Grim Dawn is the spiritual successor to Titan Quest, an Action RPG that I've played for a great number of hours back in the days. Backed from their own website, then on kickstarter, it came out only a short while ago and I've managed to play through most of it as two different classes. It's a really neat game full of interesting mechanics that keep the genre fresh and leave the nostalgia simmering below the surface. I had a ton of fun with it, even if - as usual - some aspects did leave me a bit frustrated and could've been ironed out a little.
A bit like Titan Quest, you get a class when you start the game and you unlock another one later on, the classes feel different enough - even if you could probably make links between archetypes back in time and now - and you'll have enough choices of where to put your skill points as you level through the game. Personally I like playing builds relying on a very small number of active skills - since I don't enjoy having to mash a bunch of keys to use differently-timed skills that more or less all do the same thing - and there was plenty of choice even for that here. Some skills have optional upgrades with a positive and negative side - maybe this will increase your damage but force you to use a two handed weapon - but I wish more skills had them. As-is, only a small handful did. Like in Titan Quest, you have to put points into a class before you unlock its skills and it's a good compromise between a purely level-based progression system and a purely points-based.
The game plays mostly like TQ, with the stats mostly unchanged - with a few tweaks here and there in the underlying mechanics, I'm sure - and I felt right at home on the mechanics side. They added a few more resistances and now you can see pretty much all of your stats in details, but all of these numbers add a bit of confusion; it gets tougher to see which piece of gear is better if you have a ton of data in front of you, I usually just went for base damage per second, but that probably doesn't show the whole story. You get to place a few stats points each level, but they almost could've removed them since your class level also powers you up. Stats are used for a bunch of things but mostly to gate what kind of gear you can equip. I found a bit weird that even mage gear took strength, but I understand that to balance it out, you'd need more than one stat.
The quality of an Action RPG rests on its content and the quests, enemies and locales in Grim Dawn are pretty up there, there are plenty of quests to keep you occupied and NPCs have plenty of life in them. Secrets are abound, with the game giving you special unique items for your troubles of exploring around. There were a few quests that I never could complete because I wasn't able to find the location the quest pointed me to, and there is no way to hide them, so that taunted me for the rest of the game. Besides loot, such secrets include Devotion shrines that you either can repair using materials or cleanse by killing a bunch of monsters. These shrines give you points that you can place in constellations of skills, each with their affinity requirements and order you can unlock them in. They're pretty cool and some of them even grant passive or active skills that you bind to your other skills, leveling them up over time and they can define builds.
The itemization is pretty great, you have a bunch of unique and legendary items with the usual swath of magic and less-epic stuff in-between. There are a bunch of unique spells and effects you can only get by equipping the right item and you still have the crafting system that Titan Quest did where you collect materials from monsters and when you have enough you get a consumable that boosts your gear. You can also use these to craft altogether new gear or special accessories, but I haven't went deep into the gear crafting because it wasn't evident whether that would be better for me than keeping the materials.
The game tries to infuse personality into its characters and quests, with limited successes. Here and there you have NPCs that ask you questions with 'heavy' consequences, these can range from another NPC getting killed or to you blackmailing them into giving you money. These dialogue sequences are interesting, but ultimately the player might not care about the people and care more about the rewards. Does killing that character give me better rewards than not doing so? Are there choices that net me no reward? Is there an advantage to not min-max the whole thing or should I just carefully select the 'best' answers? There is also a faction system where you gain and lose reputation with a bunch of factions, it feels a bit superfluous since there don't seem to be any big story bits where you have to balance your reputation between two rival factions or any chance for you to inadvertently make enemies out of the friendly ones. It's a bit weird to tell me that I'm 'Despised' with the undead, could I be anything else?
My main issue with Grim Dawn are the map layouts. I'm not saying that linear maps are the best, but while playing it - especially the first times where I went into new areas - figuring out which way leads to a side quest and which way the main story goes was a real nightmare. Branching paths that all twist and turn into other branches, finally leading to some other points on the map, blocked roads here and there, optional objectives hidden at one end of such semi-labyrinth, and these layouts occur constantly. After my first playthrough I was better at recognizing map patterns, but I still wanted to explore everything to make sure I wasn't missing any gear, sidequest or just plain enemy. I wish the zones were delimited better and that you'd have markers on your map to help guide you go where you want, whether that be straight to the end or to side areas.
Grim Dawn is pretty good and I plan to play it some more in the future! If you enjoy Action RPGs, this is one of those that you should give a fair shake to. My issues with it are minor for the time I sunk into it, the difficulty feels good and you have enough character customization to keep making new builds and trying them out. I'm glad to have backed it about five years ago!
