GB Feature: Legend of Grimrock II Review

We’ve once again returned to Grimrock, and after spending a considerable amount of time with the inevitable dungeon crawler sequel, have written up a full three-page critique. A couple of paragraphs to settle you in:

Spellcasters are a little more complicated, because for them to cast spells, they have to select the runes for a spell, and then activate the spell. In the original Grimrock, this frequently involved four clicks (or more) per spell, which provided a workout (and is one reason why parties only had one wizard). But now in Grimrock II, you can make “gestures” to cast spells. This sounded worrisome to me when I first read about it because I thought I was going to have to draw weird symbols in the air. In reality, it just gives you an easier way of selecting runes. Instead of clicking on them individually, you can simply run your mouse over them, and so casting now just requires a swipe and a click.

Special attacks on weapons also changed. Instead of the attacks happening automatically whenever a character has enough energy for them, you can now select when they occur. To do this, you have to “charge” the attack by holding down the right mouse button on a weapon. Then when you release the button, you also release the attack. This change only sorta-kinda worked for me. I like choosing when special attacks happen, but the charging process is often slow, and the Grimrock games are all about making quick hits and avoiding damage, and so I didn’t use them all that often. For some reason, special attacks also frequently missed for me, making them even less desirable.