Games that I have completed and my thoughts on it, with a score out of 10
Legend of Grimrock 1:
My first game log! I loved playing Dungeon Master on the SNES and wanted to find a more modern game that gave me similar vibes. When I started playing LoG, I instantly fell in love with the style, art and general ambiance of the dungeon. Some of the puzzles were difficult but that was just fine by me, and if I needed to google an answer after giving it an honest effort, that was fine with me as well. However, and this is where it will start to get into spoiler territory, once you hit level 9 of the dungeon, there is a massive difficulty spike.
The general vibe of the game so far, up until this point, was that you're encouraged to explore the dungeon and look for secrets and you'll be rewarded. Of course, you should kill all the monsters before taking your time to explore. But once you hit the 9th level, there is no more "kill all the monsters" because... you can't. They start endlessly spawning. There is just massive wave after wave of these literal dinosaurs (which is such an odd choice for a monster in this game, but I also think they're cute and I like dinosaurs so, whatever) and they crowd you FAST. You cannot run away if you're surrounded by them and you'll end up dying really quickly. It was a lot of quicksaving and quickloading to get through this level.
Unfortunately, my woes didn't end there. At the end of this dungeon, in order to proceed, you must have a certain, useless item in your inventory to put down in a puzzle. If you don't have it, you cannot proceed. Oh well! You need to go back down to those previous levels (through the dinosaurs!) and grab that item, then traverse all the way BACK to finish the puzzle in order to proceed! And I wish this was the end of my woes...
After this level, the rest of the levels are difficult, but not impossible. But... the monsters continue endlessly spawning (not all of them, but the most powerful ones, yes). They take a lot of time to kill and can crowd you quickly. Difficult monsters towards the end of the game is fine and normal, but I do want to emphasize that this was a huge jump in difficulty all of a sudden. Floor 8 was a-okay, Floor 9 was nearly impossible and almost made me quit the game, Floor 10 was better but still such a drag. I knew I was getting close to the final boss of the game, so I pushed through.
The final boss was...
okay. I actually like the design of it being a cube, a lot of people didn't and thought it was stupid, which, I can understand. However, the actual battle was stupid because, again, there was wave after WAVE of endless spawning monsters that would crowd you and make it so you can't move!! I'm dying to the stupid dinosaurs AGAIN !!!! The cube isn't even killing me, it's jurassic park !!!!! Apparently, I read online, that the best strat is to literally keep jumping down pits to avoid the monsters. I just can't stand final bosses where I feel like I have to cheese it just to play fair.
All in all, I actually do consider the game a 7/10. The game was good enough for me to finish and good enough for me to buy the 2nd one, which I am currently playing through. If you decide to play LoG1, be forewarned of the huge difficulty spike and maybe this log will convince you to lower the difficulty setting. The charm of the dungeon crawler, the wonder artstyle and the environmental storytelling really carries this game. I do recommend it, don't let my whining dissuade you, I'm just a little salty still.
