I’m curious now as to whether DM had a better approach, despite the mechanics being 99% similar at first glance, or whether it was just such a groundbreaking game that I either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. I think there wasn’t anything notably different except maybe more confined corridors with limited room. Safety dance was still possible, but more like safety retreat: I’m vaguely remembering these long retreating battles where I’d wait for the monsters to move toward me and then I’d attack & quickly back away another step.

Brainstorming now, seems like some good options would be to have a “disengage penalty” of some sort – either the monster gets a free attack as you leave or you take a big endurance hit; something that makes standing your ground a strong option.

You mentioned how cool it was to be able to literally press buttons and throw rocks onto pressure plates, etc. DM also had those things (plus nice puzzles as well) and it was so novel and magical! I suspect DM was the first “object-based” game where every item in the game was an object that could be directly manipulated, moved, dropped, etc. I can’t remember how deaths work in Grimrock, but in DM when a party member died, all their inventory would appear in a single pile on top of a set of bones. You had to quickly play Towers of Hanoi to shift all their items out of the way, grab their bones, backtrack to the nearest resurrection altar, and put their bones in the altar to get them back again. Then go pick up all their stuff again haha!

I thoroughly enjoyed this and my experience was much like yours. I think the puzzles and the secrets (OH SO MANY SECRETS) were definitely the highlight and kept me going, exploring, puzzling over levers and experimentally jumping down pits.

I didn’t really have trouble with the combat in terms of being routine. It was perfectly functional and it kept you on your toes, even if you knew what you needed to do.

I think the biggest deficiency for me was the lack of skill-points and spells. Few-ish skill-points didn’t let me explore too many of my party’s skills and the spells were basically just the 4 or so with elemental variations and a couple of random ones. Would have been nice to see something a little more elaborate.

I also really really liked the boss fight. As far as boss fights go when they need to be included this has been by far the best one for years.

What I really really want now is a modern and good Might and Magic. Yes please.