Difficulty:

Very Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

The best thing about this game is that it made me replay Wizardry 8, to remind me of how a dungeon crawler should be done, and to make it very clear to me that over the last decade (or two) games have move on.

Don't get me wrong I absolutely love the idea of an old school dungeon crawl updated to the current times, and Legend of Grimrock gets the basics right, but as a whole it just doesn't cut it.

Yes, I know it's a budget indie title, but even considering those factors, the implementation is very basic; just three classes, very limited character progression, an incredible shortage of usable gear, and the same monster types repeated over and over again.

That would be OK I suppose if the actual combat would be any good, but sadly it's pretty horrible. About an hour in, everything starts hitting so hard that kiting the monsters around is the only way to survive. This becomes repetitive very fast, requires next to no intelligence, and is quite frankly just no fun at all.

Yes, there are some fairly clever puzzles hidden inside this mess, but the vast majority of time is still wasted on the pointless running around that masks as combat, and the puzzle are by no means enough to save the game.

So, I really wanted to like this game. I tried. But endlessly saving, reloading, and kiting stuff around for next to no payoff simply isn't very much fun