Grim Dawn

New H&SARPG game from the creators of Titan Quest, with the grimdark cthulhu + scrap-survival aesthetics. Game-play is similar to the Titan Quest, even loaning several mechanics from it, but a lot of outdated busywork was streamlined. The best part are reputation boosters, which you can give to your other heroes, so you won't need to grind as much. Lowest difficulty is mostly a pleasant ride to the end, with couple of good items and mismatched skills, and without noticeable difficulty spikes in the main campaign. But on the elite+ the usual balance issues show themselves. On top of increasing enemies' stats, player character just receives extreme resistance penalty and cheap one-shots become a usual thing for any build, made not by the uniform min-max instructions. Rangedmage characters becoming very unpleasant to play, since they are stationary when attacking and can't kite well. Unlike Titan Quest advanced difficulties don't even bring much new content. And the most unpleasant part of the new balance, is the fact, that higher levels bring less and less points to spend, while requiring more and more grind, which sucks all the joy out of levelling-up. On top of that, level capped character can't fill even one skill tree, so dual builds are much less interesting, which also reduces player's ability to experiment. Graphically the game is pleasant, art-style is cohesive and models are peculiar. But enemies are done so good, that you can only wonder, why are you, yet again, forced to play as plain boring humans, when you would rather play as cursed scarecrow or some beastkin. Game works just fine on UHD UWS Surround out of the box, but is very demanding. Overall it's not as great as Titan Quest, but inherits a lot of it's flaws. It's a great time for a couple of casual playthroughs, but manages to become even more frustrating than Titan Quest on advanced difficulties. Diminishing returns of levelling-up hit hard player's incentive to spend more time in the game.

Gameplay is just as it should be. After hunderds of hours in D3, I was looking for something else. Path of Exile was too overwhelming for me, Van Helsing didn't pull me in like Grim Dawn. Core gameplay is worth it. Graphics aren't up to date, but not terrible. Story is ok, but what can you expect from ARPG. TL-DR: it has a gameplay loop that I want to come back over and over again and that's a good treat in a game which can be rare these days. Btw, if you liked Titan Quest, you'll love Grim Dawn too.

Story: Cairn, a world plagued by the ever consuming forces of darkness and death. Many empires have fallen on this world in the hopeless quest to defy the natural order of things. Most have only succeeded in begging for what they once hoped to avoid. Like most lessons though, time passes and people forget the terrible price that is often paid by others to write history. The greatest empire the world had ever seen opened a rift into the realm of spirits, allowing an endless horde of malevolent entities through in the event that became known as the “Grim Dawn”. Almost overnight the empire fell and humanity was decimated, leaving only a few scattered settlements of survivors that had not been possessed or mutated in a world that has become a battle ground for demons and spirits. You are, or were, one of the victims of what might be the last mistake humanity ever made. You were saved for only one purpose: To help push back the endless dead and give humanity a fighting chance to get through the apocalypse. Whether you drag them or carry them is up to you. Graphics / Sound: They look good to me. The Boom, Pow, Zap of powers going off are done well, the monsters explode in a satisfying way and if you zoom in you might notice some surprising details in the environment. Controls: Standard for this sort of game. Works well with a controller. Presentation / Story: It’s a ARPG so...Standard. The story is done well and is detailed if you dig around for the text logs. If you like ARPG’s / Diablo then give this game a look. It’s grim dark world is interesting, even if the story is a little loose as far as a END… mostly I’m guessing for expansions or sequels. Took me a bit to get the right build. Combat was always fun, if a bit repetitive once I got to be high level. Plenty of ways to make it harder though. All in all a great ARPG.

I'm late to the party on this game, but it holds up and is amazing. It has classic hack n slash feel but the story is also very compelling. The mechanics seem daunting at first, but it's not that had to figure out if you read a beginner's guide, and it's not necessary to min/max on normal difficulties and finish the game. After you finish, you get the option of doing it all over on harder difficulties. I think what I love most about this game is the flexibility. You pick from 8 base class specializations, but you get to choose two of them to master, so that's a total of 36 combos. And even within that, talents vary so much you can build and play a character in completely different ways. Like choosing an arcanist (mage type) does not lock you into only spell casting, you can still wield guns or crossbows or two handed giant maces, it all just depends if you have the stats for it, but since you can build however you like you can make that happen. It makes the game really fun to explore. I had about 80 hours played before I even finished the base game campaign because I kept experimenting with different characters. Another great aspect is this game rewards you for exploring. Ok on the downside, maps in this game are static, so once you explored a place on one character it's the same on your next one. But for a first play through, which will last a while, it's so exciting to find new nooks and crannies to discover secret lore or loot. That's probably my second favorite aspect. The third best feature imo, is there are a lot of quality of life features like bank sharing accross characters, that fact that you can craft items directly from your bank without having to move mats to your inventory, and a teleport system where you can return to home base at any time with no cooldown. It means no grindy monotonous travelling. In all I think it's very accessibly to casuals as well as satisfying hard core types. I highly recommend the expansions for more great features.

Crate are ~still~ supporting this game, 5 years after release. I have played every ARPG since the first Diablo. I played Dungeon Siege, Titan's Quest, Path of Exile, Every Diablo, Destiny, Torchlight, Fate, Silver, and more. None have been as deep and satisfying as Grim Dawn. That is saying a lot, because they were also some awesome games. The more you play this game, the better it gets. If you are going to play it, give it the time to show you how deep it is. Don't underestimate how much the DLC's bring to it either. I know it seems crazy to pay more for an expansion than you did for the game, but as much as I hate DLCs, this is one game that it is worth the extra money. For each class they add, bring a lot of new Masteries to what is already there. The mechanics work in that a new class compounds with every other class available, creating many more variations of what you can create. Can't go wrong just picking up the base game either, as there is at least 100 hours of fun for anyone that likes to play ARPGs. I cannot speak highly enough for both Crate and Grim Dawn.