LogFAQs > #947395624

The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians (PC)

If I ever see another dungeon again it'll be too soon!!! Hello, I'm finally back with another beat game and this time its an obscure Grimrock clone made in 2015. I think this will be one of my sleeper hits of the year. It's very hard to appreciate this game unless you are a certain kind of gamer. The dungeons don't change much and they do it every 4-5 floors. The progression and battles are slow as molasses, looking like something out of a WOW Raid Boss with the icon queuing and cooldown timing. The story is laughably nonsensical and hell nobody's gonna play this game anyway so here's how it ends: The Final Boss says his life was tied to the dungeon and now that hes dead, so are you. Not even a comeback from the heroes as you cut to black and the credits roll. Seriously. There's also a serious lack of music. I think there's only like 3 tracks in the game not counting the title and the credits. There's no boss music, which means you'll be spending most of your fights even the epic ones (even the final one) hacking away while Haunting Exploration Music #3 plays in the background.

Buuuuuut. Beneath the muddled veneer of this oldschool classic lies a gem. Yeah I can believe that. The design of the game---the way it autosaves every 5 minutes and gives you respecc points as rewards to secret passages---speaks experimentation. Each of the 3 classes has a 3-tree subclass which unlike every RPG ever, gives you a piddly amount of skills. Like, why would you ever take +3% Dodge or Haste. Because you have to. In this game, you are paced ever so slowly and even if you have the perfect build, there is no One Ability that's going to be the game changer. You're always going to have a hard time not unlike a Wizardry game in fact. You're always going to be plodding and trudging but you know what, it feel good when you beat it. Yeah, each of the 20 floors has a gimmick and a unique boss, forcing you to figure out its gimmick every single time.

And if you don't like the way it handles things. Just change the difficulty! Not only is this game flexible, its downright customizable. Every single aspect from the way you pause in real time automatically, to item highlights, to Enemy Difficulty and hell you can even remove enemies altogether and just play it like a maze game/puzzle fest. But I think one of the best things about this game for me is the way the map just flows together. The entire 20-level dungeon is one loading screen and eventually you figure out that each of the floors has hidden shortcuts leading to the other floors. It's so satisfying to just find that secret passage and complete that map.

Oh and there's also this amusing Treasure Hunt sidequest which spans 19 floors. You find a note that asks you to put it in a place which reveals another note which asks you to take it to the next floor, etc. I find it extremely satisfying to kill the secret boss bastard who's been sending these notes to me.

I would put it at Rank 10 of my Top 10.

And here's my ranking of Grimrock and its clones:

Legend of Grimrock 2
Vaporum: Lockdown
The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians
Legend of Grimrock
Vaporum
Operencia: The Stolen Sun

---

It's not so cliche anymore when it's happening to you.