This game is a complete masterpiece. Almost 10/10.

From the moment you start, alone, on an island, having to escape a crate, this game has a wonderful environment, pacing, and mix of monster-slashing and puzzles.

On the surface, Grimrock appears to be an old-school isometric dungeon game. And it is that, but it's so much more; it has modern graphics, a modern character class and potion crafting system. The game contains an amazing nod to past games, but is in fact entirely new.

The only drawbacks to Grimrock are that it's too hard. I accidentally chose "normal" mode, which for me was more like "insane" mode, and there was no way to downgrade the difficulty.

Still, I stuck with it, and admittedly used walkthroughs and cheated a bit at the end.

100% worth it.

Legend of Grimrock 2 is a game that truly deserves the ‘2’ behind the title. It’s bigger and better than Grimrock 1 in every regard while staying true to the feel and gameplay concept of its predecessor.

Not surprisingly Grimrock 2 is still a dungeon crawler in the spirit of games like Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder. You move your party of four characters through the gameworld using a grid based movement system, solve puzzles and kill monsters in real-time combat along the way.

So what did change since Grimrock 1? Quite a lot.

Instead of a single, linear dungeon you now have a semi-open world with beautiful outdoor locations and lots of different dungeons to explore. And you can explore them in almost any order, so if you get stuck on a puzzle you don’t have to check out a walkthrough guide to proceed, instead you can go somewhere else and come back later with new ideas or hints in your backpack. One other advantage of it is the games' increased replayability – in Grimrock 1 you maybe missed a few secret areas while fighting your way through the dungeon, in Grimrock 2 you can finish the game without ever seeing a good part of the gameworld.

Combat is much more challenging now, enemies move and react faster. Their AI was improved as well so many of the cheap tactics that you could use in Grimrock 1 don’t work anymore. Single, slow monsters can still be defeated quite easily using the ‘strafe and run’ tactic, but there are more than enough challenging fights with multiple and/or fast enemies.

The UI and some of the gameplay mechanics were overhauled as well. The skill system is more versatile and makes more sense now, alchemy is more useful as there is a larger variety of more powerful and interesting potions available, there are new weapon types like firearms and many other detail changes.

And of course there is much more content – the game is easily twice as long as the first game, there are more different dungeon types, beautifully crafted outdoor locations, more different weapons, more different enemies, more puzzles, more everything.

If you are interested at all in the genre this is a must-buy. It doesn’t get any better than this…until Legend of Grimrock 3 comes out.

Legend of Grimrock 2 is a perfect sequel! Stands beautifully on it's own, and expands on all the greatness of the first. Best of all, instead of exploring a single dark multi-level dungeon, now you get a whole island to explore! Each area filled with it's own dungeons, and each dungeon filled with challenging puzzles and secrets. I dare say that there is almost a Skyrim level of content here, as far as exploration and secrets go. And they've even fixed the some of the silly issues/exploits that sometimes made the first game too easy. Once in a rare while I even got the feeling that the game was trolling me a little, in a fun way tho.

For those that don't know, Legend of Grimrock is a dungeon crawler, in the style of those old 90s D&D PC games like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder or Ultima Underworld; Except with beautiful modern graphics, and all the benefits of modern game-play mechanics (there's even a day/night cycle on the island). Movement is sorta grid-based like those old games, but movement and combat happen in real time, not paused-turn-based. This creates an interesting hybrid of old school movement-rules, mixed with real-time stat-based cool-down-turn combat. If an enemy is too strong to face head-on, you can kite them around and try to dodge their attacks, but you also have to stop long enough to land your own attacks. You level your character's stats and skills just like any other stat-leveling RPG, and thankfully Grimrock's stat-system is easy to understand, and works exactly how you expect. Just like the first Grimrock, stat management is satisfying and fun, if that's your thing.

Legend of Grimrock 2 does quite a few things better than 1. Not only are the locations, puzzles, and monsters more varied.. They've also GREATLY improved the monsters' AI, to the point where it's DOWN RIGHT SCARY how intelligent they can be. They did this to make monsters more challenging, because in the first game once you learned how to kite around one monster, you could pretty much do the exact same thing to every other monster in the game, to the point where stats would become less important because you could just manually dodge around everything.
LoG2 "solves" that problem, by making the AI more clever, varied, and unpredictable. Try to kite around the wrong monster, and he might see it coming and have a counter attack ready for you, or they might ambush you with a special ability you've never seen before, or sometimes even just start running away, so you have to chase to get your experience points. Now it's a perfect balance of needing to have good character-stats, a good strategy, and needing to know/learn each monster's behaviors. Kiting around monsters is still an important aspect to combat, but it's no longer an easy-win strategy, by any means.
There's also a few non-standard enemies, who's AI seems to be on a whole separate level from the rest.. That's where it starts to get freaky.. I wont spoil anything, but the way these things behave sometimes, at least in comparison to the other monsters, you'll swear they're really alive!

Grimrock 1 took place entirely inside a multi-level dungeon. It was huge, and each few levels had their own theme for the walls, and sometimes their own set of monsters. It was great at the time, and enough to keep you exploring, but if LoG2 only offered us that again, I think it would have gotten old/dull fast. Luckily LoG2 gives us waay more to explore, the whole island of Nex! With outside locations as well as underground ones, forests, beaches, swamps, even the occasional castle and underwater area, and I'm not even listing them all. Oh, and the outdoor areas, while allowing you more freedom to explore and things to look at, still have a great dungeon-layout feel. The locations and visuals never get dull.

Bottom line, Legend of Grimrock 2 is a great game, that deserves way more recognition. It's every bit as good as a big-budget mainstream title, and is WELL worth your money! It will keep you solving puzzles, fighting monsters, and exploring for at least 20 hours, more if you're hunting secrets, and it manages to stay fun and addictive the whole time. And like Grimrock 1, The puzzles and riddles, while challenging and sometimes quite elaborate, give a great sense of accomplishment when solved, and reward the player with cool loot or new areas.
If you like this type of game or the general genre, certainly give this one a shot, it wont disappoint. If you're new to the genre, both LoG games are a great place to start. ;)
And if you liked the first one, what the heck are you waiting for?!

Basic review for the first one:
Review of first one

What I liked:

• OMG it's outside this time, and it's got day, night cycle
  
• New spells, classes, enemy variety
  
• Discovery in this game is still fun
  
• The puzzles are still good ( had to resort to a guide for more than the first game)

What You Need to Know:

• New enemy tactics and kinds of enemies to fight (AOE attacks, grabs and better counters to kiting)
  
• There is no voice acting, cutscenes or anything to get in the way of pure gaming.
  
• A freaking rope!! (so no more damaging your group by jumping off cliffs to get secrets)
  
• Not much weapon variety
  
• Lighting is so freaking good

Compared to the first game:

• Combat tactics and variety is improved
  
• Less puzzles are easy to figure out on your own ( less logical ones, more WTF do I do one)
  
• Final boss is not as fun as the first one. I think because the map is too open. I didn't even die once fighting him
  
• Added way more classes and one new race

A

Paid: $12
Completed in: 31 hours

Games similar:

• Dungeons of Dredmor

10 second review: Playing Grimrock 2 is just like playing Grimrock 1, except they fixed everything I hadn't realized was broken.

This is how you do a sequel.

Writing a brief review of Legend of Grimrock 2 is the easiest thing in the world: it's just like Legend of Grimrock, except much bigger, more complex and better. Fixing all of the first game's minor woes (like the skill system, now completely reworked to be much more flexible and less exacting), it brilliantly survived the transformation from a straight dungeon crawler into a more open-world type of design, going for broader rather than deeper dungeons in a rich (and sometimes genuinely surprising) variety of environments while still keeping everything tight and focused: exploring an island where everything is related to everything else, hidden paths tie it all together and nothing is quite accidental.

With the addition of multi-level maps to really amp up the complexity of puzzles and more varied enemy types to spice up the fighting, Legend of Grimrock 2 is more than just a worthy successor to the brilliant first game; it's an expansion on everything the first game promised and delivered. A huge, beautiful, clever and fantastically polished RPG experience and easily one of the best games I've ever played.

Almost Human has surpassed not only the original but every grid-based dungeon crawler I've encountered. My friends would lament the passing of the grid-based dungeon crawls and fondly remember "Dungeon Master", "Eye of the Beholder", "Wizardry", "The Bards Tale". Few will review this game and not re-count how amazing those games were to those who remember them. I think this game doesn’t just build upon the classics it surpasses their accomplishments. It’s the finest grid dungeon crawler ever made.

I loved the original Grimrock, having myself given up on the style years ago, it was like meeting an old friend from high-school. It was stylish and fresh, but like many a first outing, you spent your entire time delving to the deepest level of the dungeon only to find the game itself lacked depth. The fighting tactics were simple “square-dancing” and the magic system was a little sparse. It was an adventure but from a gameplay standpoint it lived in the shadow of former classics. It was wonderfully atmospheric and playfully told but not as grandiose or sprawling as the later Bard's Tales or Eye of the Beholder sequels.

This game does away with the limitations of scope imposed by the original and improves upon the gameplay fundamentals of what made this game great in the first place. The fighting, monster design, artwork and music have all been significantly improved upon. It's significantly more open and the artwork on display during outdoor sequences is beautifully rendered. Music and sound design sets the tone appropriately and is wonderfully epic in tense moments. In a lesser game the grandiose pretentions would seem bombastic but the effort you have to put into defeating the game makes it feel like your genuinely overcoming huge obstacles.

Character generation is more interesting but still simple enough to avoid being paralyzed by the tyranny of choice. Puzzles and secrets are everywhere. You'll start tripping over hints and clues as soon as the game hits its stride. Many puzzles are straightforward once you understand what is being asked of you but Grimrock is coy about showing you the way. Normally this would be a recipe for some very impenetrable and time-consuming exercise in guessing what the developer intended for you to do; In Grimrock the puzzles reward observation and careful guesswork but not baseless guessing.

After the simple fundamental tutorial puzzles are concluded, Grimrock avoids puzzle designs I’d seen in past games including the original. There is no laborious map-breaking teleporter maze puzzle. It seems grid based dungeons ALWAYS have a teleporter maze puzzle and I’ve seen many that are needlessly miserable. Grimrock II consistently finds new ways of creating puzzles with switches and pressure plates with less reuse of puzzles veterans will have seen many times before.

Fighting is more fluid generally and many fights are more memorable and unexpected. You still have to abuse the grid system to succeed in fights but it's made less easy by how many encounters are staged. Enemy types behave very differently and many need specialized tactics to defeat efficiently. The introduction is still gentle, the middle is tense, and the end-game is full of surprises. Combat was rarely tedious except for backtracking which except for those trying to wring every secret from the game isn't too excesive.

It’s an amazing game. I’m looking forward to the next installment already but for right now I’m happy to have experienced a great game.

It's like masturbating with your left hand. Different enough to be exciting again, but still familiar and comfortable.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 100%. Any gamer would be a fool not to play this.

It's a non-linear version of Legend of Grimrock with a mix of indoor and outdoor environments to explore, with countless improvements.

+ Huge island to explore. It's non-linear so you can venture whereever you want and get to end game. I beat the game in about 50 hours, but some people have beaten it in 20 or so hours. I did a lot of backtracking
+ Much refined character development and skill point system
+ Combat is greatly improved, You can't cheese battles like you could in LoG.
+ More rewarding puzzles. Some of them are tough, but if you get stuck you can just skip it and go elsewhere. You usually figure out puzzles in your sleep anyway.
+ Amazing soundtrack
+ Gorgeous graphics
+ More varieties of enemies
+ It's like Dungeon Master 2!!

- Can't think of anything bad about this game.

Legend of Grimrock 2 is an old school first person non-linear dungeon crawling role playing game. Improves on the first game in every way. Incredibly challenging. Lets us go outside!

Read the full, and lengthy, review below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiiNXd8J8JE


Legend of Grimrock 2 is an old school grid-based dungeon crawling role playing game wherein players take control of a party of four prisoners that survive a shipwreck and wash up on the mysterious Isle of Nex. They soon find out, however, that they are not alone and to make it off the island alive they have to overcome the challenges devised by the ominous mastermind of the island.

After playing around 10 hours (and counting) of Legend of Grimrock 2 I can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that the game has managed to take everything that I loved from the first Legend of Grimrock and somehow make it better. Almost Human Games have given us extra flexibility and variety when creating and setting up our party with new races, classes, abilities and perks, an expansive and open world to explore and survive in with a full day and night cycle, new multi-tiered zones ranging from tropical shorelines to rat-infested mines, lush jungles, to creepy graveyards, overgrown ruins to long forgotten tombs, ancient temples to poisonous swamps and then the freedom to move between them all at will and with ease. The game's engine handles the great outdoors wonderfully, too, and it all looks much better than I thought possible for a game of this type. There are now more secrets, puzzles, riddles and items than ever before and then, most importantly, the same great, addictive and thoroughly challenging old school style of gameplay and combat. Progression through the main plot of the game is done in a non-linear fashion that rewards players that take their time, explore and immerse themselves fully.

Grimrock 2 also features a built-in Dungeon Editor that seems a lot of fun. I've only briefly tested it but in the 15 minutes I spent using it I was able to create an actual dungeon I could walk around in. I plan on sinking some time into making my own content for the game once I've completed it.


All of that said and after playing an unhealthy amount of the game over the past couple of days I can say with much surity that Legend of Grimrock 2 is well worth your time and definitely worthy of a grand adventure! This game will appeal to long-time fans of the series, and now almost extinct genre, and newcomers alike. Although, it must be said, both of the aforementioned groups will still find themselves struggling with some of the enemies, challenges, puzzles and riddles presented to them during their time on the Isle of Nex.

Check my likes and dislikes below!

Legend of Grimrock 2 was developed and published by Almost Human Games and is the sequel to 2012's Legend of Grimrock. If you don't own and haven't played the original yet I recommend buying the Legend of Grimrock Bundle and playing the first game before the second, it is also a great experience and will let help you hit the ground running in Legend of Grimrock 2.


Here's my quick(ish) list of Grimrock 2 likes and dislikes. I didn't include everything in here, but hey, should still be enough to get you informed.

Likes:

• New Party Creation System - Grimrock 1 had four races, three classes and only a handful of abilities to choose from. Legend of Grimrock 2 has a total of five races, eight classes and a large number of abilities, traits and more. You get to create a much more varied and fun-to-play party.
  
  
• Freedom - After a brief introduction area you are thrown into a incredibly (for this type of game) large open world to explore at your own pace. This game is as open world and free as a first person dungeon crawler and grid based game can be and it works great. Is one particularly challenging puzzle or fight getting you down? No problem! Just leave it for later and try something else in the mean time. You get to go where you want, do what you want, fight what you want and loot what you want when you want.
  
  
• The Great Outdoors - While playing through the first Legend of Grimrock I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like, and look like, if we could actually exit the dungeon and see the great outdoors... Wish granted! As I said above in Legend of Grimrock 2 we get to explore tropical shorelines, lush jungles, creepy graveyards, overgrown ruins, , ancient temples, poisonous swamps, long forgotten tombs, dungeons and mines, the beds of rivers with actual water in them (yes, underwater exploration is now a thing... see below.) and much more.
  
  
• More Depth - The level design in Legend of Grimrock 2 has been improved upon greatly and levels can now be multi-tiered both indoors and outdoors. Why is this important? It all just looks that much better and feels that much more expansive when exploring. Makes for great, and confusing, puzzles!
  
  
• Day / Night Cycle - You thought walking around a dungeon or mine was scary in the dark? Try a cemetary, or a poisonous swamp or even the bed of a river you just accidentally fell into... Night time in Legend of Grimrock 2 is great and terrifying all at the same time.
  
  
• Secrets - There's always something more to find out there, trust me. With the game now being as open world as it is there are just so many more opportunities for hidden caches of treasure or secret areas than ever before and it truly is satisfying uncovering all the no doubt long-lost secrets.
  
  
• The Challenge - Legend of Grimrock 2 is not easy. Even on the easiest difficulty setting the game can be brutal at times and I personally think it is for the better. Whether you're being teleported into a room full of face-eating zombies or whether like five swarms of killer wasps are spawning on top of you... It is always an exhilirating and ultimately rewarding experience to try escape with your party, and sanity, in tact.
  
  
• A Better Map - In a game with as many secrets, hidden areas, puzzles and riddles as this it really, really helps to be able to put your thoughts down somewhere before losing them and the updated map is really great for that. The new visual style of it and the fact that you can have the all of the sprawling open world visible in one place is also kinda great.
  
  
• The Sound - The Legend of Grimrock 2 sound and soundtrack is just absolutely brilliant. I honestly don't understand how they do it. I recommend playing the game with a headset turned up nice and loud. Also, the main theme.... Chills! Every time I listen to it.... CHILLS!
  
  
• The Dungeon Editor / Custom Dungeons - SO GOOD! Even a map-making newbie like myself can actually throw something relatively decent together in no time at all and then, conveniently, share it on the Steam Workshop!

Dislikes:

• The Island Master - He's a real jerk. Play the game, you'll understand.
  
  
• Water - Wait, what, you're scared of water? HAHA! No, really, trust me on this one I'm not even joking around. The water on the Isle of Nex is the bane of anyone playing this game's existence. Unfortunately, however, as adventurers it is our sworn duty to explore everywhere... Even under the water... the dark, murky water...

I'll continue to update the likes and dislike section as I play through the game and learn more about it. Thanks for reading and rating, I hope you all have as much fun as I am playing Legend of Grimrock 2!

HAPPY THAT! :D