Your adventurers are a clean slate. Just stats and a portrait, no sad back stories or motivations besides "gotta get the hell off this grim rock". There's three main things you're doing: solving puzzles, fighting enemies, keeping yourself fed.

The puzzles are pretty good. There are dozens of them, from simple "look around for a tile on this wall that looks like a switch" to "manipulate the entire dungeon to place yourself where you ought". Only a few felt like bullshit, and I'm not particularly patient.

I saw frustrations in some reviews regarding enemy encounter placements. Often you'll be mobbed by monsters either upon entering a puzzle room or after completion. This actually gives you space to think, and with a very generous save/quicksave anywhere system (unless you're playing specific modes with it disabled) it shouldnt be a problem of losing progress.

And about fighting those enemies. I ran with the default team comp, but it was definitely not considered the ideal. Wizards are very squishy and I gave my alchemist a firearm (a big no-no supposedly) and while some encounters were difficult, nothing felt like I had stuck myself with no way out.

The combat is in real time, in a sense. You don't move to a different 'plane' for combat, it all takes place in the grid space you're traversing on. Square dancing is a reliable cheese for most monsters, including those above your level, but then suddenly new tactics are needed in narrow corridors and dark dungeons. Like turn-based dungeon crawlers, there's a consideration of resources and exposure when trying to fill every corner of the map. It's very addictive.

The last bit is eating. Literally, your characters grow hungry and require food. This food takes up space in your inventory but it does not go rotten. For 99% of the time (on normal at least) you will hardly notice this, even as a hindrance. Food is abundant both as drops from certain enemies and as spawning resources in water areas (you can pluck fish to your heart's content).

It is fairly useless as a survival mechanic, but I think it has value as an appendage to the inventory tetris. Weighing the likelihood of hunger striking and realizing it is not as threatening as it first appears can help assuage inventory hoarders into maybe letting go of other items as well. After all, who are you gonna sell that shitty starting sword to anyway?

Grimrock II's story is simple. It's all mysterious letters and foreboding diary entries. Leprechauns and evil wizards pop up to visibly alter the world and remind you you're trapped on this island, it aint no vacation. But your characters never speak, any characterization comes entirely from the player's brain. It reminds me of Myst and its legion of copycats, of which I only played bits and of pieces of when I was a kid but was still so memorable.

So yea, a seriously dense and fun adventure. Grimrock II is one of those games in a genre that makes you go "Oh I get it! Maybe I'll try etrian odyssey now, or one of those old gold box games." We'll see how that goes

Incredible clarity of design and a tasty meme. When you finish each "world" gratification comes in form of both the knowledge that you have conquered yet another devious set of puzzles and a little tune that vaguely reminds me of that youtube video of some nerd playing the Titanic theme on a recorder. Will constantly surprise you not only with how many ways there are to manipulate a sausage (hur hur hur) but also with how many ways there are to fail a level. Quick, infinite undo button allows you to experiment wildly on each level, which quickly teaches you that rapid-fire trial and error will just make you get it completely wrong a lot faster and haha no you really have to use your brain, good luck, this game is 100% idiot-proof.