So I played a bit of Legends of Grimrock 2 this weekend and in my opinion it is a really nice game but somehow something is missing.
The graphics are really beautiful and the party creation and combat are exactly what I expected and hoped for. And also the puzzles I encountered up until now were quite nice.
And I had a lot of fun playing and I will have fun playing the rest of the game but somehow this little extra which makes me want the play the game without a stop is missing. It is hard to describe, but when a game really gets to me I don't want to stop and here after like 2h I stop since I don't feel the need to continue just now.
So I was thinking about this the last days and probably the "problem" lies within the graphic and the settings. It is strange, but when I played the first one, I started the game, looked at the dungeon walls and thought "Hey these look just like the dungeon walls an Lands of Lore 1, just not that pixeled". It was like coming back to a place you love. And this little bit is now missing in the second game and while I still think it is an awesome game it makes me a bit sad.

So how is your experience with the second game?

Copy paste: Like i said, it's overwhelming the amount of places you can go and stuff to do (the first one was more "linear") the combat is somewhat harder and i have to say that the lack of arrows enchantment is a poor decision.

My experience has been different. The first game was entertaining, but felt a bit monotonous. Some of the secrets were really "out there" and seemed extremely random when it came to natural discovery (like: remove a torch here and a door will temporarily open halfway across the map). I consulted online walkthroughs to find a significant number of the better rewards in the game there after clearing all the levels on my own. The combat in it was really quite silly because most of it could be won by dancing around enemies.

LoG 2 is significantly more varied with locales. Enemies are often very challenging - sometimes frustratingly so - but that just makes the victories much sweeter. Many of them use mechanics that discourage circle strafing them to death and trying to rely on it will regularly get you pinned in a corner. The amount of puzzles and secrets is absolutely astonishing in LoG 2, and while a lot of them are fairly easy and mundane switch and pressure plate puzzles, some of them are really ingenious. Almost any puzzle that requires some outside the box thinking to solve has a hint provided somewhere in the game to crack it. So they're not dependent on excessive amounts of trial and error or random chance to stumble upon a solution. I looked online for help to find a secret that I knew was there but which I wasn't able to crack due to vague hints (or a lack thereof) only a couple of times, and only once was it for a puzzle that was required to advance through a dungeon (and in the end it made sense and I felt stupid for not figuring it out myself, because there was an obvious clue that I missed). Another great thing about puzzle/secret rewards in LoG 2; many of them aren't unique and those that are aren't significantly more powerful than the alternatives you'll find. So if you can't manage to discover the solution to a few puzzles, you won't suffer for it if you skip them.

Now, I've felt the desire to take a break a couple of times as well, but mainly because I wanted to get back to the game later with a fresh mind to work on puzzles I didn't manage to solve, or because I'd just finished a dungeon/one of those frustratingly hard fights and/or twitch puzzles after reloading my save game a couple dozen times. I don't consider that a weak point of the game though. It's good that it tests your skills and perseverance regularly.

True. Some of the puzzles don't have any tips. But the game is still awesome :D

I thought LoG 1 was much worse when it came to tips for the (non-essential) secrets. There were only a couple where you had any clues to work with and even some of those weren't very clear (I distinctly recall a note telling you had to take X steps from a position in a room where there was torchlight and throw a rock in a certain direction from there, but the position you were supposed to cast the rock from wasn't nearly as light as some other positions in the same room so I spent over an hour fumbling around before I finally got it right, even though I didn't do anything wrong with the hint.

The hints for secrets in LoG 2 are much clearer and much more clever once you do figure out what the hints actually mean, so you shouldn't need as much trial and error. And they often blatantly taunt you saying "look at this cool stuff here! There is a secret.. can you find out how to get to it?" or even just putting a plaque with some descriptive text clearly hinting that there's something you can do there. In LoG 1 the secrets were much more secret, but it often meant you could miss out on large parts of the map. Which already wasn't very big, so that was somewhat disappointing to me.

True, but LoG1 had less annoying puzzles that were related to progress. Not secret areas.
Still, LoG 1 & 2 are awesome and a little bit of frustration because of some puzzles is not that bad :)

Now that I'm almost through, one more point of criticism.

Overall I think the game could be shorter- perhaps half the size. To be brutally honest, I don't care much how the game ends now, because things got too dull and repetitive for my taste in the later part of the game. If the developers spent more time on the story, some puzzles as well as the overall experience, this would be 6/5 stars for me ;)

Those who haven't played LoG 2 yet, don't get me wrong though - the game is fantastic and a must have, and the price is more than fair (I would've paid more for it).

Hoping to see LoG 3!

I think that they haven't spent much attention on storytelling in order to leave the focus entirely on the dungeon crawling and puzzle mechanics. Sadly, in many games the story is inserted as an afterthought. When a game tries to present its story as something important while it wasn't built to support that, the story almost always ends up being disappointing. I actually love RPGs with a good story with lots of interesting characters and an intriguing plot, but a dungeon crawler doesn't lend itself well to such things and that's what LoG is.

This game gives no illusions about trying to tell you an epic story. It's a very small and simple one, but the premise is actually not bad at all. Your reason for coming to the island doesn't actually start to dawn on you until you see the "easy way out" ending cutscene of the game. When I saw it, it encouraged me to keep digging to find the solution for the proper ending, which wasn't too difficult as I had already explored all the dungeons and only needed to find a few more items from fights I previously found too difficult (though actually finding the hidden shrine was tricky and could have used better hints). The mini plotdump you get at the proper ending was well worth the extra effort in my opinion. Everything you'd gone through so far made sense. And it worked well for this particular type of game.

I recommend you don't give up when you get to the easy escape and try to uncover the true ending as well, even if it means you have to consult a walkthrough to overcome the last challenges. One warning: the (proper) final fight is REALLY hard. It's not exactly unfair and doesn't require you to abuse stupid gimmicks to exploit a weakness you couldn't know about or anything like that, but it almost requires super-human alertness and perfect movement to avoid dying. Bring lots of potions or you will have to reload very, very often.

I have to agree that the story is not one of the stronger points of the game, but I have to admit I liked the size of the game. For me the first game felt short, but this one had a great lenght and I enjoyed that :-)

Just finished the game. 25 hours of pure fun.

I loved the first one and this is far better than it. For me is the best game of the year.

Thanks a lot, "Almost Human".

I love the game but the Dungeon Editor is just as good as in LOG1

I made a beach dungeon called "SURVIVAL BEACH" uploaded it to Nexus Mods/ Grimrock, picture attached

pretty happy with it and a lot of fun

.....
The only thing i care about... Is there a shop in it to pawn all the loot you amass like the old dungeon master series it tries to take on.
Without that simple style of updated interactive progression in your tools it's just anouther railroad shooter to me.

Not sure if that's a question or why did you quote me but no, you can't sell the loot therefore this probably isn't a game for you.

I was really disappointed playing the game after a while.

It started with a lot of promise - I liked the party customization, the graphics and atmospheric effects. The first few encounters and puzzles were fun, and some of the levels were really rewarding to play. I particularly liked the diversity of playing in the open, compared to the dark gloomy dungeons - it was refreshing to take a dip in the sea after a long haul through the early dungeons!

After about 15 hours though, I started to get really tired of the insanely hard puzzles. I mean, some of them seemed to be designed to be so hard to solve that you needed to be one of the developers to understand what the player is supposed to do. I think that providing some obscure clues in lore books that the player can pick up would have been a huge help, rather than just leaving the player to work it out. It felt like a cheap way of making the game 'challenging' to give no help whatsoever.

The Ai's combat tactics also grated after a while, with their only strategy appearing to be flanking maneuvers to intentionally block the party in, and then just hack at them. Sure, some of the bosses were easy after you died several times, and had the hindsight of room design/strength of opponents - but the constant reloading took away any continuity, and rather than an RPG it began to feel like laboriously playing tetris.

Sadly, I abandoned the game after about 20 hours, because I really hated the unimmersive combat (load-die-load-die-load-die gets really boring after a while), and some of the puzzles were impossible without constantly checking online for solutions. I didn't get to the end, because quite frankly, it felt like it was going to be a lot of hard work to get there, and I just couldn't be bothered. That's really sad.

I know I'm in a minority here, but in my book, games are supposed to be challenging and fun, but not infuriatingly hard work!!