, there are day and night cycles complete with an animated sky, you can explore underwater which looks completely different than exploring on land, there are some mist and fog effects that make the cemetery and bog maps more distinct, and there are even opening and closing movies. I don't think Grimrock II is going to win any graphical awards or anything, but it sure looks much nicer now.
Performance
It took me about 40 hours to play through Grimrock II, and during that time I didn't notice any bugs. All of the puzzles were solvable, all of the skills and bonuses worked like they were described, and the game didn't crash even once. The only downside to Grimrock II is that its world is bigger and more complex now, and so save and load times take about five times as long. If you played the original Grimrock, then you might not even have noticed when the game auto-saved, but now you can definitely feel the pause, and load times are even slower. These down times aren't disastrously long, but they make some of the battles and puzzles even more frustrating than they would have been otherwise, especially when it feels like you're staring at the loading screen more than you're playing the game.
Conclusion
Overall, I enjoyed Legend of Grimrock II pretty well. It's a satisfying game with an equal balance between thoughtful puzzles and frantic combat. It's also well-constructed with a fine attention to detail, and it looks like a real game now rather than just an indie production. Plus, it's challenging, even on the normal difficulty setting. So if you're looking for a way to spend some of your free time, and if puzzles are a plus rather than a negative, then Grimrock II is a good way to go.
