This game is too hard.

[Miketopus]

Yes, I know, it's a whiny statement, but let me kind of explain why I feel this way and perhaps it'll make more sense.

I get the dungeon crawl concept. I've played them before, and roguelikes. Against all expectations, I beat the hardest of hardcore modes on Dungeons of Dredmor, I went through a couple playthroughs of Dark Souls, all that stuff. When I lose in those games, I feel it's because I did something to mess up, missed a move or made a wrong decision.

With this game, there is no wrong decision to make, because no matter what you decide, you get thrown up against a difficulty spike that you can't possibly be ready for until you die at least once to it. If it isn't the obtuse puzzles that only make sense about half the time, it's the enemies that pop out of nowhere, can take forty times as many hits as any of your characters, and deal out damage that can kill you in seconds in a straight fight.

I know a lot of people may disagree with this, and they certainly have a right to. But to me, this game isn't a challenge, or a dungeon crawl. It's just mashing my face against random walls in the hopes of finding a hidden switch, and getting killed a dozen times by the same overpowered monster group until I find the hidden cheese tactic that somehow lets me go down another floor.

[Dr.Disaster]

Dunno what you mean by "straight fight". In case it stands for "tank them and hack away til they (or you) are down" that strat never worked out in any real-time dungeon crawler. Sooner or later critters there get a lot stronger and tougher than any possible party build could handle them head-on so learning how to out-dance them is a must.

[Matthew]

Yeah it is a whiny statement. Try standing on a diagonal from the enemy, then attacking a couple times as they move to a square adjacent to you. Then move to another diagonal. You can avoid all damage this way, trivializing combat.

[Vitalix]

Are you using the dungeon to your advantage? In other words, if you can kite the monster to an open space with at least four squares, you can continually attack and rotate through the four spaces without being damaged. Some might say it's cheap, but the tactic seems to obvious that the developers were certainly aware of it when they made the maps.

And no I don't think you sound whiny. Stating that the game is too hard is a valid opinion if said reasonably. I did not find Grimrock a challenge, but would probably be called whiny if I said Dark Souls 2 was too difficult to be fun. Some games are harder for different people, and that's not anyone's fault.

[thrive]

Hi Miketopus. How far did you play? The game gets a bit easier when you are able to make your own potions.
Also you can totally make a wrong decision when making your party and skilling them. While there are a lot of valid party composition options, focusing on 1-3 skills per party member is important, I think.
In the beginning option menu you can choose difficulty. Playing the game trough the hard way, Id say its above average in difficulty level, but cannot compare to crazy hard games of the era grimrock is a remake of.

[ad]

I loved the puzzles in the game, dont gree with your complaint there.

[Jake Stonewall]

Originally posted by Miketopus - Zrii Master:

Yes, I know, it's a whiny statement, but let me kind of explain why I feel this way and perhaps it'll make more sense.

I get the dungeon crawl concept. I've played them before, and roguelikes. Against all expectations, I beat the hardest of hardcore modes on Dungeons of Dredmor, I went through a couple playthroughs of Dark Souls, all that stuff. When I lose in those games, I feel it's because I did something to mess up, missed a move or made a wrong decision.

With this game, there is no wrong decision to make, because no matter what you decide, you get thrown up against a difficulty spike that you can't possibly be ready for until you die at least once to it. If it isn't the obtuse puzzles that only make sense about half the time, it's the enemies that pop out of nowhere, can take forty times as many hits as any of your characters, and deal out damage that can kill you in seconds in a straight fight.

I know a lot of people may disagree with this, and they certainly have a right to. But to me, this game isn't a challenge, or a dungeon crawl. It's just mashing my face against random walls in the hopes of finding a hidden switch, and getting killed a dozen times by the same overpowered monster group until I find the hidden cheese tactic that somehow lets me go down another floor.

I agree with you, friend. I was pretty addicted to this game for the first couple floors but then I came to find out how obtuse some of the puzzles were and I am not a big fan of having to kite around and hope for the best. People in this thread are putting up the point about diagonal fighting but then what is the point of finding elite gear though solving the puzzles that, yes, require I just look at walls all day and hope for a switch or something.

It is unfortunate for me too because this game had so many things going for it for me too. But, alas, I lost interest because of the same reasons you expressed. Big thanks to the devs for keeping this genre alive though!

[LocalFire]

I know alot of players don't like to have to kite around monsters, but, and this is just my opinion, its more involved than a straight up fight anyway, since standing and whacking each other is even less involved, as for collecting good gear it reduces the chance of getting hit (lurker) or redices the damage from high level enemies when they do hit, and weapons make killing an enemy quicker.

That said I'd be interested in knowing what you'd like to see in combat, I've worked on serval mods and I'm always looking for things to improve, espcially in the limited combat, So far All I've really done is made some monsters that trail poison clouds as they move.

[Ozymandias]

I have completed the game on a number of occasions now, including on Hard and Toorum mode, and I can honestly say; you're wrong.

You need to observe and think, for both combat and puzzle solving, there is a fair amount of tactical thinking required for combat where by not only do you need to think carefully about what weapons you have at your disposal, but also what space you will be fighting specific types of enamies in (for example; the tactics for defeating the horde Scavengers in the fighters challenge from level 6 are very different from the tactics needed to survive the horde of Herders that you need to kill in order to win the Dismantler from the Vault on level 8)

Re your comment about the puzzles, If you think that puzzles only require you to find hidden wall switches then you really haven't given this game a fair play through at all.

[ad]

Yeah few puzzles were about wall buttons. People are just not used to playing challenging games anymore.

[FriendFive]

Obviously coming in to this late but I agree with the OP, this game is pretty difficult. I am still enjoying it, and I have been playing games since the early 80s, so I know a fair bit about old school difficulty in games. I am just now getting down to the 6th level and I find the critters pretty difficult to fight. Maybe I built my characters "wrong" but I shouldn't be punished for building the characters the way I want instead of min-maxing everything. Here's one example of where the game was just too brutal for me. Going down the stairs to the 6th level, as sonn as I got inside the door, it closed behind me and I got jumped by a bunch of spiders. Had them on all three sides of me. so then, how can I kite them or dance around when I can't even move?
The next time I went down, it was my first ogre and I died pretty quickly there, too. The puzzles are generally fine for me so far but I did have to look up how to do one or two of them and I HATE doing that. I like to figure stuff out on my own. Also, I was really stuck at the beginning of level 5 and I had to Google to find out that I had missed one stupid "hidden" wall switch which would have let me proceed. So yes, I do feel like some of the puzzles are trial and error and bumping around into walls to find hidden switches. So far though, I am sticking with it and still mostly enjoying it.

[Dr.Disaster]

Originally posted by FriendFive:

Here's one example of where the game was just too brutal for me. Going down the stairs to the 6th level, as sonn as I got inside the door, it closed behind me and I got jumped by a bunch of spiders. Had them on all three sides of me. so then, how can I kite them or dance around when I can't even move?

lvl 6 entrance: an open door frame with pressure plate and wide room past it plus something unknown and prolly big running around there .. it literally screams "It's a trap!". There are several ways to deal with it: stand/tank (and take a beating), run and hide somewhere or run and battle a bunch of monsters in a large hall.

Level 6 marks a turning point in the game. This level has IMO the most stuff to do and discover. It's also one of the few floors that feature monster respawns, meaning virtually unlimited experience gains and food.

[FriendFive]

You may be pointing out that I was not observant enough to notice that it was a trap, but whether or not I did notice, it was clear that I was going to have to go through there to progress the game and the first time I did, the spiders jumped me before I could even move off the pressure plate, so I was stuck. There was no running around and hiding somewhere on that iteration of playthrough for me.

Since my post, I did jump in there and veer left to hide and I have since progressed through much of that level. It does feel like a relief to have a seemingly endless supply of snail meat for my party, which was constantly starving for the past two levels. And yes, the "haunted corridors" (or whatever they are called) are good for grinding xp, but the skeleton warriors don't give all that much xp, so it seems like that would be tedious to stay in there, killing the skellies (which at this point don't pose much of a threat).

[Unfulfilled Desires]

personally i found this game way to friggin easy since you can kite every single monster.

[Coup d' oeil]

I think you guys F5 F9 combo when you make a mistep is trivializing the combat. LOL

Just use the life stones.

Anyone can get past a tough part save get past a fight save. No one does a perfect run. Combat is on the easy side, but with the traps, and long times between saving, without turing to save scuming, ups the ante...alot

But the game isn't too hard

[Dr.Disaster]

Originally posted by FriendFive:

And yes, the "haunted corridors" (or whatever they are called) are good for grinding xp, but the skeleton warriors don't give all that much xp, so it seems like that would be tedious to stay in there, killing the skellies (which at this point don't pose much of a threat).

Don't worry. There are other tougher monsters around for grinding a lot more xp ;)