Review: Legend of Grimrock

A group of four criminals have been thrown into a hole at the top of Grimrock with the promise that if they make it out of the mountain's dungeon alive, they will be forgiven of all crimes.  Unfortunately, no one has ever made it out of this dungeon before...

That story sounds exactly like the old RPG, Exile.  However, The Legend of Grimrock doesn't just mimic old school stories, it also mimics old school gameplay of games like Eye of the Beholder and Might and Magic.  It also updates this style of game beautifully with its own added twists and turns to make quite an amazing dungeon crawling adventure.

The game starts off with players creating a party of four adventurers choosing their race - Human, Minotaur, Lizard, or Insectoid - and their class - Fighter, Rogue, or Mage.  Each race has its own pros and cons (except humans because they're always the incredibly boring balanced race in every game ever).  Players have room for two adventurers in the front of the group and two in the back.  Melee attacks will hit the front row first and the back row must use spells or ranged weapons to attack.  So generally, Rogues with bows and arrows or Mages will be in the back row and the very healthy Fighters or backstabbing Rogues will be in the front row.

Once in the dungeon, players will soon learn they must fight monsters, keep lit torches on hand, and solve puzzles to succeed.  The game does an excellent job at teaching players how the various mechanics work and also reward players for backtracking to look for secrets once they learn what to look for.  The puzzles get increasingly clever and difficult, especially the puzzles that are hiding secrets.  Caution is also crucial or players will find themselves in a room surrounded by spiders (because they are in every RPG ever), trolls, or some other monstrous fiend.

Adventurers can gain new skills by gaining levels from killing monsters.  Each class has multiple different trees to spend these points in, which lets players specialize their adventurers or round them out evenly.  There is no way to maximize all the trees by the end of the game, so there is definite replayability trying out different groups and seeing how they do.  Players can also try disabling the auto-mapping in the game to really go old school.

If you yearn for some nostalgic adventuring with the improved game design methods of modern day, Legend of Grimrock is an excellent choice.