Grim Dawn

tl;dr version: My first character is a Witch Hunter who can teleport between large groups of enemies and explode little blades that explode surrounding monsters into meat chunks and blood sprays. My second character is a Demolitionist who gave me short-sightedness because every time he does his default attack, he procs 3 different additional effects. Still tl;dr version: I hated Titan Quest but Grim Dawn is one of my favourite games of all time. Long version: Grim Dawn is the pinnacle of ARPGs, alongside Path of Exile and Diablo 2. I love the latter two, but just like how there's nothing that can replicate PoEx's insane skill customisation system, so does the same apply to GD. Let's see what makes this game a potential GOTY contender. - Near limitless build options. Not as flexible as Path of Exile's, but way more than any other ARPG I've tried. There are 6 masteries (classes), and you can either choose to focus on one or dual-spec. You also have a subsystem called Devotion which gives you passive bonuses, but more importantly grants procs that you can attach to skills, so you can actually have your Aether Ray drop freaking Blizzard from the sky on crit. - Wicked itemisation and crafting system. So if you've read the above, it sounds like that's all there is to character builds, but no, items grant skills too, thereby allowing room for further character customisation. Apply augments and crafting mats to add more modifiers; find dynamite and dismantle your items to try and acquire rare crafting mats. Options, options, options. There's also never a dull moment when you open a chest. Stuff just pours out of it. - Things to do, galore! Quests, Nemesis farming, boss farming, Steps/Bastion farming, etc. - Choices and consequences. There are some, but arguably fairly minor ones, i.e. nothing that changes the story. Still, they affect which NPCs get to remain in the game world. Hit the character limit, so I'll stop. I hope you all enjoy the game as much as I did!

An outstanding classic and deep ARPG experience. A game from what many say: "What D3 should have been!" Well, maybe in the heart of manys but honestly it's more the sequel of the underestimated Title "Titan Quest". The game uses the same and well updatet engine and a lot of big names of the genre took part in devoloping the game in an ~10 man crew. I have i 1K hours (steam) and over 30 chars in the game and no sign of stopping me on the horizon. A wide world with alot of quests. 40-50 hours for the first difficulty (i recommned to start on veteran). 6 classes from which you can choose two for dualclassing and profit from the individual skills synergies. A loot table that schould find hisself in the genre. 6 qualities, among these over 250 Legendarys and the same amount of learnable blueprints and recipes. Explore the world, find hidden places, great chests and randomly spawning cave entrances. Do bountys and gain faction reputation. Become hated by the enemys and fight against a factions nemesis that will drain your blood out of you. Empower your skills with the great Devotion-system. But not to forget: take on all the monsters, random champions and Bosses in sp, mp, soft or hardcore! There will be blood!

The first time i heard about this game I found out its from the creators of Titan Quest which immediately sparked my interest as I have pushed aside d2 long time ago to play TQ, Started playing this game in early access, paid full price at the time, never regretted it. 200+ hours in early access playing it now again after all the changes have been added. Amount of builds, customization, stuff to do, plan and test is just overwhelming. Combat is fun, multiple viable builds (which isn't the case for games like d3 for instance where you have set amount of builds that work and there rest is just crap). I love the loot indicators moving on the screen when you open a chest or loot a loot orb, little touches like that make it great. Lore notes/books that give exp, Deep and shallow specializations, cross class and single class builds, the Devotion system with constellations puts path of exiles massive skill tree to shame (its big but useless as its filled with +1% dex BS stuff), here in GD every point in constellations serves a purpose, its not a +1%dex. its more, or it gives a skill, or it unlocks a path, or it lets you unlock a skill or it lets you gain affinity or it lets you complete a constellation to gain further affinity. Nemesis systems, 3 difficulty levels along with an optional difficulty modifier (veteran) available from the start letting experienced players get good challenge from the start while still letting less experienced players enjoy their game. Very good visual style, dirty, dark world, that is actually believable, nothing sterile like d3 (very happy about this). A ton of skills along with skill modifiers letting you change for instance an aether ray into a chaos ray. Apart from all that there is multiplayer and mods and the game will give you hundreds of hours of great fun, guaranteed.

Was the only Steam Early Access game in my library I didn't feel ripped off months after purchase. Usually serious urges for Arpgs come once a year, or every couple months, and every time I've returned to GD there's always been improvements or something totally new that wasn't present when I quit during early access. Now that it's finished it's even better. The only qualm I have is there's nothing similar to BattleNet. But that's not particularly an issue because every person I've traded with or dueled hasn't been hacking, and hacking's generally frowned upon within the community. If you enjoy D2 or TL2 get this game, it'll keep you busy for many hours. Probably decades, too.