<span class="bold">Legend of Grimrock</span> The law states that at the summit of mount Grimrock, all crimes are forgiven when prisoners are thrown into its pit without exits. That's not exactly what anyone would call merciful and it is basically a hypocritically masked death sentence, but navigating trough Grimrock's depths while searching for an escape route is simply the only chance your team of four adventurers has to survive.
The reasons why the four have been imprisoned is not relevant anymore; you just need to know that, during character creation, you can fully customize them by choosing among four races (the versatile Humans, the agile Lizardmen, the extremely strong and sturdy but almost blind Minotaurs and the arcane versed Inscetoids) and three classes, namely Fighter, Rogue and Wizard. Each of those classes has access to six different skills, upgradable from level 0 to level 50 by spending the skill points you obtain after leveling up. Realistically speaking, there are barely enough points to maximize two of them, and since each point makes a significant difference (being that in sheer power, special attacks, armor proficiency, better defense and new spells) you are clearly encouraged to choose your favorites and specialize on them, so even if the choices are many you should restrict them as much as possible and have a party of specialists capable of covering all situations; this is not a game for “solo” runs.
Everything is based on four fundamental attributes -Strength, Dexterity, Vitality and Wisdom- that you can set at the beginning; all of them work logically and their effect are immediately easy to notice, yet I didn't understand why Dexterity influenced the aim values of melee weapons only and Strength influences power of both close and ranged attacks.
Projectiles are infallible, and I found this particularly exploitable with a Minotaur: many think they are excellent warriors, while in truth they are much better suited as rogues, since they paradoxically won't have to improve their already awful Dexterity while in the meantime taking full advantage of their enormous Strength, becoming perfect snipers.
Your objective is to descend through the 13 level of a single, giant dungeon to find an exit; the system is grid-based, so you will move from tile to tile with WASD and Q and E for turning, using the mouse to control your team offensive moves and interactions with the inventory and the environment. This breaks the usual first person control standards, but it is extremely simple to manage and actually also very comfortable just after a couple of minutes.
The endless stone walls of the dungeon may feel visually boring, but the clever design abundantly makes up for it, supplying your navigation by providing a challenging set of puzzles, a good number of monsters (each one with its own peculiarities and unique tactics) and an immense amount of secrets.
Remember that this game was made to revive and modernize the genre while keeping all that made the old school great, so there will be no hand-holding. You will have to find clues and use your own brain to understand where and when to use them, there will never be any pointer and you will have to intelligently manage your limited inventory both to avoid overburden and to keep your food in check, as the characters will not survive long without it.
Don't be afraid of all this, though; Legend of Grimrock is a game that respects the players' intelligence by challenging them and punishing them only for outright dumb moves and not with gratuitous and artificial difficulty spikes leading only to frustration (like some other praised modern title or the most cruel games of old): Legend of Grimrock strongly opposes today's AAA standards of mindless, always successful actions with a balanced and calculated gameplay well suited for everyone, provided they actually want to play rather than let the game run by itself.
That is why I loved it and I can absolutely recommend it to everyone: after the tremendous decline of the videogame industry, started with the last generation of consoles (I mean Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii, for those that still call Xbox one and PS4 “next gen” rather than “current”), almost made me quit videogames altogether because I simply didn't find the vast majority of them good any more, games like this started to bring back real fun in the media, stimulating intelligence and curiosity and discarding the “games as pure numb, effortless relax” or “game as a movie” trend and making players with the “old” mentality once again rediscover the pleasure of playing a quality title and remember why they loved videogames in the first place.
Great work, Almost Human!
