If you haven't played played Legend of Grimrock, and if you're a fan of the old-school tabletop-style RPG videogames at all (think White Wolf and D&D in particular), then you should definitely check this game out ASAP. It's still 10% off I believe, making it around $13 which is a great price. I've really enjoyed it so far, especially the puzzle elements where you really need a keen eye to spot chinks in stone walls or other buttony/levery/pressure-platey type elements. The combat is more or less enjoyable, and the normal difficulty level is spot on (if the combat was any more harrowing I would probably get fed up with it). While I haven't tried creating my own characters yet (the default characters are pretty stock, but they're usable), Legend of Grimrock seems to offer a deep but not overwhelming character creation system. I would consider this game to be perfect for its type, but, and this is a big but (shut up), the game's narrative is skeletal at best, and practically non-existent at worst.
The game starts off with a cutscene of still images with text appearing on top that tells of how the four characters came to be in Mount Grimrock's catacombs, but even that chunk of story is minimal and too-quickly explained. I would have liked to see a prologue that you can actually play, or at least something like Skyrim's opening sequence. After that, though, you can kiss any notion of narrative goodbye as the game relies heavily on emergent narrative (narrative that emerges from gameplay only). This is bad for Legend of Grimrock because its gameplay is not conducive to having any kind of narrative emerge from it. Basically, its a super-satisfying first-person, hack-n-slash, puzzle-solving RPG (could we as a species think up some more concise genres for games? It's getting kinda ridiculous). So go grab a copy and check it out!
