This game is a lying, buggy mess. The main GOG page states it's Multiplayer/Co-Op which is a flat lie. Multiplayer must be purchased as a separate $6 DLC. WOMEN must be purchased as a separate $3 DLC. I can't decide which disgusts me more. I played this on a friend's PC and learned that her multiplayer DLC absolutely would not be detected by the game, meanwhile the other PC's worked fine for no discernible reason (same version). So even after you go through the disgusting practice of piecemeal multiplayer and women into your game, you may not get it. On top of that, the gameplay is nothing as advertised, the options are basically none like some sort of mobile phone port, and there's no borderless window option, so enjoy having your 2+ monitors all eaten up by this one incredible buggy mess. This should be removed from the GOG store outright for lying about its features.
Grim Dawn is a game in the Titan Quest vein that aims to recreate the mechanical experience with a new setting. It checks all the boxes of an ARPG dungeon crawler: Isometric, voice acting, quests, classes, skills, elements, resistances, and the all-important loot. To this end, Grim Dawn successfully treads the waters of the ARPG genre. The elements (and by extension, resistances) part of the game adds several types to the genre tropes of Fire/Ice/Lightning/Poison by including Vitality/Aether/Chaos/Piercing. These make character Masteries feel simplistic—choose any two then find out what damage types they have in common, done. The resistances function the opposite way—you want as many as possible but rarely can get anywhere close to maxing them all, which forces true weaknesses. The damage itself feels like different flavors of the same thing and they all start to run together, especially when each type has an associated DoT (Damage over Time) that all function identically. Where the game begins to show its failings are with the setting. If the mood is "gloom fantasy", the setting would be "generic forest" or "generic mountain". Sometimes with a slightly gloomy twist. There are only two areas in the entire game that are memorable: the lower Cthonic levels and Darkvale gate just before the Act 3 boss. The areas never drastically change and it feels like you walk every painful step of the Lord of the Rings journey to Mordor in excruciating detail. This cut the game's replay value drastically as I couldn't look forward to doing it all over again. The Masteries lacked the same impact and uniqueness of Titan Quest since the skills are only loosely held together by a common theme. This makes character building much less interesting. Celestial points would have offered a bandaid to this but they are gained so few and far between with ridiculous specificity that they feel tacked on. Overall, it scratched that ARPG lootcrawl itch but didn't leave me coming back for more.
