Legend of Grimrock 2

[imweasel]

I wonder why LoG 2 sold so bad in comparison to LoG. I haven't played LoG 2 yet but I thought that LoG was great.

 

[Gord]

I liked LoG and wanted to get LoG 2 as well, but somehow, once it was out I lacked the motivation to buy and play it.
It's still on my list, though.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I liked LoG and wanted to get LoG 2 as well, but somehow, once it was out I lacked the motivation to buy and play it.
It's still on my list, though.

Same here. There are just too many good games coming out recently. At the moment, I'd rather play Elminage Gothic. Not that it's better than LoG2, but something different.

The finalized their long promised iPad version of LoG.

http://www.grimrock.net/2015/05/04/grimrock-ipad-has-gone-gold/

I really wonder how their RT combat world on a touch screen.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I wonder why LoG 2 sold so bad in comparison to LoG. I haven't played LoG 2 yet but I thought that LoG was great.

IIRC much of the LoG sales came from when it was super-cheap on Humble Bundle.

 

[Infinitron]

I wonder why LoG 2 sold so bad in comparison to LoG. I haven't played LoG 2 yet but I thought that LoG was great.

IIRC much of the LoG sales came from when it was super-cheap on Humble Bundle.

The original LoG was also cheaper from the beginning - $15 vs $25.

They may have anticipated that lightning wasn't going to strike twice for them, and hiked up the price to make more money off of the sequel's smaller audience. They can always reduce it later.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

I also did not buy on release - without other great games it would be indeed d1p.
But i bought it recently and played like 20 hours... then got obsessed with Underrail and forgot.

LoG 2 is a great sequel but it's the same formula. So that might be the answer.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

If there is one problem with LoG2, it's the fact that the spell schools are unbalanced. Somehow they managed to screw that up compared to LoG1...which also had unbalanced spell schools, but not as badly as this.

LoG2 has a bunch of low-level offensive and utility spells, virtually no medium-level spells, and only a couple of high-level spells that require cross-training across the schools in order to be cast.

 

[iZerw]

I wonder why LoG 2 sold so bad in comparison to LoG. I haven't played LoG 2 yet but I thought that LoG was great.

Many people bought the first game. Why? Not because its a DM-clone, it just was high praised by many major and hipster gaming sites and magazines. But how many did play it or enjoy? Just look at the global statistics of achievements: Ogre Slayer (Kill your first ogre) - 19.8%, Master of the Dungeon (Complete the game) - 9,4%.
Only every tenth purchaser did finish the game. And who must buy the sequel after that?

 

[vonAchdorf]

I wonder why LoG 2 sold so bad in comparison to LoG. I haven't played LoG 2 yet but I thought that LoG was great.

Many people bought the first game. Why? Not because its a DM-clone, it just was high praised by many major and hipster gaming sites and magazines. But how many did play it or enjoy? Just look at the global statistics of achievements: Ogre Slayer (Kill your first ogre) - 19.8%, Master of the Dungeon (Complete the game) - 9,4%.
Only every tenth purchaser did finish the game. And who must buy the sequel after that?

I don't think the stats are bad – especially not for a game which was in a bundle. Actually only 10% finishing a game is pretty standard.

Only 10% of avid gamers completed the final mission, according to Raptr, which tracks more than 23 million gaming sessions. (talking about Red Dead Redemption)

 

[cvv]

Steam is full of Kwan richfags that buy games like they buy their faggoty merchandise toys. They just never take them out of the package.

 

[Redlands]

I wonder why LoG 2 sold so bad in comparison to LoG. I haven't played LoG 2 yet but I thought that LoG was great.

Many people bought the first game. Why? Not because its a DM-clone, it just was high praised by many major and hipster gaming sites and magazines. But how many did play it or enjoy? Just look at the global statistics of achievements: Ogre Slayer (Kill your first ogre) - 19.8%, Master of the Dungeon (Complete the game) - 9,4%.
Only every tenth purchaser did finish the game. And who must buy the sequel after that?

I don't think the stats are bad – especially not for a game which was in a bundle. Actually only 10% finishing a game is pretty standard.

Only 10% of avid gamers completed the final mission, according to Raptr, which tracks more than 23 million gaming sessions. (talking about Red Dead Redemption)

Not only that, but I assume those are for the Steam version; people who bought the game who were more likely to finish it may have gotten elsewhere.

Besides, someone might not have finished the game and still bought the sequel because they enjoyed what they had played of the first part (like I did, though I did finish the first game before starting the second).

It's kind of disappointing to hear it hadn't sold as well in the first one; I had an absolute blast playing both games (probably enjoyed the second one slightly more).

 

[Whisper]

I suspected as much tbh. Even though LoG2 is a much better game than the first one

It is not.

 

[Magellan]

It is not.

I liked LoG2 better than the first as well.

 

[Metro]

When it starts hitting 75% off/bundles they'll take in more money. LoG was a nice revamp of an older genre and 2 added some polish and a bit more depth. There isn't much else they can do that's within their means so a third game probably isn't likely.

 

[DemonKing]

As someone else posted, a lot of people bought the first game but only a handful finished it. I can't say I buy too many sequels to games I can't be bothered finishing.

I think the first was also a better game with a tighter focus. The only way to progress was to solve riddles and move on in a fairly linear fashion. The second went for the interconnected world model, which while it's fine for the Souls games, is a bit of an issue when you run into an area you can't complete without an object from the other side of the world map. It was also easy to bork yourself by dropping a vital item and then being unable to remember where you left it.

 

[Redlands]

It was also easy to bork yourself by dropping a vital item and then being unable to remember where you left it.

It really shouldn't be: if you need to leave something, you can just mark where on the map with a notation.

Or do what I do: carry everything around with you! Spent torches, rocks, weapons you're never going to use; just pack it all into boxes and bags and throw those suckers wherever you go! It's not weird at all!

 

[Jasede]

Haaah, I am exactly like Redlands, I obsess over sorting everything into the right box/bag. So I end up with a box of torches, a box of rocks, etc, etc.

I actually learned this from playing Ultima 7 and 8, games where you will never find your stuff ever again if you don't keep your pack tidy.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I actually learned this from playing Ultima 7 and 8, games where you will never find your stuff ever again if you don't keep your pack tidy.

Except my experience with the packs in U7 is that they auto-scramble themselves frequently. I blame Spark, the little bugger keeps going through my stuff trying to find my booze.

---

I have to eat my words a bit here, and say that I have continued playing that Deranged Isle mod I slammed earlier, but mostly because I wanted to know one thing: Is the "non-linear open environment" a good thing for Grimrock?

I think I've played far enough to say with certainty: Not necessarily.

Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder and Legend of Grimrock all used the same configuration for their floor layout: A "tower" of levels where the player starts at the top and must work his way down to the bottom. It sets simple boundaries, gives a general direction of travel and makes for a very linear journey; the biggest deviation is that two of the aforementioned games have one floor below the "final" one. It's a classic layout for the reason that it feels like a dungeon and is simple as fuck.

Now compare the sequels. Dungeon Master 2 had this large, sprawling outdoor area around a central keep that had to be beaten to gain entry, Legend of Grimrock 2 copies this. Meanwhile, Eye of the Beholder 2 merely inverted the "tower" layout and introduced a couple of offshoots from it - first you go down, then you go up, then up another fork, then up the final fork. But they have to be done in a proper order so at the end of the day it's still a linear journey. I can't recall precisely whether DM2 also had a linear path (counterclockwise) through the outdoor areas, but look at LoG2. Once you beat a couple of linearly-set maps you reach the castle and find you can go in two directions at once. When you pick one of those paths you realize that it goes in three different directions. At that point the main objective becomes muddled - there's a castle over there, is that the end objective? But what about that pyramid over there, that looks ominous. And what's down south in the swamp?

It seems to me that Almost Human realized that their design was coming apart with such a large, sprawling world, so they put up a couple of puzzles to block access to the pyramid and the graveyard until players were good and ready. Unfortunately those two puzzles are the two most-bitched about puzzles in the entire game. Finding the clues to the graveyard puzzle is a feat and a half (and that's before people try to decipher them) and the key to the pyramid is located (as someone said so eloquantly) on the other end of the world map. Things are no longer as simple as before, the path is not so obvious.

Fortunately there is one other tradition that Almost Human kept aloft that saves the LoG2 campaign from being an utter clusterfuck: Puzzle segregation.

What that means is: Except for the big overarching main puzzle of the game, or puzzles needed to unlock new areas (see graveyard and pyramid above) the ingredients needed to solve a puzzle should all be in the same area. If you need three emeralds to open Zuul's refrigerator, they should all be located on the same floor as the fridge, or at best a sub-floor accessible from that floor. Failing that, hints should be provided as to their locations, like a note saying how one emerald was stolen by a raccoon which ran over to the junkyard, then you know you have to find one emerald in the junkyard. This sounds like Game Design 101, but you'd be surprised how many people (modders especially) fail at this.

Let's look at the basic layouts of DM, EoB and LoG again. It was rare that you had to venture to a lower floor to complete something you were doing on your current floor. (Can't speak 100% for DM on this case, but it's pretty solid for the other two.) EoB had clusters of floors, like how the first three floors were the sewers, the next three were the Dwarven Halls, then the Drow Halls, etc. While there were cases where you were moving between the floors willy-nilly, you were always within the clusters. It compartmentalizes the puzzles a bit, makes them a little easier for us humans to sort and deal with.

Almost Human, however, then went and did one thing that almost screws this up: The talking heads. They're scattered all over the island, and clicking on them gives various clues and hints. The problem was, they would often be speaking of puzzles that were very very far away, and often of puzzles the player hadn't encountered before, making their words often far too cryptic. Fortunately Almost Human made this as painless as possible by having this awesome automap that allows players to make extensive notes - an old-school solution to a problem that can quickly spiral out of control.

Which brings me back (finally!) to the Deranged Isle mod.

It tries to copy the LoG2 campaign. You start in an underground dungeon, you run into some tough fights, there's no clear path on how to progress through the dungeon, there's a boss monster in a large room to the north, and he holds the key to exit the level. There is nothing that prevents a new player from walking right in there and getting brutally murdered, no hints to say that he holds the key to the exit. This level is based solely on the "trial and error" principle, you inch along the hallways trying to find something that won't kill you outright. This "starter dungeon" takes far too long to beat, but eventually the party is strong enough to beat the boss and reach the surface, where a more relaxed LoG2-esque game awaits.

Except the author didn't follow the puzzle segregation rule.

I've given this mod 12 hours now, and I can say with certaintly that 2 hours of that time is me running around trying to figure out where to go and what to do. The reason for this is simple: Area accessibility is tied to the monsters being killed, not to levers, locks or pressure plates. There are no puzzles to speak of - I've found ONE puzzle in the entire mod, and the solution to it involves cheating the puzzle (you have to find a button outside the puzzle area that allows you to push the bricks through the grates). Otherwise it's just navigating the surroundings, killing the monsters and trying to find what has opened up. I have 3 keys with me right now that I have NO IDEA what open. I found a key in an underground excavation site that opened a door in the catacombs, 2 maps away! Right now I'm just standing here going "Now what?" This mod didn't get dumber - it just stays at a below-average level throughout.

So one possible answer as to why there aren't any decent mods out for LoG2 is this: Non-linear open-world settings like the one LoG2 offers are MUCH harder to do right than a basic downward-leading dungeon. And no one has managed to do that yet. It may take a few more months for someone to come along and pull it off, but until then people are better off twiddling their thumbs.

 

[cvv]

A well reasoned argument Unkillable Cat but I completely disagree.

It's still a linear journey, I can't recall precisely whether DM2 also had a linear path (counterclockwise) through the outdoor areas, but look at LoG2. Once you beat a couple of linearly-set maps you reach the castle and find you can go in two directions at once. When you pick one of those paths you realize that it goes in three different directions. At that point the main objective becomes muddled - there's a castle over there, is that the end objective? But what about that pyramid over there, that looks ominous. And what's down south in the swamp?

You can come from this angle at basically any non-linear RPG. That it's messy, a clusterfuck, not clear enough etc. But that's the whole point of a non-linear game. That's what people like about them.

Now, if you wanted to say you prefer linear design, that's perfectly fine. I also think there's nothing wrong with linear, quasi-linear or partly linear RPGs. Unlike many other Codexers, I might add, who bitch and whine at every opportunity they feel "railroaded". Which is basically everytime their game is not 100% percent open since the very get go. Which is retarded because afaik there's only one such game in the whole vidyagaim history and it's Gothic 3.

But there's nothing wrong with a non-linear RPG either. And I even think there's nothing wrong with a non-linear quasi-dungeon crawler like a LoG2. I don't think AH felt "their design was coming apart". As for the two puzzles you're talking about - I think the only problem people's expectations were confounded because they expected a segregated puzzle, is in the case of the pyramid puzzle. When I found out the staff is to be placed in the pyramid alcove I was like: "R U fucking kidding me." But as for the pieces of paper with the directions, I think they pretty easy to identify as a clue to the graveyard puzzle.

In short - the fault is not in the system but in the one individual puzzle. Fix that and there's no problem at all from where I'm standing at.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Just to be clear here, and to avoid any misunderstandings, I am not advocating lineararity in favour on non-lineararity in general. It's just that these dungeon crawlers seem to benefit more from a linear progression than a non-linear progression.

Kudos for Almost Human for trying to "break the mold", so to say, but it's clearly a tricky business to get it right.

 

[CyberWhale]

And...nothing. There are no decent or interesting Grimrock 2 mods out there...yet.

There is one that looks promising, but it changes too much, like adding a shop and such.

I suspected as much tbh. Even though LoG2 is a much better game than the first one it sold way, way worse and garnered much less attention overall. The modding scene was bound to be smaller as well.

Huge, huge shame.

I think of the biggest reason is because Komag has departed the modding scene to raise a family.

He was a huge person both in the Thief community and then the Grimrock community.

Just another reason for Valve to introduce paid mods - people like that could earn some money by doing things they love (and are good at).

 

[cvv]

Not sure even Komag could survive on LoG mods but that's definitely a great argument in favor of paid mods. That LoG1 overhaul was easily worth 10 euro.

 

[Redlands]

Not sure even Komag could survive on LoG mods but that's definitely a great argument in favor of paid mods. That LoG1 overhaul was easily worth 10 euro.

Except it isn't necessarily (a great argument in favour of paid mods, I mean; I've not played the overhaul in question).

Overhauls are (essentially) games that require another game, so:

• they're competing for customers not just with other overhauls of that game, but other games and their overhauls,
• they take longer to develop than simpler mods, so they're automatically in a worse position than simpler mods when it comes to earning money,
  
• they need more testing than other mods to ensure they run okay (otherwise you'd risk get a bad rep and at that stage you might as well have released it for free),
• if they're still working on it during active developer patching, they might get screwed if the developers make an alteration that affects the game's balance,
• if they delay to wait for all of the patches, they'll probably have lost a few potential buyers who have moved on to other games,
  
• if they want to use other mods in theirs, they'll not only need to get their express permission, but also quite likely have to either send quite a bit of your income their way or limit their market even further to the customers who bought that mod, and
  
• they might end up having to compete with the original game devs (releasing their own DLC/expansion pack/sequel) or other modders: I'm sure Blackthorne can attest to the potential problems of releasing a paid game right after a free game in the exact same genre came out to critical acclaim.

Even if the LoG1 overhaul was worth 10 euro (not having played it, I can't say for certain), that won't necessarily mean they'll get that on the marketplace. If you're going to go to all the effort of making an overhaul mod - with the idea of earning money and all the issues that can raise - then LoG2 and other smaller games probably aren't the place you'd want to focus your attention (even if you loved the game) solely for practical reasons. Additionally, under the Valve model, the vast majority of your efforts may be going to other companies, or you'll have had to raise your intended price to compensate and run the risk of nobody buying your mod at the price they see from their end.

From the consumer side, there are issues too:

• you have to pay money now, and you might get scammed into paying for some piece of shit,
• you might have to pay even more money for any other mods this mod relies upon, with the risk that at some point something is going to break badly with no bugfixes, or not get to use the ones you do want because the makers are against paid mods in principle,
  
• you might completely miss out on playing a good mod because the store finds the shitty small mods much more profitable and so push those,
• you're now in competition too - for the attention of good modders to make content for more niche games you like best vs mass-market stuff - and on the back-foot.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Except Komag's "Master Quest" mod for LoG1 isn't an overhaul - it's more of an alternate take on the main campaign. Some parts are better, some parts are not, and there's something about fighting a snail with a crown that appeals to players, it seems.

Anyway, I'm putting LoG2 away for the time being. I was wrong - there IS a mod out there that's worth playing - if you're a certain kind of player, that is.

But let me spare a few words on the "Deranged Isle" mod first.

Deranged Isle tries its best to be like the LoG2 campaign; covering a vast area, non-linear, plenty of things to see and do. However, it's bogged down by a lack of cohesion. There are too many instances where there are no clues to the puzzles, but solving the puzzles doesn't always yield an obvious reward. Having to go look around to find what that button did gets really tiring really fast.

The mod's biggest problem, however, is that it just isn't finished. The author announced the mod in January and released it in March, and yet here I come along in early May and break it on the first try. I managed to get myself into a situation that the author simply hadn't thought of that made the mod unwinnable for me. Yay. The mod favours combat more over puzzles (in fact I only counted 3 real puzzles in the mod up to the point I quit).

Earlier I said that the author's stupidity was the undoing of this mod. I was wrong. It was his inexperience. He's still working on it, and I hope he manages to make something decent out of it. But for now, the only verdict I can give is "avoid" with a "wait and see" somewhat loosely attached.

---

The other mod bears the pointlessly long title of "The Legend of the Lost Kingdom of Kahrak'arul" and at first offers some goodness like the LoG2 main campaign. However that quickly turns sour. First and foremost, this mod is TOUGH. One of the first enemies you'll come across is a Mimic chest, have fun kiting that for 10 minutes while whittling away at it with branches and rocks. A little later on there's a small graveyard that almost begs to be dug up - except one of the graves contains one of those robed serpent monsters that served as endgame monsters in LoG2. There are some really tough fights in this mod, but at first they're only challenging from a strategic point of view - later on however the author opts for pure HP bloat in every damn monster you come across, with the most extreme example being an ogre with 6000 HP!

But in many other ways this mod is an exact opposite to Deranged Isle. The writing is good and humourous and even breaks the fourth wall a couple of times by referencing other games, even older dungeon crawlers like Eye of the Beholder 2 and the Black Crypt. In fact, the mod borrows heavily from EoB2. The plot is that your party has been tasked with finding a lost dwarven kingdom by the Archmage Khelben Khendrack, who remains in contact with you by a magic coin teleporting magic scrolls to your position. And while the start of the mod looks like it offers the non-linear gameplay of LoG2, the game quickly pulls a bait-and-switch and becomes completely linear. Early on you find a central hub with 5 directions; the one you came from, 1 that leads to the (locked) entrance of the lost kingdom, and then 3 other branches that lead to a swamp, a wild forest and a graveyard, respectively. And they must be done in that order. The swamp map is first, only a single map with a few interesting puzzles (and an enemy people won't forget) but then there's the dark forest and the ruins underneath it that stretch on forever - I counted 8 maps before I hit bottom and my travels starting moving upwards again. The graveyard section is only slightly better, with at least 9 maps to trudge through before finally getting the final key, but at least the scenery changes and a swanky-looking pyramid appears half-way through. This setup, however, creates a new problem for the mod - the mod is so linear that one would it thinik it was a corridor crawler, and if your party isn't good enough to handle whatever situation is currently impeding your progress, there's nothing that can be done about it - harvesting every scrap of XP and finding most of the secrets in an attempt to score some better loot is what has kept me going this far. That, and I abused the Save/Load feature so much I might as well have been playing Braid.

But what almost kills this mod is not the tough battles, or the lack of healing crystals (they are few and far between) or the lacklustre equipment. No - it's the puzzles. Where Deranged Isle only had a handful of them, TLOTLKOK (what a mouthful!) has them by the fucktons. Many of them are clever and provide worthy challenges, but it's the bad ones that really mess everything up. Two of them in particular come to mind. There's a puzzle where there are 12 pressure plates of which only 4 of them must be weighed down to open the door to progress further. Even after spending 5 minutes trying to figure it out and with the in-game hints provided, I was no closer to what was being asked of me. So I looked up a walkthrough and I was STILL no closer to what the logic was behind the puzzle. But later on comes the killing blow - 2 puzzles back-to-back where items must be thrown through teleporters to weigh down pressure plates in remote areas. The first one makes NO DAMN SENSE, even with a walkthrough in hand, while the other one makes sense once (if?) you realize its "gimmick".

But at the same time I get the feeling that this was a LoG1 mod that was just ported over to LoG2. There are no chests to dig up, no essences or power stones to collect, monsters don't respawn after a certain while, the only firearms ammo you get is from dead ratlings, there's no beach (or turtles) and no teleport hubs to help players get around the isle better. This mod seriously got on my nerves sometimes for having me need to take 10 minutes to kill a single spider or going through 2 "puzzles" where I do nothing but wait for walls/gates to open and close.

So my verdict for TLOTLKOK is "meh" - it's fun if you're starved for LoG2 action, but frankly there are better LoG1 mods out there than this (and that's not a typo). That last bit is probably the saddest part about the whole thing - currently this mod is the best LoG2 mod released so far, but only due to the competition still being in various stages of development. Play it at your own risk - when it's good, it's good. When it's bad, it's bad.

EDIT: Update - when I wrote this late last night, I had not yet finished the mod, merely gotten past the point of needing four keys to access the Dwarven Stronghold. I thought I'd have a look what lay beyond. What I found were death traps - lots and lots of death traps. Take a false step? 2500 damage per party member. Pull the wrong lever? 2500 damage per party member. Solve a sliding block puzzle only to be put through a gauntlet of fireballs, followed IMMEDIATELY by being surrounded by 4 fast-moving, fast attacking monsters? No thanks. Not even Eye of the Beholder 3 was this cheesy. This downgrades the mod from "meh" to "not recommended". If you want custom content, stick to LoG1 instead.

 

[Arulan]

Antti Tiihonen of Almost Human on "designing a modern retro dungeon crawler".