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Legend of Grimrock 2

Unkillable Cat

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For a laugh I thought I'd have another look at the LoG2 modding scene, see if there's anything there worth a look. Can't say there's anything there that immediately catches my eye, but I did download and play a mod called "Isle of Dagor".

This one starts with the "castaways on the beach" trope and takes it from there, but the mod is heavily story-based, telling the story of the sole survivor of the previous lot of castaways and how he met the natives and proceeded to take control of them and the island. How do I know this? I've found over 40 pages of exposition - and my party is only Level 5. There's a LOT of reading involved here. Unfortunately the pace of the mod doesn't justify that. I played for a total of 4 hours yesterday and just barely managed to reach Level 5. Monsters are few and far between, the gameworld keeps changing from a small overland area to an even smaller underground area and back again. Each area is locked with a Round Key lock, and as I progressed further these locked doors got more common, to the point that I could see the next locked door from the position of the last one! You would think this was Tollbooth Isle.

But what made me stop playing last night (and is outright killing any interest for me to try again) are the puzzles. They start out alright (in fact the first dungeon has some damn clever puzzles for such a small area) but when I reached a small hub I quickly found a puzzle that requires me to learn to count in a foreign language, another that needs to be solved during the proper time of day, one where a lightbolt needs to be directed through an underground dungeon by meddling with levers in the middle of the dungeon (meaning time wasted with a trial and error solution) and finally there's one with a whoppin' 25 pressure plates! Most of these are end-game grade puzzles, not something you throw at players in the "opening stages" of the game.

This mod is a bust. The pace is too slow and the sequence of things is all wrong. Not recommended.
 

Unkillable Cat

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Hang on, here's a mod that's actually quite good.

"The Mountain" is presented as an unofficial expansion pack to LoG2's main campaign, starting in the swamps to the south and expanding from there. It's a high-level adventure but without all that sweet loot you'd gathered throughout the first game, but at least all the spells are there.

I am really impressed by the puzzles. Some of them are just slight variations on old and familar puzzles, while others are brand new and strike a good balance between challenging and solvable.

I do see two problems with this mod, however. The first one is that the challenge of the mod is raised by simply HP-bloating all the monsters. Even a fight with those walking twigs can take forever as a result.

The second problem is that this is merely the first part of several. Part 2 is in development as we speak.

But yeah - unless something spectacularly wrong crops up in this mod, this will be the first LoG2 mod that I recommend.
 
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Unkillable Cat

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I spoke too soon. I've reached the last steps of "The Mountain" mod - and I'm this close to giving up. It's not that I don't know what I'm supposed to do - it's just that the puzzle has over 7000 possible solutions and nowhere near enough in-game hints to narrow that down to a sensible number.

The puzzle is supposed to recount the tale of when the Emperor met the Four Super Sayans and in what order he met them. Ingame this means a 5x5 grid of squares that have moveable walls and movable teleporters. Using only ten buttons to setup this elaborate puzzle, you're supposed to line up the walls AND the teleporters in their correct position to advance through the puzzle. It's hard enough to see what you're doing when there are teleporters and walls blocking your sight, the feeble hints provided simply aren't good enough. It took me 20 minutes + 5 minutes of online search just to figure out where the first wall+teleporter were supposed to be, narrowing down my problem to a 4x4 grid. Another 30 minutes follow where I try several possible solutions - but none of them seem to work. That's the other problem with this puzzle - I have no idea whether I'm on the right track or not.

But anyway, to get this far I had to spend too much time doing two things - trying to deciper clues in Bad English, and killing HP-bloated monsters. Yes, the author is not good at English, yet he tries to write clues that are puns or wordplays. *shudder* It only makes things worse. Here's an example. The 4 Super Sayans are nicknamed The Runner, The Patient, The Evasive and The Tenacious, and each one has a puzzle related to his nickname to reach his tomb, and they're all in the same outdoor map. While all of the puzzles have in-game hints, and the game is gracious enough to allow the player to solve the puzzles in any order, the hints will only be helpful if the player goes through the tombs in a set order. Yes, the hint to solve some of the puzzles is given AFTER the puzzle is solved. *facepalm*

The Runner needs to get from Point A to Point B ASAP, for example - except it takes long enough to find Point B. The in-game hint for that is located in the tomb of The Tenacious, which in order of discovery is found after the tomb of The Runner. Worse than that, if you open the path to the tomb of The Runner, you close off a critical junction in that mess of a maze that this particular overland map is, meaning you need to find another way around. BUT, in order to reach Point B of The Runner's puzzle, you first have to solve the puzzle of The Patient. For that puzzle I guessed that I only needed to sit on a pressure plate for a set amount of time - yet it wasn't working. It wasn't until I looked online that I discovered that I need to place the Time Piece (a.k.a. the pocketwatch, found VERY EARLY ON in the mod) on a nearby pedestal before I can solve this puzzle. And where's the in-game hint for that? I don't have a bloody clue, but I found it online and it's such a mess of a clue (and English grammar) that it's easily dismissible. *sigh*.

More? There's a room full of pressure plates and a rock on one of them. The only hint for this room is the word "spirals". Have fun figuring that one out.

And on top of all this, I have to spend 5 minutes to kill a monster because it's HP-bloated to hell - and most of them respawn. This mod is good in giving you nice gear when you finally reach the "Maze of Wisdom", but until then you have to make do with crap weapons and about a dozen Meteor Showers to the face of every single monster you come across.

And once you clear the Maze of Wisdom you end up in that crapfest of a puzzle I'm dealing with, and from what I can tell there's at least one more map before the end (not counting the optional "secret map" that I haven't even found) and that has a similarly annoying puzzle. Would it have killed the author to just skip a puzzle or two? And he's writing a Part 2 to this mod? Cant' say I'm interested, sorry.

Nevertheless, this is the best LoG2 I've come across so far. It's brilliant in parts, but SO TEDIOUS inbetween those parts. Keep that in mind.
 

Unkillable Cat

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yeah, all those puzzles were a tad too much for me in Grimrock 1, fear Grimrock 2 would enhance my anger

The main campaign isn't bad in regards to puzzles (with a few exceptions) but I strongly recommend that you use the note-making system of the automap to keep tabs of all the clues, as they're scattered all across the maps.

Traversing the environment seems to be the primary focus of LoG2. How to reach certain areas, interpreting the 2D automap in a 3D environment, etc. The game is fun in that way.
 

Gord

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There's certainly more puzzles in LoG2 compared to 1 (but then the whole game world is bigger).
However, the focus has changed a bit, there's no puzzle that's extremely critical of timing and reflexes, as there was in LoG1.
The ones where you do need some timing are generally easier.
Also several puzzles are optional, or can be postponed for some time as the game is less linear.
 

adddeed

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I hate puzzles.

Give me immersive world and stat building / difficult enemies. I hate pushing blocks around like an asshole.
Game is basically a puzzle game with RPG elements. Definitely not for you if you hate puzzles.
 

Unkillable Cat

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I'll be damned - I actually found a LoG2 mod worth a damn.

"Crashed" is a tiny little file (not even half a megabyte) that follows the LoG2 trope to a tee. What it really contains is a massive campaign that goes a long way towards rivaling the LoG2 campaign. The gameworld is set up in a manner that gives this campaign a "Metroidvania" vibe to it - you're free to explore in 3 directions from the starting map, which then branch off into various choices themselves. You'll have to skip certain parts of some maps until you're either powerful enough to tackle them or have found the necessary equipment/skills. This isn't a keyhunt - it feels much smoother than that. Not only are there "secrets" but also "riddles" to be found and solved - seasoned LoG2 players will have a fun time cracking these.

The fights are also well-balanced. The only monster I've encountered that feels "buffed" are the rock monsters - those things really pack a wallop, and make me question whether I'm in the right place at the right *time*.

I'm 8 hours in so far with a Lvl 8 party and having an absolute blast. The only point of criticism (short of the fact that the crashed ship is not on the beach, but inland) is that it's kinda slow to start. Nevertheless, this looks to be the best LoG2 mod out there to date.

One other thing, for those that have been wondering where all the good LoG2 mods are - there are two problems that answer that. The first one is that the devs didn't release all the needed files for hardcore-dungeonmaking until February this year, so people have been spending time getting familiar with it before "getting to work". The second one is that the lynchpin of the LoG community, Komag, has pretty much retired. Komag made the "Master Quest" mod for LoG1 which is THE must upvoted LoG1 mod of all time - for good reason. Komag also had a large say in keeping the Thief community together in the first 10 years or so after T2 was released before moving onto Grimrock, and then moving on to modding a family in RL. No one has taken up his mantle in the LoG communtiy, and as a result they're a little scattered and uncoordinated - which at least slows down the public aspect of any LoG2 mod development.

This mod gives me hope - that the best has yet to come.
 

Unkillable Cat

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And...finished. Or to be more precise, I opted out of the optional endgame content and just quit when I had the chance.

"Crashed" is a little shorter than the main campaign and uses no new assets - everything's recycled unchanged from the original campaign. You'll see some different and interesting bossfights, but otherwise this is the LoG2 campaign minus the pyramid - or at least I didn't play long enough to find a dungeon that used the pyramid settings. Most of the optional content involves 3 tombs, and I've had my fill of undead in LoG.

The goal is the same - find the four elemental essences to open up the passage to the endgame portal. What's different here is that there's no Island Master, no Leprechaun, no power cubes that need to be merged into the Essences - these stages are all skipped. The optional content involves finding a second set of essences and turning them into Balance essences so that another portal appears and gives you the True Ending.

The puzzles were all of the variety that they were easy to understand, but left open the gap of the player needing to figure out how to precisely solve them. Only one set of puzzles proved to be too elusive - there are 4 Elemental Forges, which upgrade certain items when they're placed on the forge and it's powered up by the correct Essence. Turning on a forge gives you cryptic scrolls - these are actually clues as to what items you're supposed to put in the forge. This "puzzle" has absolutely no in-game hint or help to go with it, and I didn't even figure out until after I'd stopped playing and looked the mod up online.

Another point worth mentioning is that the mod assumes that you've played the LoG2 campaign previously and are familiar with the spells and recipes - because no spell scrolls or recipes can be found in this one.

So, with the exception of one minor optional puzzle being vague, this mod is on par with the original LoG2 campaign and therefore the best mod I've found so far for LoG2.
 

CryptRat

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I am a few hours into the LoG2 and it's awesome. The first one was a correct Dungeon Master clone (with some cool puzzles) but so far this one has one of the best exploration I've ever seen.
 
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Unkillable Cat

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I am a few hours into the LoG2 and it's awesome. The first one was a correct Dungeon Master clone (with some cool puzzles) but so far this one has of the best exploration I've ever seen.

LoG2 is trying to follow Dungeon Master 2 - large outdoor area surrounding a castle to explore before moving into the castle for the endgame content.
 

CryptRat

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LoG2 is trying to follow Dungeon Master 2 - large outdoor area surrounding a castle to explore before moving into the castle for the endgame content.
In Dungeon Master 2 I got bored looting axes to sell to the shop and I dropped the game before entering the main dungeon. I keep a horrible memory of this game (I haven't finished Chaos Strike Back either, but it was good).
 

RuySan

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Dungeon Master 2 was a disappointing sequel that was a few years too late. LoG2 came right after the first and managed to be twice as good. I love this game.
 

cvv

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Well DM2 was old-school, that's why it was a flop in an era of a lightspeed technological progress in PC gaming. But it was otherwise a fantastic game, far exceeding the prequel in complexity, size, difficulty and features. Thing is being old-school is not objectively bad, LoG was a stellar success precisely because it was old-school.
 

RuySan

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I honestly don't remember if it was a commercial flop or not. I only remember buying it and getting bored, and i was already very much into rpg's at the time.
 

Jarpie

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Well DM2 was old-school, that's why it was a flop in an era of a lightspeed technological progress in PC gaming. But it was otherwise a fantastic game, far exceeding the prequel in complexity, size, difficulty and features. Thing is being old-school is not objectively bad, LoG was a stellar success precisely because it was old-school.
Although I never finished neither CSB or DM2, CSB was clearly superior from the map and puzzle design.
 

cvv

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Well DM2 was old-school, that's why it was a flop in an era of a lightspeed technological progress in PC gaming. But it was otherwise a fantastic game, far exceeding the prequel in complexity, size, difficulty and features. Thing is being old-school is not objectively bad, LoG was a stellar success precisely because it was old-school.
Although I never finished neither CSB or DM2, CSB was clearly superior from the map and puzzle design.

Dunno, by prequel I meant DM1, never played CSB.
 

Jarpie

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Well DM2 was old-school, that's why it was a flop in an era of a lightspeed technological progress in PC gaming. But it was otherwise a fantastic game, far exceeding the prequel in complexity, size, difficulty and features. Thing is being old-school is not objectively bad, LoG was a stellar success precisely because it was old-school.
Although I never finished neither CSB or DM2, CSB was clearly superior from the map and puzzle design.

Dunno, by prequel I meant DM1, never played CSB.

You should check out Chaos Strikes Back, it makes DM feel like a tutorial dungeon in comparison.
 

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