YMMV / Legend of Grimrock

• Awesome Music:
  • The main theme, composed by the Finnish musician Jarno Sarkula, is the only real music track in the game barring the intro and credits. And it's awesome.
  • The theme for the sequel more than matches it.
  • Final Boss and True Final Boss theme are not shabby in this department either.
• Breather Boss: The Wormbound brothers in the sequel are not very hard, considering that Wormbound Catacombs is intended to be one of the last areas you gain access to. A few electric bombs and charged strikes can bring them down quickly even on Hard difficulty.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Both games suffer heavily from this. Weapons, skills, traits, and stats all have highly unequal power levels and usefulness, and creating a good party build is a matter of identifying which of these things don't completely suck. Worse still is the fact that you can't respec in either games, so if you messed up your build your best solution is to either start over or use a save editor.
  • The loot distribution in the first game heavily favors investment in swords for warriors and fire magic for mages. The other weapon and magic types have neither as many nor as powerful equipment options.
  • For the second game it's often recommended to take at least one Alchemist. Not only they make surprisingly good casters due to their decent energy growth, but they have unique skill in that herbs multiply in their inventory as long as they have at least one. This includes extremely rare Crystal Flowers, which can be turned into status buffs.
• Demonic Spiders: Do we even need to say it?
  • First game:
    • The normal-sized Herders are trivial to deal with, but small and large Herders are a very different story. Small Herders have a powerful ranged poison bolt attack (and often travel in pairs on lower levels), making them dangerous despite their low health. Large Herders have a deadly poison cloud attack they can fire from any direction, making ranged combat a necessity to whittle away at their high health.
    • On Level 9, Ice Lizards. And they respawn.
    • Giant Crabs are pretty vicious when you first encounter them at Level 5. They attack quickly (often delivering two strikes at once), have high health and defense, and are maneuverable (they usually walk sideways as a crab would, making them nearly impossible to backstab). They become more manageable in Normal mode after you level up some more; not so in Hard mode.
    • Level 10 features Goromorgs, lethal forcefield wizards that you fight in groups.
  • Second game:
    • The 'swarm' type enemies such as the insects in Keelbreach Bog are EXTREMELY fast in both movement and attack speed, have high evasion, can only be hit during a certain part of their animations, and hit quite hard, especially on the roughest Difficulty.
    • Frogs. They take quite a few hits before going down, can jump above you to attack you from behind, especially your most likely more fragile members in back row, and can steal your weapons from your hands. Thankfully you can recover those once you kill them, but fighting them barehanded isn't exactly the best prospect.
    • Sabre-toothed Wargs in II are extremely fast and powerful, and will also howl to boost their movement speed & attract their fellows to maim you en masse. A large pack of them roams the Hamlet of Stormbreach (alongside the forest Ogre already prowling the map!), presenting a serious challenge to players exploring the level for the first time.
    • Zombies. They take lot of hits, hit hard, and they hide burrowed in the ground from which they pop out when you pass certain point, usually en masse so they can easily surround you. Better get ready that Forcefield spell.
    • Fire Elementals. They have little health, but that is the only saving grace. Once they notice you, they dart towards your party in a suicidal charge that damages whole group for quite bit of health and of course they give no experience if they go out this way. Your only chance is to take them down with ranged attack or spell before they reach you, but of course they rarely show up alone.
• Even Better Sequel: While the first Legend of Grimrock was a good game, it was limited by a singular dungeon and not a whole lot of customization options (only three classes, for one) and the game was certainly plagued by a lot of Early-Installment Weirdness (such as the Awesome, but Impractical nature of class skills). Then, Legend of Grimrock II promptly blew it out of the water in almost every way, with a semi-open world, numerous smaller dungeons to explore, a change in pace of scenery throughout it all, eight classes instead of three, and the addition of a brand new race in the form of ratfolk. Add in this with a lot more freedom of customization compared to last time, and you have a game that is generally regarded as a major improvement overall.
• Game-Breaker: II can be considerably cheesed by using party consisting of only or mostly Alchemists due to their ability to multiply plants if they have any in inventory. This multiplication doesn't depend from quantity of plant in inventory but it is separate for each player character, so with three or four alchemists you'll be steadily supplied with ingredients for healing, energy restoration, antidotes, bombs and stat boosts. The base stats of Alchemist also allow them to take any role, be it fighter, rogue or caster (as long as they have staff), and especially said bombs are very handy to solve many tight situations. To compensate though, the opening part of the game can be difficult, until you find your first staff and start finding plants to grow more of.
• Goddamned Bats: Shrakk Torr, A.K.A the annoying fly showing on lower levels of the first game. Relatively weak and dies in a couple of hits, but is annoyingly fast and can inflict disease, and can get really troublesome if it appears along Ice Lizards and Goromorgs.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The jingle that plays when you discover a secret.
  • Also the sound when you successfully use new spell for the first time.
• Narm:
  • The Undying One — the final boss of the game, the very reason Grimrock was built, the terrifying immortal being that the Goromorgs imprisoned for the destruction it wrought...is a giant, talking cube.
  • The final bosses of both games constantly taunt and boast to you, but rather than menacing and frightening they just sound like edgy anime villains.
• Nightmare Fuel: Given considering the type of the game, but it can still surprise you.
  • You can rest wherever you want, but if any monster sniffs you out you'll get a pretty nasty wake-up call in a form of Jump Scare with monster apparently trying its best to make it look like it's crawling all over the screen. The best way to rest is to drop a grate or a door in secluded room before, but even then, waking up from sleep and finding there is a monster waiting for you on the other side of the grate that wasn't there before isn't the most ideal morning sight ...
  • Do you like spiders? No? Tough luck, but level 3 is full of them. Giant, fast, poisonous spiders.
  • Some enemies get a pretty nasty introduction:
    • Tunnel Ogre, which is lurking in central hall of Level 6. Nothing like getting rammed by this hulking beast out of nowhere.
    • Ice Lizards. They start appearing in part of Level 9 after opening doors with really ominous messages in a dimly lit labyrinth. They have an annoying habit to spring on you from unexpected side, sometimes in packs. At least now you know how protagonists in Jurassic Park felt when hunted by Velociraptors, which Ice Lizard kinda resembles.
    • Goromorgs. They start appearing in Level 10 one you open the main path and they surely make an impression. If the fact they're Cthulhu-esque beings hooded in a black cloak with ominous blue lantern hovering around isn't enough, they can attack you on range with spell of every element, and they can open doors. The moment, where you hide from it in a closed room and the door suddenly starts to open really sends chill down the spine, especially if you were not aware they can do that.
    • Wardens. They look like a giant statue but they suddenly come to life if you approach them.
  • Level 9 contains some sequences where you can loop indefinitely. For example, on path towards the Temple Grounds you'll be turned around in a mirrory Mind Screw manner. And then there is the passage of columns which seems and will go on forever if you don't know how exactly you have to traverse it (there is a scroll with the hint earlier in the level).
• Nintendo Hard: Par for the course, especially with Old School Mode that removes the automap, as well as Toorum mode that forces a Solo-Character Run.
• Paranoia Fuel: A given, being a dungeon crawl. Worse without a torch. And the telltale stomping of marching skeleton warriors on floors just above or below you is very unsettling, at least to first-time players.
  • Special mention to the Pillars of Light level for the spiders. They are everywhere, and they're decisively powerful (and venomous) enough to be full-blown Demonic Spiders when first encountered.
  • Level 6 leaves you trapped in a large, open, poorly-lit expanse with a lone ogre lurking...somewhere, nearby or far away. You'll feel the wet breath on your back till you finally bring yourself to seek it out and kill it (which you don't have to do, but...well, decide if obtaining a Tome of Fire, which gives your Mage 3 fire skill points and +10 Resist Fire is worth hunting it down, as it carries the gold key).
    • In a basement accessed from Level 5 you can hear the ogre's stomping. Eek.
  • Level 9 leaves you in a series of convoluted twisting hallways filled with Ice Lizards, dangerous late-game threats that move relatively quietly and like to attack from behind. Good luck getting cornered by more than two. And they respawn.
    • The warning next to the entrance gate leading to that area sums it up pretty well. "Temple Grounds. Trespassers will be hunted down." Open the gate and find another sign: "You have been warned."
  • The sequel has Mimics that any chest has a chance to be, depending on how many chests you've opened so far. Once you encounter your first, you're sure to be terrified at the idea of finding more.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The second game never really labels what items are important key items and what is generic trash. While most are fairly easy to guess if they are important, others not so much. This can lead to an infuriating situation where the player might ditch and important item needed to progress with no idea that it is important until much later and then have no idea where they dropped it. The Serpent Staff being a key needed to open up the Pyramid of Umas is a rather infamous example.
• Spiritual Successor: To Dungeon Master and the old-school dungeon crawling genre in general.
• That One Achievement:
  • Dungeon Runner, which requires you to complete the first level in under 4 minutes. This is a very demanding time limit, and pretty much requires optimising a party build specifically for early-game combat.
  • Try getting "Seeker of Secrets" (find every secret in the game) in both games without a guide at your own peril, lest you miss something several areas back and need to backtrack.
  • Insane Ironman (beat the game on Ironman mode, with Single-Use Crystals turned on) isn't quite as hard as it sounds once you remember you can do this on Easy difficulty, but it's still an incredibly tricky and grueling feat that requires a ton of planning and expert party design. Thankfully, the achievement doesn't require you to beat the game's True Final Boss.
• That One Level:
  • While all the levels in both games are pretty hard, one secret dungeon on Level 3 from first game has attained a level of notoriety for being filled with Slimes, high-health, low-experience monsters that spread disease to your party members and can attack through bars. It isn't even needed to attempt this dungeon unless one wants a crossbow and one of seven optional hidden treasures, collected for a measly achievement, but it's borderline impossible if attempted right when the player is at Level 3. Later in the game, the player obtains a map to access this dungeon, if they didn't find it already.
  • Level 3 in itself is a very notorious level for the abundance of spiders. This is largely due to spiders being the first enemy in the game that can poison you, and as noted, the floor is crawling with them.
  • The entirety of Crystal Mines in II. They also have Giant Spiders with their poison, and there are also Xeleroids - eyeball with wings-like enemies that can inflict paralysis, but Eyctopuses - giant flying squids - really take the cake, as they have ability to blacken your whole screen with ink for some time, so have fun flailing around at monsters completely blind while 3/4 of your group is also poisoned. The mines also have one giant chasm in the middle without guard rails, so it is very easy to fall to lower levels and get hurt, especially when blinded. And while the design of mines is nice, the black rock everywhere makes harder to see around you and spot enemies before they jump on you. Thankfully, the dungeon has at least interesting puzzles.
• That One Puzzle: While there are several tricky puzzles in the game, the rotating teleporter puzzle found on level 3 is the first to leave a lot of players stumped. And when they finally figure it out, it's still hard to get right.
  • The "Trails of Thought" puzzle on Level 4. A room made up entirely of floor plates and teleporters. The teleporters move whenever you step on a floor plate. There's a specific path you have to take to make your way to the door, and it takes many tries to get it right.
    • The trick to the room is that every time you take a step, all teleporters next to you will turn from on to off or visa-versa. If the space is not touching an active teleporter, it will turn into a dead end the moment you step onto it. In general, making sure you keep stepping onto a platform that is next to a teleporter makes the puzzle much easier.
    • Anyone familiar with the Lights Out puzzle will have a head start in figuring it out.
    • The second game has similar puzzle but worse - on bigger grid, requiring you to switch 4 levers instead of a single button, and instead of teleporters there are trapdoors that will send you to the lower level, so you either need to trek back or reload. At least it is thankfully optional in this case.
  • Level 6 puzzle for the Sword of Nex, which is prerequisite to enter Fighter's Challenge. It will take you some time to figure entire sequence out and on top each step is timed and for some steps the limit is very tight, so you have to move around quickly, something that rigid controls don't help.
  • The "white blobs" iron door puzzle on Level 7 isn't tough to figure out, but getting the keyboard movements right can be, and if you have a slow graphics card, good luck. There's even an achievement for completing it.
  • Level 8, so much. Better hope your heroes Resist Shock pretty well... (Then again, it's technically optional... but who'd pass up a sword like that?)
  • The Archives puzzle in II provides a cryptic set of instructions for opening a pair of gates and nothing but an equally-cryptic code sheet to decipher them. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that not all of the instructions are on the sheet, requiring you to methodically test different options through trial-and-error (or just look up a guide, like most players probably did).
  • Taking a leaf from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire's braille puzzles, the Castle Nex library puzzle in II provides a cipher that you must translate into binary, with the ones and zeroes representing which direction to flip each switch. By this point the dev team likely knew that most people wouldn't be playing the game without a guide, and designed the puzzle accordingly.

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