Legend of Grimrock 2 Reviews

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Video Review:

Legend of Grimrock is a little game from Almost Human Games that came out in 2012. It was a rather solid dungeon crawler that had the player dive down through 13 levels of a dungeon that included combat and puzzles the entire way. It was a solid return to what used to be a major part of the computer industry. The party based Dungeon CRPGs. 2 years later Almost Human Games returned with Legend of Grimrock 2. And boy, what a sequel.

Legend of Grimrock 2 definitely feels like a continuation of the first game, at least in style. You again build a party of four adventurers and have to dive into another adventure to find your way around. The battle system and engine here is clearly the same, but at the same time, you have an all-new “dungeon” to explore.

The graphics on Legend of Grimrock 2 are far better than the first one, part of the reason is the new location. Rather than being in a dank, dark dungeon, the game is played with the player on an island, and a little more than half the game is played outdoors. You get a good day-night cycle and a lot of variety in the level design as well as the terrain. Even when you go underground, you have a number of different environments rather than just plain “dungeon”. There is a mine, a pyramid and a castle to go through as well.

The graphics though aren’t top of the line. They are about four years old now and the team who created this game was quite small, still, it was built for simplicity rather than as a testament to realism. The diversity and the number of interesting locations are great and I constantly wanted to see what was next.

One trick the game does is having secrets that hide in plain sight. There are a number of hidden switches and traps, and the game does well at hiding them from those who don’t have eagle eyes. Once you know what a switch looks like it’s easy to find it, but most switches had to be pointed out to me, usually from a guide because I would just miss them even walking by them a few times unless it’s obvious there was a switch there.

In addition, you can check my first look, there’s a tree by the crystal that I walk by a few times, I didn’t realize that the knives that are sticking out of the tree branch were actually items I could grab because they look like their part of the game. There are a few situations like that where objects and pieces of puzzles are well hidden in the game. The game will give you a hint to go find something but until it does, you might miss something rather obvious.

So how’s the gameplay? Well like I mentioned, Legend of Grimrock 2 is a dungeon crawler. Dungeon crawlers are a special genre where the player moves usually on a grid-based system and can attack and be attacked by enemies.

There’s the ability for the player to dodge attacks as well. If the enemy starts to swing and the player sidesteps the attack, it will miss them. This allows players who want to play more tactically to use their movement to move next to an enemy and attack and then step back out of range for the enemy attacks.

I believe this is intentional because without it, a number of enemies are quite difficult and I can’t imagine beating normal difficulty or even hard difficulty without that tactic. Still, it might put some gamers off due to the timing of the attacks not always being obvious.

There is no randomness to the island’s layout or general loot. While the enemies are pseudorandom (you’ll find turtles on the first beach which can respawn in different areas) and move as they want, the items you find like the throwing knives in a tree are not. You always find the same loot in the same areas, which can mean that without scouring the entire island you might miss an item you really want or a piece of armor that will help you.

At the beginning of these games, they feel like a rogue-lite or roguelike, but they’re not, and that’s intentional. It allowed the developers to script the game so players always will find certain items and can assist each other on forums as to where the best loot can be found, usually requiring a secret or two to find them.


Now I’ve said island a few times, that’s a major change for this series. The first game was 13 levels in a dungeon with not much else, but now you have an island where you can explore it. It’s a bit more open world than the original game, and allows you to explore more of it as you desire. There are certain areas that probably are best left for the end game and three dungeons that require other prerequisites, but for the most part the game is set up to allow you to go in any direction you want at your leisure, as long as you can handle the combat in the areas.

Legend of Grimrock 2 really has two styles of gameplay. First there are puzzles, and they’re rather solid, however, they’re a big caveat. Many of the puzzles in Legend of Grimrock require you to have a specific object. This seems minor, but there are certain places where you can leave an item behind and it becomes either very difficult or possibly impossible to recover.

For instance, there is a serpent staff, which is a very weak weapon and I thought I was over leveled when I found it. I’m glad I looked it up because that staff is critical for a game progression puzzle. There are a number of these types of puzzles, many with very easy to lose objects even in your inventory especially if you drop a bag or a crate with a critical item in it. Worse if you need to solve the puzzle and know you need X, if you dropped it somewhere there’s not a better way to find it rather than retracing EVERY step you ever made. You can’t even tell what map a quest item might be on, even ones you’ve already touched.

The fact is everything you pick up has some value, and if you can’t see what it is, such as the staff that’s underleveled for your characters, it might be for a specific puzzle or not.

Some of the puzzles in the game are quite hard, and a few puzzles confused me. The good news is that there are excellent guides and maps for anyone who can’t figure out a puzzle. But the joy of the puzzle system really comes from you solving a puzzle. Anyone can look up the solution but it’s better when you find it on your own. Still, some of these puzzles are a bit too hard or annoying or require a lot of trial and error, especially the late puzzles.

There are also a number of puzzles not required for progression but with great rewards, almost every puzzle in Legend of Grimrock 2 is worth solving because there’s a reason for them, though there is the caveat that if you don’t have a fully formed team you might not need some of the special loot you can find.

Speaking of teams, let’s talk about the other major gameplay piece of Legend of Grimrock 2, combat.

You’re able to develop a unique team for yourself, and your team is arranged in a grid of 2×2, with two players in the front of the formation and two on the back. There is a consideration about attacks from the left or the right, but the important part of the formation is who is in the front row and who’s in the back.

If you want to read more and see a final score, you can see the full review with pictures and video at https://kinglink-reviews.com/2018/07/05/legend-of-grimrock-2.... You can also check out my Curator page at If you want to hear more from me, you can show me that by following my curator at http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31803828-Kinglink-Revi...