I'm running this game now, and all I feel (level 4 completed) is one huge disappointment (well, maybe just big).

First of all, I don't find it interesting. Fights are not interesting. Story is almost non existent.

Some puzzles are nice (I liked some teleport puzzles), but there are some that are just stupid - I can't find much worse thing in a game that puzzle which can be just not noticed. How the hell I could know there's reversed pillar puzzle?

Magic is stupid, why the hell I should do the same thing again and again.

I wouldn't notice there are any skills if I didn't get some point I need to use.

And most dumb thing in this game - time puzzles. Some were impossible to solve, because in HQ settings your heroes are moving slower than without HQ settings.

The only one thing in this game that I like are graphics, the game looks very good.

I was waiting for this game, and when I finally sat down to play it, it's just not very good.

I liked every single bit of it, and I haven't really played dungeon crawlers that much before (last time with my 486 DX2 somewhere in the 90's). I'm a huge fan of Wolf3d and every other block based simple game there is, I just can't get myself interested in nowadays games too much, so I'm really waiting the Dungeon Editor to come out for the GOG version too :)

I couldn't disagree more with the OP. I love this game (level 3 Spiders aside). I find it to be a great indie dungeon crawl and can not wait for the level editor to be released. Are there things I would change - absolutely. Are there things that are annoying - absolutely. The game is just fun and those things just don't matter so much.

I would like to see the ability to add more traits (maybe every 3 levels or so) limiting to only 2 seems a waste

Magic is implemented the same as melee or ranged fighting (you have to click them over and over as well) However, being able to set a default spell and clicking once would be nice.

These are just tweaks to what is a great first attempt on an indie dungeon crawl.

Level 6 here.

I should mention that "Major disappointment" doesn't mean that I think this game is bad, it means that imo this game is above average (but not very good, as I hoped it will be).

It has outstanding graphics, and I must say that fight is getting a little bit better later.

But I think this game is badly designed. It's dungeon crawl, not arcade game, and with some puzzles, it's very hard to do it fast enough.

I should also mention that I'm playing LoG on the highest settings, and that's the part of the problem, because my computer is not good enough. So my party is moving a bit slower. It's not a big problem during normal puzzles or fights, but with arcade puzzles I have to change setting, and then it's easy to solve.

But then again, it's just a dungeon crawler, it should run smoothly on a calculator.

About magic - I'm talking about being able to set default spell, rest of it is very good, but that one thing is a pain.

I finished Eye of the Beholder 1 & 2, Dungeon Hack, Lands of Lore and Dungeon Master II (only part of it). And I never had such problems (arcade puzzles, spells, etc.).

To everyone who might have a too weak system and therefore a inferior gaming experience, check your FPS! (described here http://www.grimrock.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2574&start=10#p26796)

You need 25-30fps at least or grimrock will become annyoing (timed puzzles!). You should lower the resolution, as this is the most effective way for more FPS... or maybe it should be seen as sign that it is high time for a new graphiccard, a cheap used 50$/€ model from ebay will easily lead to hundreds of frames per second. ;P (Grimrock is ONLY grapiccard performance bound, CPU and RAM are no bottleneck at all)

I figured that already. I'm playing on the highest settings, max resolution, and I have 10 fps.
And it would be ok (moving, fighting etc.) if there were no timed puzzles.

Anyway, in such cases I just set the settings to low (I have 20 fps and that is enough), solve timed puzzle, and then go back to the highest settings.

I'm sorry but this thread is completely bonkers, calling a game a major disappointment; and then pretty much summing up the FPS as the only proper issue is downright an insult to the joy that most of the people (including myself) got from this release.
I'm sure i speak for a vast majority of Grimrock fans, that we've been waiting for eternity for someone to so boldly revive our cherished genre that pretty much died aeons ago. Not only did the developers deliver an overall fantastic gaming experience, they managed to return us to many of our all time favourite oldies whilst keeping the experience fresh and new.
Most of us grew up with computer games, grew up with hardware issues, heck i'm even sure that i'm not the only one who kept separate "boot diskettes" that made many games even remotely playable.
It's somewhat sad that the art of squeezing everything from our machines is pretty much dead nowadays, mostly due to countless console ports which we are getting nowadays (which barely even make our hardware warm), but to expect a game which is as graphically stunning as Grimrock to run flawlessly on an undernourished hardware without making some compromises is at least unrealistic and it definitely isn't something that can be treated as a developer's fault.

A couple of random additions:

If you're having trouble with timed puzzles, and you have vsync/triple-buffer enabled, turn that off while doing the time-based puzzles. Also, movement is faster if you tap the relevant keys repeatedly rather than holding them down.

I'm not sure what your hardware is like, but that could also be contributing to it. Unlike many other games (especially ports) this one relies almost entirely on graphics card output and uses almost no CPU power, so while other games may mask a weak graphics card with reasonable CPU performance, you don't get that here. (If you're getting only 10-20 fps on high settings then a weak graphics card - or worse, an integrated graphics unit - is probably part of your problem.)

--

The story is mostly implied, relying heavily on foreshadowing and unanswered questions, with some elements of it being presented indirectly (such as through Toorum's Notes), and some elements that probably won't be apparent except in hindsight.

Please try to read with understanding.

Did I say it's disappointment for me because it's running slow? I'm fine with it, as I said - no problems with moving and fighting.

I don't like timed puzzles, and I wouldn't like them even on most modern machine.
I don't like the story (lack of it). I don't like the fact spells have to be casted again and again.

I don't like skills, I don't see much use for them, I wouldn't even notice them.

Also, I'm not very happy with the fights, but as I said, level 6 here and it's getting a bit more interesting, so we'll see.


Plus (but only plus, it's not the thing that makes this game disappointment for me) - in my opinion, dungeon crawler should be working fine with my computer. I'm not expecting Witcher 2 or Fallout NV or Dishonored or Ass Creed to run smoothly on my computer, but LoG is not that kind of game, it should be optimised to run on mediocre machines. I don't have problems with running other games from GOG, even modern ones.


ps. as I said - I finished EoTB 1&2, Lands of Lore, Dungeon Hack and played DM2. All those games are better than LoG, even LoL which I found average in the end (at start I thought it's awesome). Obviously LoG has the best graphics of all dungeon crawlers, but not much more.

And I also almost finished Stonekeep, which was fantastic game.

I know that nostalgia is very powerful weapon, but please try to tell me what LoG has (except graphics) that makes it great game.


And one more clarification - I expected this game to be pure awesomeness. And it's not, hence my major disappointment.

I'm not sure yet if it's average, good or very good - I'll know when I finish it. But I do know that it's not awesome.

Yes, you are completely right about my graphic card, but as I said, I found out the solution to my problems with timed puzzles, and that's not a big deal anymore. Other than that, I don't mind playing it the way I do.

And about story - I'm aware there are Toorum's Notes and foreshadowing and unanswered questions, I just not found it interesting (yet?). My opinion may change, we'll see how I feel about the story when I complete the game.

Nothing wrong with you not liking the game, to each is own... however you brought up this multiple times, yet i fail to understand the logic behind that: 'dungeon crawler' is just a genre, and in that regards it does not imply any engine standard whatsoever: it can be done with ASCII graphics, bitmaps and fake 3D, or full blown accelerated 3D engines with shaders and whatnot.

LoG is one of the latter, is not a retro-game, and so there is nothing strange or wrong in requiring a machine capable enough, given the explicit hardware specs on the store page.

Only twice, not multiple times.

And of course you can also say that one should not expect solitaire games, or chess games, or strategy games (like Panzer General, not like Civilization 5) to have low requirements as a genre, but in my opinion, there's no reason for those games to require good modern machine. Dungeon crawler is also such genre in my opinion, contraty to other crpgs.

I must admit I find this last point more than a little confusing; why should a dungeon crawler, or a strategy game, for that matter, not be demanding on a computer? Solitaire and chess are simulations of simple games that one could just as readily play in real life, ergo the emphasis is less on replicating the look of the game with superb graphics. Strategy games are intended to simulate a variety of activities being coordinated by the player as a sort of god-figure on a large scale, and while some may not be demanding of a computer in terms of graphics technology (see Darwinia), others may choose to provide more detail in the game world, thereby not only requiring a computer that has the processing power to handle a lot of in-game activity, but also solid graphical capability to boot.

The same goes for dungeon crawlers. Nothing in the genre requires that the game have simplified graphics, aside from the fact that many older games in the genre run on comparatively simple technology; to hold otherwise would result in an absurdity, as this would force one to similar conclusions in all other genres.

For example, the history of first person shooters is littered with games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, etc., all of which share the property of requiring, by modern standards, fairly puny system requirements. If your argument were adopted, games like Half Life, which is probably one of the better games in the FPS genre, would be held to be flawed purely because they were more graphically demanding; in essence, the game would be considered, at least in part, worse than its predecessors solely on the ground that it had better graphics. In short, games would forfeit at least one point in their favor by utilizing improving technology in order to provide more immersive experiences.

This is the pinnacle of reductio ad absurdum. While it is true that a game that has seen more development time sunk into making it look pretty at the expense of failure to make the game fun is possessed of a glaring flaw, improved graphics serve to make this particular form of entertainment and art more appealing and engaging to the player. If your argument were to be accepted, the great innovators in gaming history would consistently lose out to the most primitive game that came before it in the genre for no other reason than it was innovative in this particular way, yet I think that there are few who would contend that Gabriel Knight is automatically disappointing when compared to Zork on the grounds real visuals are more demanding on a computer than plain text.

One clarification - I was only talking about Panzer General type strategy game.

And about dungeon crawler - that's just my opinion, I always thought about dungeon crawlers as a genre that doesn't require modern machines. Maybe it's because this genre is old (and was considered to be dead), or maybe it's because dungeon crawlers are, after all, very simple games, when it comes to the gameplay.

In regards to the first point, I thought that might be your point, but I thought it best to take no chances and risk basing a portion of my argument on a faulty interpretation.

As to the second point, I concur that your opinion is what it is; trying to argue that someone doesn't have the opinion they say they do is only slightly less of the waste of time involved in archiving every Twitter post. My point was that your opinion is based solely on personal prejudice, but has no logically sound foundation, and that barring many people having similar personal tastes (which, judging by the amount of posts agreeing with you, does not seem to be the case at the moment), you should not be surprised that the majority of responses you will receive will not be in agreement with you.