Three things make this great game bad. Any two of them in tandem would be rough but not ruinous -- but all three are here, and together they make me glad there's no Grimrock III.
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1. Most egregious: the decision to force players to click individual weapons in combat. I am from the 80s and played my Shining in the Darkness and M&M and Wizardry and I understand the appeal of this UI element. Keep it in. Keep it as the default, even.

But to not give the player an option to do anything else at all in combat? Imagine any ARPG game, its UI, controls, combat flow. Now imagine the same game except you have to click around the very corner of your screen to take any action. Imagine that game providing players hotkeys for character selection, weapon swapping, and movement – but nothing else. Why? Other than misplaced nostalgia, why?

I like high APM games and fast-paced fights. I love Sekiro combat and being rewarded for staying collected and performing well under pressure from some terrifying foe. But Grimrock forces you to stare at your corner and micromanage a little click game.
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2. Overtuned combat on Hard. Again, I like hard games. I’m at Maliketh on my Elden Ring Lv1 run and enjoying it. But there are good ways to make combat hard and there are bad ways.

Having to spam rest after every fight just so the next single rat man doesn't mow you down with laser-guided knives is not good balance. The game throws inexplicably-spongy enemy groups at you at a pace that exceeds your ability to, you know, play the game instead of milking rests and saves to eke out one mob at a time.

Even a well-versed Grimrocker will be regularly slaughtered by standard encounters. I mean a player who knows how to kite and square dance, who knows the meta game and has made a fairly optimal party while avoiding the 30% of classes, skills, and builds that are pure dogwater (see #3 below).
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3. Poor balance of skills and classes. This really gets to the "if only two of these three problems existed, we'd be okay" idea. It would be fine that half the classes are comparatively subpar; ditto skills. It is not fine to have those imbalances go live alongside both overtuned combat and the worst UI design decision this side of Skyrim inventory.

For example, new players might reasonably expect a balanced party to do well. They might have an alchemist, a wizard, and a couple hard hitters from the barb-fighter-rogue circuit. That new player is cucked by the relative awfulness of firearms and the tissue-paper health of the wizard, just to begin.

That would be fine – suboptimal builds can be fun and encourage horizontal progression – but in a game already shackled with the above two issues, players are brutalized for experimenting or following their interests in class and skill selection.
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Is it possible to beat the game with a random party on Hard despite these issues? Yes. It is also possible to win a race with oversized shoes on the wrong feet, but the response shouldn’t be “lol git gud runner;” it should be “Why the hell aren’t we giving runners shoes that fit and letting them switch feet?”

Grimrock 2 is an incredible game whose pleasures are well-extolled in reviews all around me. I agree with most of the good things people say about this game, and I’m on my fifth playthrough. But the above problems – intentional design choices, remember – hold Grimrock back from being what it should be.

If you enjoy watching a 7-foot-tall minotaur in your party get their ass kicked by a tiny rat man who inexplicably has 10K hitpoints while they fail to hit them 10 times in a row, this is the game for you.

My favorite blobber.