Grim Dawn

... it would be Grim Dawn(GD). To me it's an ARPG dream. Just read the GOG description and it is pretty much spot on. What I will write about is that GD is so deep that you could play it for ever, no really, you could. Unlike Diablo 3 that went the arcade/console direction, GD takes what was great about Diablo 2 and focuses on the loot, stats and customization. It's the real Diablo 3. There are the usual ways to upgrade our weapons and character with some added new ones. The new ways to upgrade are the Devotion skills and magic powders. Devotion is an extra layer of abilities and stats to build your character. The magic powders that you buy from factions can be applied to your character's equipment. I love the the gritty graphics and sound FX which are amzing. Controls are great and there's a lot of cutomization for your PC in the options menu. There are a few minor complaints that I have: limited music and chracter class. I love the music in GD and think it fits the game, but I could not help to notice that I heard the same tunes played redundantly. I really hope the developers add new music when the new expansion comes out link them to specific areas of the game. Then there is the limited character class that only lets you choose to be human. There are no other races that you can choose in GD and it has been that way with Titan Quest, too. Those are minor complaints and it sure doesn't effect my score to give this game 5-stars. If you like deep customization, then this is your game, a real PC ARPG dream come true. Now on to the that expansion.

You can feel and see that devs aren't making this game only for money. You can see that they love their work and their product. Respect! PROS - Game's current content value is much bigger than games price - Dual class system - 8 Masteries (I must say that I like every mastery in this game) - Devotion system (Find Shrines all around the world and unlock special Passive/Active skills. Its really fun system because not only you have to explore and search hidden areas for those Shrines to get points but you also have to think twice to maximize effectiveness of your Devotion) - Dungeons - Secrets all around the world - Reputation system - Crafting and Transmuting - Huge amounts of enchants for items - Relics - Challenging difficulty - Multiplayer - Large map with different zones ( all with its own troubles and atmosphere) - Grim atmosphere throughout whole game - Dark graphics (you actually can't see much in dungeons, in night, etc.) - Large amounts of loot - Day/Night cycle with weather - Interacting with world (creating bridges, destroying blockades, upgrading town, etc.) - Story (An ARPG with a good story? Hell yeah! I absolutely fell into those short stories that you can find around. At some point I could feel the struggle of people in the world of Cairn. For example you can find a journal pages telling a story about decent family trying to escape the apocalypse only to fall to the absolute bottom and becoming murderers and cannibals due to starvation) CONS - Story could be given to player some other way (Outside of quests you can find notes and journals which contains personals stories of people around you or informations about zone its history etc. But first you have to find it... And then you can still miss previous pages... I don't like it, Its a mess) - Could have better music (Theres almost none) - Missing character customization (You can only pick your gender. Give us som personalization dammit! :D)

immensely great game with a buttload of replayvalue :) I recommend playing it with a friend or 3 :)

Ask yourself - what did you think of Titan Quest? Grim Dawn uses basically a system almost identical to Titan Quest, it does add new things (like a new system of passive bonuses) but the basics are still the same. The biggest difference is probably the theme, being much darker... this is both good and bad. This is an old school game. It does not simply things, does not take control from you but it is missing many new features, e.g. the feedback of using skills is terrible when compared to Diablo 3 or Torchlight 2, even attack feedback is not that good... one place when they simplified things are tooltips... which actually is bad, it means you have to go into the skills screen to make sure what each skill does, as you cannot really see that in action and the tooltips are just too general. One new thing is controller support which is... decent. So skills were not designed for it and aiming does not work well, so your mileage will vary based on your build.

TL;DR - An excellent ARPG with a somewhat dated engine. If you can forgive the fact that it doesn't do 4K particularly well, and the graphics have the occasional bizarre glitch, it's well worth the price. In regards to some of the crashes mentioned in the early reviews, I suspect that was an Early Access problem, as I've never experienced a crash with Grim Dawn. I bought this back in early access on Steam, and it was worth every penny of the full price I paid for it. It is far and above the game I play the most on Steam, with 160 hours on record. Yes, this game was heavily influenced by Titan Quest--same engine, and Crate was founded by former developers of Titan Quest. The engine is showing it's age a little bit, but it's not completely ugly, and I find that the engine adds to the post-apocalyptic ambiance of the game with it's older graphics. Crate has made a number of upgrades to the Titan Quest engine to support Grim Dawn, and they continue to add free content occasionally. They have also released two paid expansions, The Crucible, and Ashes of Malmouth. The Crucible is great if you like fighting off hordes of monsters in waves, and collecting treasure, in an arena-like setting. It's not my favorite--I prefer the story-line, which is what Ashes of Malmouth extends, and does so quite well.