super-sidney-bridger - Tumblr blog

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mom called me a fag yesterday by accident

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I don't know, Lt. Kim Kitsuragi. I have no idea what we're doing.

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everytime i get dysphoria over my height, im quickly reminded of how freakishly tall fromsoft women are, which in turn cures my ailment

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FromSoft Messages but they’re a yard sign

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I have realized that the perfect form of media must have a delicate balance between absolutely heart wrenching pure emotional devastation and the most ridiculous nonsense you have ever seen in your whole life

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Huh, funny that this appears in my feed a couple days after finishing Grimrock.

The most deadly weapon ‘Dungeon Master II’ PC

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They also had a Nintendo 64 at the open day. Very cool.

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There is a very specific kind of internal pain that comes with applying for university and, because you both feel fake AND have a relative present, that application has Mr **deadname I literally don't use in most social contexts** on it.

Otherwise my day's going pretty well. Working on a second review. Yay!

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Legend of Grimrock (2012): An Overlong and Overdue Review

Ah, Legend of Grimrock, a foe that has seemed implacable since I was 14 or 15 years old and it was a relatively recent release. My first and to date only experience with old school grid based dungeon crawlers. If you’re interested in the genre and looking for a simple yea or nay on whether this should be your starting point, then the fact I’ve recommended this title should be enough, but if you want to know a little more then keep reading.

(Beware, there will likely be spoilers ahead. If you care about a 12 year old game with a pretty threadbare plot being spoiled for you then you may want to simply take my recommendation at face value.)

So firstly, I’m going to briefly address any Steam Deck users that may be reading this, since that’s what I used for my recent run where I beat the game after some 10 years of accepting defeat. The game IS playable. It runs fine, doesn’t crash, the UI is readable, and the whole thing plus any mods you might be looking at take up practically 0 of what precious little drive space the Deck has (this game and its sequel come in at less than 2.5gb combined). However, the controls are certainly, let’s say, interesting. You will definitely want to take some time to look at and rebind them to your liking, and even then your actions will likely be significantly more sluggish than they would be with a keyboard & mouse. Still, this issue is both very surmountable and hardly the game’s fault since the Deck literally wasn’t even an idea on paper for years after Grimrock’s 2012 release.

As for PC users, I’m pretty sure that you could make this thing run on your Dad’s Amiga from 1991 if you tried hard enough. Grimrock probably puts less strain on even the weakest of computers than opening Notepad its so tiny.

Legend of Grimrock is, from this genre noob’s standpoint, extremely accessible and very content rich for such a small game. You can save at any time, life crystals (which are an autosave, full heal, and resurrection all rolled into one) are usually easy to reach, and food and healing are common enough that, unless you’re a 14-15 year old girl with no idea what she’s doing and no concept of resource conservation (imagine that? Couldn’t be me.) you will PROBABLY never run into issues with it. Combat is the very definition of simple, but its emphasis on manoeuvring and positioning and a steady drip feed of new enemies is enough to keep it from getting boring. Also, this game is secrets galore. Quite literally secrets within secrets within secrets sometimes, which brings me to a few somewhat spoilery recommendations to help you along in your adventure. Consider it helpful advice from a now slightly more seasoned dungeoneer:

*If you intend to have a ranged rogue character in your back line, make them a Minotaur. Their accuracy penalty does not matter as ranged attacks ALWAYS hit and the damage still scales with strength, making Minotaurs actually the most optimal choice by far.

Make a save called ‘hole’, because you will be jumping into every pit you find and will want to save beforehand. Why? To find secrets of course!

Before doing anything that looks important or going to a new floor you should save. This game LOVES monster closets, often dropping combat on you with little warning up to and including teleporting enemies all around you which, if you are not ready, is DEATH.

Do not be tempted to spread your characters’ skills out too much. Investing in any more than 2 or 3 at once per party member will render them little more than a virtual meat puppet you now have to drag around and feed for the whole game.

At the same time, don’t try to hard spec into one skill. You will not get enough levels over the course of the game to do anything but get that one skill to 50 and you WILL feel the effects of that crippling overspecialisation.

Beware floors 3, 6, 9, and 10. I won’t say why, but be prepared for a hard time and don’t be too proud to look up a guide for them if you get stuck. You can figure it all out yourself, but a couple of these puzzles and encounters require some big logical reaches in my opinion and I just looked up the solutions after 10-15 minutes of frustration.

Lastly, mods. The workshop support for this game is great and you can make and upload your own dungeons, but there isn’t that much on there for this game. Despite that, there is enough good stuff on there to give you plenty to do if you’ve beaten the game, want more, but don’t want to/can’t move onto Legend of Grimrock 2 or some older games like Eye of the Beholder. I’d recommend The Mine of Malen Vael as a solid way of squeezing 2-3 hours of more playtime out of the game. You can even import your own OP endgame party from your last save with all their stats and xp, only to learn it was good equipment that carried you through the end of the main game! The adventure continues!

And so ends this review. I should really manage my time better, huh?

Legend of Grimrock was launched in 2012, published and developed by Almost Human, and is available on Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, and the Nintendo Switch. It is also 75% off on Steam at the time of writing (05/07/2024).

Original review: