Grim Dawn

I have only ONE gripe about this game: melee attack animations are garbage! For example a character dual wielding swords (which has high attack speed) seems to kill enemies by sneezing on them every 0.5 seconds because the attack animations stops at the beginning, when he tilts his head forward, and the interval of time between each swing doesn't scale. Everything else is fine.

Visually, Grim Dawn (GD) looks striking; almost like something out of the Dark Tower series. The story is engaging enough, a land ravaged by the conflict of two, horrific powers and humans stuck in the middle. Music doesn't strive to be anything more than atmospheric and forgettable. There is a moderate bit of exploratation and the core scavaging for loot is there as well. So overall not a bad game. The part of the game that really rubs me the wrong way is that it doesn't feel enough to be it's own game and relies on the core components of Titan's Quest (TQ) to run. Yes, GD does run on the TQ engine so it's a given that mechanics should be seen, but to a point. Nearly everything of TQ is left within the game, the creators cobble a few add-ons, changed textures, and then released the title. The gameplay feels like it doesn't have it's own legs, that it's just playing off TQ verbatim. If you're a strong fan of ARPG titles and don't mind playing something you've played before, then it's worth a purchase. Otherwise, I would encourage anyone else to do some thorough reviewing of the game before buying.

Very fun Diablo style game. But there are some dumb mechanics where if you die in a zone you have to log out log back in, fab another key with expensive mats, and re-fight your way all the way back to your death spot and loose a ton of experiance points. Most zones don't do this, but the ones that do are just stupid.

This is still a steam version, but messed up a bit and sold as GOG version. They didn't even bother with altering repair.exe executable to actually repair game issues - it still tries to launch steam...

I'm still waiting for an ARPG that lives up to Diablo's legacy. Grim Dawn has great bones. It's got great visuals, a nice UI, good control, decent music and sound effects, and fun loot. The final boss is amazingly well done from a visual standpoint. The game's skills are well balanced so you can make an effective character out of many different designs. However, there just isn't enough variation and challenge to keep me coming back for more. I started playing Elite mode at level 57 and it's mind bogglingly easy. It's not a hardcore game. As good as the level design is it's not randomized very much so that you know what to expect every time you come back. There also isn't much randomization in enemy creation. It's very homogenous in it's pace. It's not like Diablo or Diablo 2 where you can be humming along and then run into a pattern of enemies that trip you up. But this is all par for the course in modern ARPG's. They all seem so focused on balance that they become homogenized. I played Diablo 2 for years over and over again and was pleasantly surprised by it's patterns every time. I wish I could find that again. Why can't designers get beyond all this modern homogeneity? Wouldn't it be cool if a single cave opening in Grim Dawn could be 1000 levels deep or 1 and you had no idea how far it would go? And if by some amazing chance it was 1000 levels deep you come out of the cave so powerful that you could mow through several areas in the game before encountering a worthy challenge. Or, if you never happened to find a cave deep enough you might have to suckle your power by repeating those same areas over and over again looking for that orgasmic cave with extremely rare and mind blowing loot at the bottom. Wouldn't it be cool to wonder if you could even complete a cave or have to come back when you're like 50 levels higher because the beasts in inside are so extremely powerful? I wish game designers would focus less on controlling an experience and more on surprising themselves.