Recent reviews by Ham

Ah, Legend of Grimrock, a foe that has seemed implacable since I was 14 or 15 years old and it was a relatively recent release. My first and to date only experience with old school grid based dungeon crawlers. If you’re interested in the genre and looking for a simple yea or nay on whether this should be your starting point, then the fact I’ve recommended this title should be enough, but if you want to know a little more then keep reading.

(Beware, there will likely be spoilers ahead. If you care about a 12 year old game with a pretty threadbare plot being spoiled for you then you may want to simply take my recommendation at face value.)

So firstly, I’m going to briefly address any Steam Deck users that may be reading this, since that’s what I used for my recent run where I beat the game after some 10 years of accepting defeat. The game IS playable. It runs fine, doesn’t crash, the UI is readable, and the whole thing plus any mods you might be looking at take up practically 0 of what precious little drive space the Deck has (this game and its sequel come in at less than 2.5gb combined). However, the controls are certainly, let’s say, interesting. You will definitely want to take some time to look at and rebind them to your liking, and even then your actions will likely be significantly more sluggish than they would be with a keyboard & mouse. Still, this issue is both very surmountable and hardly the game’s fault since the Deck literally wasn’t even an idea on paper for years after Grimrock’s 2012 release.

As for PC users, I’m pretty sure that you could make this thing run on your Dad’s Amiga from 1991 if you tried hard enough. Grimrock probably puts less strain on even the weakest of computers than opening Notepad its so tiny.

Legend of Grimrock is, from this genre noob’s standpoint, extremely accessible and very content rich for such a small game. You can save at any time, life crystals (which are an autosave, full heal, and resurrection all rolled into one) are usually easy to reach, and food and healing are common enough that, unless you’re a 14-15 year old girl with no idea what she’s doing and no concept of resource conservation (imagine that? Couldn’t be me.) you will PROBABLY never run into issues with it. Combat is the very definition of simple, but its emphasis on manoeuvring and positioning and a steady drip feed of new enemies is enough to keep it from getting boring. Also, this game is secrets galore. Quite literally secrets within secrets within secrets sometimes, which brings me to a few somewhat spoilery recommendations to help you along in your adventure. Consider it helpful advice from a now slightly more seasoned dungeoneer:

*If you intend to have a ranged rogue character in your back line, make them a Minotaur. Their accuracy penalty does not matter as ranged attacks ALWAYS hit and the damage still scales with strength, making Minotaurs actually the most optimal choice by far.

*Make a save called ‘hole’, because you will be jumping into every pit you find and will want to save beforehand. Why? To find secrets of course!

*Before doing anything that looks important or going to a new floor you should save. This game LOVES monster closets, often dropping combat on you with little warning up to and including teleporting enemies all around you which, if you are not ready, is DEATH.

* Beware floors 3, 6, 9, and 10. I won’t say why, but be prepared for a hard time and don’t be too proud to look up a guide for them if you get stuck. You can figure it all out yourself, but a couple of these puzzles and encounters require some big logical reaches in my opinion and I just looked up the solutions after 10-15 minutes of frustration.

Lastly, mods. The workshop support for this game is great and you can make and upload your own dungeons, but there isn’t that much on there for this game. Despite that, there is enough good stuff on there to give you plenty to do if your beat the game, want more, but don’t want to/can’t move onto Legend of Grimrock 2 or some older games like Eye of the Beholder. I’d recommend The Mine of Malen Vael as a solid way of squeezing 2-3 hours of more playtime out of the game. You can even import your own OP endgame party from your last save with all their stats and xp, only to learn it was good equipment that carried you through the end of the main game! The adventure continues!

And so ends this review… which no one will read because this game is ancient now. I should really manage my time better, huh?

A truly awesome game. Amazingly fun despite it's punishing difficulty. The randomly generated games mean that every game is a little different. The game is strong overall but its the combat which is simple yet very satisfying that really stands out as it punishes the slightest tactical error with death which means you have to start all over again. Sounds harsh but hey, just another reason not to get killed I guess. The UI and the backdrops for the game are stunning. If you're new to strategy games or a seasoned veteran expect to die a lot... On easy.

If my really quite terrible computer could cope I'd love this game!