Grim Dawn is a cultist lifestyle, it's all about online community and 'build' stats. But where is the game? Like all decent Action-RPG's GD has some slick and addictive game-play, but as a 'single-player game' experience it's barely average in the muddy field. Much of its map is a simple snaking-path of skull-bashing leading to a quickly-reachable 'final' boss that doesn't even trigger end-game dialogue if you reach it too soon! I unwittingly 'finished' basic GD just by marching onwards for a few turns! ie before reading enough of the patchy-at-best dialogue, and doing too many of the particularly-mindless (yet often hard-to-locate) 'mini'- and sometimes buggy- side quests! Then in confusion I spent around half of my total game-time looking for whatever I missed- much of which now earnt me zero 'experience' stats- before going online to find that I'd completed the last boss and should now buy expansion no1- both for more game, and also to achieve everything offered to me on the various stat screens! I don't personally need online play, multiple playthroughs or to spend my days improving endlessly differing character builds. I do need a solid principle game. And as for Support the poor devs? Like they hadn't even worked in this highly successful business/genre beforehand? C'mon. These people are not the poor victims of Diablo's evil! And GD isn't Sacred 2 either - Crate are milking here. It's still £45 the full set, with sales rare. Even on sale the first two expansions are £9 to 12 each, though no.1 is built-into the game from the outset. Purchase from the Main Menu of course. I played Diablo 3 directly after, and honestly it's far superior as an actual game. OK Blizzard had probably ironed-out quite a lot by the time I played it- but what is Crate's excuse in 2023? Please guys, stop pleading poverty for your beloved devs and needlessly brown-nosing them too. And NEVER believe you are 'needed' to help finance their next one. Crate can do that themselves.
