Legend of Grimrock Review (rrhvella)
I went into this game expecting a slog with opaque puzzles and impossible fights. Instead I found a gem which rewards exploration and patience. I think there was only one non-secret room in the whole game where I felt like "this is bullshit if I didn't have these things on me, I would have spent hours backtracking", the rest of it was challenging but achievable. Don't get me wrong, you die many times, and save scumming is almost a requirement, but I never felt like my achievements came down to luck or pixel bitching, and it gave me a satisfying feeling right until the end.
A note on exploration. One thing I despise but have come, in resignation, to expect from modern CRPGs, is the endless wasteland of nothing which those games provide for "exploration". This is why I am no longer a completionist when it comes to these kinds of games -- despite the fact that I love the joy of discovering something.
Why spend 300 hours looking through everything, doing every quest and exploring everywhere, when you can beat the game in less than 40 hours? The thing is that "discovering something" starts to lose meaning if that something is inconsequential to you beating the game or not.
But nothing is superfluous in this game. It is short yes, but it is long enough to provide a satisfying experience, and to encourage you to actually explore everywhere, look for secrets, read the scrolls, learn the mechanics, git gud at combat (which you can, once you learn a few tricks of the genre).
9.5/10. Comes so close to being perfect, but it's still better than most rpgs out there. Can't wait to play the sequel.