Legend of Grimrock 2 is a dungeon crawling role playing game with a modern execution but an oldschool heart. A group of four prisoners have shipwrecked on the secluded Isle of Nex. The island is filled with ancient crumbled ruins, mysterious shrines and a vast underground network of dungeons and mines. If the prisoners wish to make it out alive, they have to overcome the challenges devised by the ominous mastermind of the island.
This was a nearly perfect dungeon crawling experience (with tons of content outside dungeons)! The game oozes with style, and the environments are awesome in their square-paper format. Combat is hard but manageable with patience -- movement is essential in its (nearly) turn-based battles. Character progression is slow but perceptible, especially when you have the opportunity to fight again some opponents from the beginning of the game, and there is very little filler -- you are always fighting some monsters, trying to figure out the puzzles, or hunting for better equipment. There is tons of backtracking, but the game presents many shortcuts to accelerate your trips around the island.
Exploration is nice, but the puzzles and riddles are the stars of the game. All of them are logic, though you might want to explore the world to find hints, and often a hint is quite far from the puzzle itself. I actually found myself stuck very often, but coming back to a puzzle on another day gave me new ideas; there was only one "main" puzzle that was too obscure for me (the combination to the cemetery door -- I found its hints and nearly solved it, but I would never guess the one extra bit at the end of the sequence). Moreover, you can actually finish the game skipping one (maybe two?) of the big areas; you would miss on a lot of content, but this means you do not have to solve everything, unless you want to get to the "true ending". There are also many optional riddles and secrets which just provide you with extra equipment and are entirely skippable, some of them very clever -- there were quite a few "a-ha!" moments for me.
Now, do not expect too much story or lore -- though there are a few bits here and there, they are just an excuse for all the dungeon (and exterior) crawling. Score: 87/100.
LoG 1 was a nice game, walking on the very old path opened by Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Black Crypt, etc: claustrophobic grid-based dungeon crawlers. Riddles, spells, creatures to fight, items to collect, XP to earn, using an easy yet fun gameplay.
But LoG 1 was lacking on several aspects: diversity (not enough environments, always the same fighting style), duration (too short), difficulty (too easy riddles). But it was not a problem: it included a dungeon editor. Lots of people created new tilesets, items, creatures, and of course dungeons. Some of them were very nice, actually better than LoG 1, but in the end they all were there thanks to LoG 1. That's what made LoG 1 such a great game to me: the opportunity for people to create new dungeons à la Dungeon Master.
LoG 2 is not a revolution, it's quite similar to LoG 1 in gameplay (still has lots of nice new features, especially for the party characters development), but it's a much better game. About 20 hours of gameplay, always something to do, tons of various riddles - some nicely hard, high diversity in environments (not so much in fights, even if there are some nice ones), complex open world... And of course, it also has a dungeon editor.
All in all, LoG 2 is for sure the best dungeon crawler you can get today. And one of the best RPGs around.