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[LTK]

So here's Legend of Grimrock, a dungeon crawler of the old school with a new, high-res coat of paint. It involves customizing your party using different races, classes, skills and equipment, and also square-based movement, saving and loading at any time, real-time combat with cooldowns for attacks, fiendish puzzles, falling down pits, hidden switches in the walls, and carrying torches around.

It's also really hard - the combat as well as the puzzles - and incredibly addictive. You really should go play it if you enjoy any sort of RPG, it's only like 13 bucks on gog.com. The game has a degree of quality that I'm not used to seeing; not only does it look great, but it runs smoothly, responds quickly, and there are almost no graphical glitches anywhere - which is essential if you're going to be scrutinizing every wall for symbols or switches.

I'm hacking my way through the dungeons with a party of a minotaur fighter specializing in unarmed and athletics, a human fighter specializing in armor and swords, an insectoid mage specializing in ice and earth magic, and a human rogue specializing in thrown and missile weapons. Skill progression is spot on, and so far I've been able to handle every monster the game throws at me, although not without retrying a couple of times.

Come on, go play it!

I knew I might have been playing too long when I closed the game and found the next day's QC already posted.

[smack that isaiah]

I think the game looks great, and I've been wanting to get it since TotalBiscuit's WTF Is? on it came out.  As soon as a credit card issue gets fixed, I'll be grabbing it. 

There is one question I have about it that I've not heard about (admittedly, I haven't researched into it at all): Is there permadeath like in other roguelikes?  Is it an option?  Personally, I do enjoy permadeath in games--it increases my investment in the game, makes it slightly more realistic imo, and makes me really really upset when I die.

[LTK]

Hardly. Your party members can die, but that doesn't mean their corpse drops on the spot; they can still walk along and carry items. There are periodical save points, about once every level, where you can restore your entire party to full health. Plus, you can save and load at any time, which is completely un-roguelike-like, but you can simply not use it in order to give yourself a greater challenge. I don't recommend it though; getting surrounded by two or more monsters usually means certain death, and you'd hate to get sent all the way back up to the previous floor.

Finished it, by the way. Took me about 14 hours and only got half of the iron doors open. It's been a long time since I binged on a game so hard.

[snalin]

Just bought it, got to the fifth or sixth floor last night, the first one where the walls are a different kind. It's really fun - well paced and challenging, with interesting mechanics and skill point selection. The only thing I really miss is a quick save function - getting cornered is BAD, and you often lose a character or two, even if it's just one monster that's got you stuck in a hallway, and the trek back to the save point is a bit far. I also suspect that the character that dies might lose some XP over it - I noticed that one of my front line guys where a couple of hundred XP down compared to the other guys after dying. Not sure, though.

This game actually remind me a lot of the first Diablo. I think it's a combination of the sound effects in the background (there's one in particular that really does this), and exploration where you really don't see far ahead of you at all. Anyways I really recommend it, it's easily the best game I've played this far this year.

[schimmy]

I'm in roughly the same place. It's an interesting game. I tend to be pretty rubbish at puzzles, and there's been a couple that have had my stumped for a while, but I've yet to be actually frustrated by one. It always feels fun even when you're failing terribly. And I fail terribly a lot.
On that note, the game wouldn't really work if there was permadeath - it's pretty much impossible to not have your characters die repeatedly. There's too many enemies that appear from nowhere and swarm you.

[LTK]

On the level where tapestries hang from some of the walls, I got very frustrated at one puzzle where I failed to find the clue to solving it. It was impossible without.

(click to show/hide)

Turns out you can rip off the tapestries to reveal alcoves and buttons. ARGH. I could have deduced the possibility, but in a way it's bad design; at no other point does attacking the wall have consequence.

Another thing, kind of funny: I'm always hesitant to use single-use weapons like bombs because I'm worried I might need them against a hypothetical future monster that I can't otherwise defeat. And I always had them in my rogue's inventory because I thought that bonuses for thrown weapons applied to them. (Still not sure if they do.) Plus, my rogue was always carrying a bow or crossbow in one hand, and arrows in the other, so removing either one in favor of bombs would severely cripple my ranged offensive ability. Now I completed the game with about a dozen of every type of bomb, derp.

I haven't really experimented beyond the normative equipment distribution among hands. My fighter uses a weapon and a shield (the minotaur kept one hand empty), my rogue had either two throwing weapons or a bow and arrows, and my mage was carrying two magic artifacts at all times. It's possible to dual wield melee weapons - my fighter carried a fire sword in his off hand until it ran out of charges - but there's no advantage to it; the cooldown for attacks applies to both hands. If you use two different weapons you're just sacrificing the use of the most efficient of the two. At one point I gave a spear to my mage so he could attack from the back row, but that just meant I could cast spells less often. It's a shame, really, there's potential for some interesting gameplay variety there.

[LTK]

I just found a reason to replay this game: There is a secret that allows you to play as Toorum! Pretty hard to find, though. Once you've fulfilled a certain criterium, you can start a new game and enter the name 'Toorum' for the first character, then press Enter. You'll be in for an interesting game.