Grimrock

What most irked me, is the randomness in the final battle. Not only because of the randomly spawning monsters, but also because of their random movement patterns and the inherent randomness of melee attacks.

I sometimes, if I didn't take care and even if I did at times was closed in by monsters and just at that point my two front row fighters also thought it would be a good time to miss their attacks or not do enough damage, as skills from higher skill point levels (e.g. in Swords or Maces) are, at least as far as I could see, applied randomly and not when you'd want it to (like, say, in Dungeon Master, where you chose the attack). My rogue was skilled in Missile weapons and carried the stun gun, which did damage to normal mobs, but not much. Next time I'll use a throwing weapons rogue. And even the mage was not able to dish sometimes dish out enough DPS in concert with the other to kill the monsters blocking me in.

So basically it comes down not so much to skill, but to how you can deal with all those random factors at once.

I just found a handy pillar near some pits to run round, this encouraged the cube to squish any enemies chasing me!

I recommend bombs, I chucked a few at it, in combination with some spells and throwing weapons and it took it down. Just make sure you save every now and then.

Daniel.

I did not even notice the respawn The big cube was good enough at crushing everything (with some guidance from me, of course), that the only real threat enemies posed was getting in the way when I had to move out of the way of the big cube.
If you find the fight hard, remember that the pits offers a safe resting spot.

Yea I didn't really have a problem with the final boss....I kept saving after every couple of shocks lol. I mostly stayed in the back left area and the mobs hardly came there.

I didn't mind the respawning Goromorgs, the timer was set long enough to not be annoying for me while adding a little bit of extra challenge.
The enemies spawning during the final fight were a little more aggravating, but I think this was a design choice to add some rush and urgency to the battle (it might also be a reference to the DM showdown with Lord Chaos). What I mean to say is that I don't agree with the OP and think the placement and quantity of enemies was well balanced throughout the game.

Endboss is a big design error. Maybe one of the worst i ever played. I like Grimrock, but to create a endfight with endless spawning enemies is no good fight.
the idea with the cube is great, the first time i saw this thing i thought "WTF". after chasing around i realise that i can not hurt him and jumped into the teleporter.
But when you return with the mighty-OP-weapon you stop him, but you dont know if you hurt him.

And even on my good PC i7 3400MHZ 8GB Ram and Geforce 260GTX the performance is very bad if there are more than 6-7 enemies and the cube.

Xombium wrote:This is no longer about skill as your constantly just trying to single out one enemy so you can kill it with out other things coming out of nowhere to screw you up.

That takes skill ...

An overall brilliant game slightly marred by a few things here and there. My sentiment is generally the same as some of the others for the nuisance of the final battle. The main thing for me is, it was wasn't so much that the final battle was a bit annoying as much as I was slightly letdown by what was communicating with me the entire time. It makes sense, but it was still a little bit of a letdown.

You have to admit the end game boss being a cube of DOOM (tm) was kind of unexpected!

Daniel.

Darklord wrote:You have to admit the end game boss being a cube of DOOM (tm) was kind of unexpected!

Daniel.

I honestly liked the idea. Just found its implication from both and story and game design aspect a little light. There is no real information given to the player about WHY cube man had to be locked up. And from what we see in the last fight there is little reason shown that he was all that big of a deal in the first place.

Mind you I enjoyed the game a lot. But I think maybe a few more notes here and there either from Toorum or from someone else giving a little more back ground onto cube man would have been nice. Floors 10 11 12 and 13 all could have been used to explain cube mans history. After all the dreams where making us think we were helping out some adventurer trapped not fearing the great evil trapped in the prison.

Barring that maybe not cutting away directly to end game and stead having some extra post fight escape floor with this information. Heck doing that with some sort of timer to escape or get blown up would have been a nice little icing on the cake.

I've had to sort of do some mental gymnastics to give myself a logical story reason for parts of the game. Not overly a bad thing dungeon crawlers tend to be light on the story anyways. But the end just kind of feels like it was a bit of a rushed in thing they way it is done now.

But is was funny the first time I freed him. I was totally thinking it was a real prison cell and the walls would just drop down. So it was a bit of a shock when it rolled froward and squished me.