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[Moghjubar]

Legend of Grimrock, for those that haven't seen it yet, is a modern take on the classic first person dungeon crawlers.  The second iteration introduces outdoor dungeons, some misc improvements to the engine, etc, as well as maintaining a robust dungeon editor.

Classes list: 
Alchemist: Grow herbs in inventory and use guns more easily (less malfunction)
Barbarian: Big. Smash.  Additional 1 str per level and high health.
Battle Mage: Front line wizard: higher defenses with orb or staff equipped and less armor weight.
Farmer: No skillpoints at first level, don't gain exp from killing monsters but instead get it from eating.  Unsure what thing they are actually good at, maybe they are just challenging, I have no idea.
Fighter:  Generic fighter, skill specials (hold mouse button on attack) charge 25% faster.
Knight: The Tank.  Additional 1 protection per level, armor weighs less when equipped and shields give bonus evasion.
Rogue: Additional 1% crit per level, and less penalty from dual wielding weapons.
Wizard: Spellcaster, bonus willpower and high energy.


Obligatory link
http://www.grimrock.net/


Rock Paper Shotgun review link: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/14/review-rpg-grimrock-sequel/


Edit: Added classes, will add more info later.

[Levi]

Is the UI any better?  Having to click everything with the mouse in the last one got pretty annoying.

[GiglameshDespair]

Huh. I might pick this up then. The first one was alright, though I ended up playing more community dungeons than the main campaign.

[nenjin]

I was mixed on the first. I liked it, basically, but character development was balls. They say they've addressed this to make each choice during level up more interesting and worth it, so I'll probably pick it up.

[Silfurdreki]

I actually preordered this as soon as I saw their trailer since I loved the last one. Playing through the first levels yesterday did not disappoint; it's basically Grirmrock: More of Everything Edition. Personally, I have absolutely no issue with that, but people who hated the combat in the first one will still hate it since it's almost exactly the same. I personally enjoy it since it emulates some sense of franticness, especially when surrounded. The best way to do it is to stay calm and measured in fighting, but it's easy to panic a bit and lose control, which I feel is a good way to emulate real combat while still staying squarely within game territory. That's not to say it could be smoother and flow better, though.

Character development seems to be better than the first one, but not stellar by any standards. It's fairly similar to the first, but with more a reasonable skill system.

The real reason I love the game is not because of the combat or character mechanics, but because of the extreme focus on exploration. Everything in the game just oozes exploration and (at least so far) the level design simply is amazing. You're constantly awarded for being aware of your surroundings, with the level design itself hinting at secrets and hidden areas. There have been several places in the first few hours where if you go to a certain tile and look in a not strictly required direction you will see a glimpse or hint of a place with a chest or some sort of area you can't normally reach. In each of those circumstances, there have been a handsome reward for figuring out how to get there. There's also one place where I'm currently sure there is something but I haven't figured out how to get there yet.

Exploration is actually one of the major reasons I enjoy video games, so this game just fits me so perfectly that I can easily overlook the average combat mechanics and character progression. Basically I enjoy it for the same reason I enjoy Myst or System Shock 2: knowing nothing about a world and finding out things about it by prodding it until it gives you information, one way or another.

[GiglameshDespair]

So the power of side-stepping still is a Win button? How disappointing.

[Silfurdreki]

Well, sidestepping have been reduced in efficiency a bit. Most enemies now have a dodge that enables them to travel sideways way quicker. Most also have some lunge that enables them to attack from two squares away and some other have a ranged attack as well. The exception to this that I've found so far is the undead, who are still shuffling about as before, which fits them, IMO.

[nenjin]

The complaints about side-stepping ect.... confuse me. This game is still an homage to tile-based dungeon crawlers. Asking for a turn-based system is asking for a different game than they're making.

[Moghjubar]

Well, played hell outta it: as far as side stepping goes, its still basically necessary to do so for the most part (instead of just straight up trading blows) but theres plenty of situations where you get limited options and have enemies on all sides and have to burn resources to stay alive, or play smart / prepare properly / do party managing.  Certain enemies will sometimes catch you if you sidestep improperly as well, and they are in general a bit smarter about how they do things than the first one.

Anyway, made one of my guys a farmer.  I cannot figure out what this class is good at other than eating all of your parties' food to level up, when otherwise they would be behind several levels (I think he was 4 levels behind before I decided to make my ratling just clean out the party hamper to bring him up to par).   Theres digging / treasure hunting too: at first I was gonna dig everything but decided I'lll just wait till I find an in-game note with a clue as it was getting tiresome and became a sucker/OCD trap.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So far found  buried treasures, 1 at beach area near a tree, 1 near the first shrine near some torches, and also minor junk at the cemetery.  Digging corpses is fun!

[Moghjubar]

Oh gods the mummy fields. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fight a whole damn army, some giant flame rock dudes... and even that fucking leprechaun again!

[Retropunch]

I really liked the first one, although I ended up completely ruining my playthrough due to poor resource management and a bad party, which meant that I couldn't really progress and didn't really feel like restarting it (as I knew the puzzles, and the combat wasn't stellar).

Did they add more loot? The first one felt so paltry/strict in the loot it gave you that I felt it became almost a puzzle game rather than an RPG.

I've been reading the devlog and it seems that they've taken onboard the complaints about the AI/constant sidestepping, so I imagine there are many enemies that can defeat that/situations where it won't work as much. To be honest though, I loved the frantic feel of it - even with sidestepping you had to really think things through to not get surrounded. I get that it didn't feel 'fair' on occasion though.

[nenjin]

Got this gifted to me, put in 5 or 6 hours last night.

In the end, not much has really changed from LoGR. I still find their mechanics simple, at best. Lots of the good parts of Dungeon Master have been further refined/streamlined to make this a simpler game. Character advancement is better than LoGR, but not by a wide margin. Once you get over the novelty of the outdoor areas and realize it's just a retextured dungeon with a backdrop it kind of loses some of its magic. But it's a nice change of pace from dank, silent corridors all the time.

That said, this seems to be a tougher game than LoGR by a decent margin. It didn't take me too long before my front row fighters were in serious danger of getting et, whereas I went half the dungeon in LoGR before I found challenging mobs. There's also seemingly a higher number of "dick head traps."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

See a musket on pedestal, pick it up and be instantly transported to an enclosed room where you're surrounded on all 4 sides by mummies, two of which are a 4-pack. Thanks, dick. Also the Wasp Trap.

All in all I think I like it better than LoGR. It remains to be seen whether it stays interesting enough to finish though.

[Parsely]

I'd really love to try one of these games, I've never played a traditional first-person dungeon crawl before.

[Moghjubar]

Well, you could try Dungeon Master itself... or even a Java remake of it: http://people.cs.pitt.edu/~alandale/dmjava/download.html

Anyway, Grimrock itself is much more actiony, with a lot of "explore everything to find secrets" built in, lots of riddles/puzzles and whatnot that usually aren't too bad, and a few "oh shit" situations where you have to come up with a battle plan as sidestepping won't save you anymore.

Did finish Grimrock 2 last week, pretty intense final boss battles (though would be much less intense the second time now that I know whats up).  Still missing secrets somewhere, notably south of the bog underwater gate. 

There are optional challenges the game has as well, but no Toorum mode though in this one (in LoGR 1, after beating the game you get informed that if you do something you can play as an effective "hero" character that has more skills and is faster, but has to go thru the dungeon solo). 

[Parsely]

The game just looks awesome, but yeah I might give Dungeon Master a try.