”…”
“…”
“I died, can you open a rift?”
“Sure.”
“Much obliged.”
“…”
“…”
(there’s no talking during Grim Dawn)
Grim Dawn is an action RPG, in which you help the human race survive against powerful Aetherials and Chthonians. The former ones want to possess humans, the latters seek the utter destruction of humanity. Or at least something along these lines. I tried googling it, and I read a couple of forums and the wikipedia page, but overall I would say the story is something something portals and dimensions, something something aetherials and chthonians, something something dark and grim.
At the beginning of the game you are apparently someone who was possessed at some point and therefore hanged from a tree, but then somehow became unpossessed. The good the people of Devil’s Crossing ask you that since you have nothing to lose (I am not sure where they got this information, maybe they have already killed your family?), would you kindly take care of some great evil that keeps raising the dead.
Writing this review is challenging because I simply cannot look at Grim Dawn as a standalone game and not mention other ARPGs.
Grim Dawn is your usual ARPG, isometric view, parties of up to four, talents, inventory. It added the much appreciated sorting mechanism for the inventory, which helps keeping track of your stuff. The terrain is beautiful and detailed, and the layouts are very interesting. When you venture out you see remnants of human settlements taken over by zombies and there are even multi-leveled sections that look really cool. You have your town portal, which is a called a rift now, you have talents and quest logs, a large map. Everything you need for the usual ARPG fun.
The Good
Let’s start with the things that work. Interestingly, the first thing I want to mention is the music. It is not as iconic as the Tristram theme from Diablo II, but I liked it a lot. It adds to the atmosphere of the game, and the boss fights have especially cool guitar riffs. The level layouts are also neat and the terrain looks good. Spiders descend from the ceiling, enemies crawl out of dark places, everything looks really cool. The talent system the developers borrowed from Titan Quest also deserves a shout out – you can choose not one, but two classes! And then you can figure out your synergies. For example, if you pick Occultist and Demolitionist, you will be a Pyromancer.
Since I like this so much, I cannot stop myself from including a chart of the different combinations:
Just look at this table! Writing about it makes me want to try all the combinations! Do I want to be a Warlock, hmm, or a Druid? Conjurer? Witchblade? Each sounds cooler than the other, and I want to see them all. On top of these you have attributes and devotions – star installations with which you can get extra abilities and stats. The system is complicated and interesting, I definitely had fun reading through the different skills and trying to pick the best combination of two classes for my character. Some of the classes are refreshingly new, like the demolitionist (e.g. you can set up mortars that shoot the enemy while you run around hurling different types of grenades at them), some are more standard (the arcanist is your run-of-the-mill mage). The idea of combining classes is really good, but the execution is not flawless. What ends up happening in real life is that you will have a dominant class and then use one skill from the other. My Arcanist – Occultist Warlock was actually just a mage with a demon dog. Maybe I should have read more guides on how to optimize my skills, but this is what came to me naturally when setting up my character.
The gear is also refreshingly non-medieval. You have guns and crossbows and pilgrim hats and sometimes even Mad Max masks and accessories. Thumbs up for being able to dress up like a psycho from Mad Max.
The Bad
Based on my initial paragraph you could guess that I found the story…not very interesting? Overly complicated? I feel like ARPGs need to have a more straightforward story because people tend not to read through the tons of dialogue options. It is not the Witcher 3, where each line is well-written and interesting to listen to, the voice acting is not exactly captivating either. I have to admit, I am one of those people who does not read every bit of diary, journal, tome, or codex entry. I know, I know, shame on me. But I prefer to get the gist of the story through amazing movie-like cinematics or cutscenes. In Diablo you do have cinematics and the story is much more straightforward. Kill the bad lords of hell. I do not need additional information, I can totally get on board with killing a creature nicknamed the Lord of Hatred. For this review I replayed Act I of Grim Dawn, killed the big boss in the end, and I felt mostly slightly… bored? The music is cool, the abilities are cool, but I did just spend three hours killing various zombies. No kidding, mostly just zombies.
Grim Dawn also makes the same mistake as most ARPGs. Too much loot and too many monsters. In some cases I am fighting 100 (I might be exaggerating) at the same time, so on my screen I just see flashes of light, I keep spamming my main damage dealing abilities, drink the occasional health potion (tonic of mending), and that is it. I do not actually get to remember any of the monsters or their skills. I just know I killed a bunch of somethings. I know, I keep bringing Diablo II up, but in my opinion that is still the best ARPG out there, and in that game, I remember multiple types of monsters. I know that the little jungle fetish thingies with their blow darts, or the rakanishu demons from act I. Or the annoying maggots in Maggot’s lair. I could go on for another half a page probably. I think game do this to make it seem like the game is challenging, but it is not. My basic abilities can still wipe out half of the monsters on my screen. I want to be able to see what I am fighting, and I want to be able to distinguish between the monsters. Is that too much to ask?
Due to the swarm of monsters, you also end up with an overabundance of loot. Your bags will get filled up very quickly, so players end up taking frequent trips home to sell everything, since most of the loot is useless. The money can be used to retalent, so it allows the players to explore their classes and different spell combinations. But managing all the items is still annoying and comparing objects is not straightforward. Do I want more chaos damage, spirit, energy regeneration, pet damage, casting speed, or some sort of resistance? I would be willing to spend time and energy on doing that for a worthy challenge, however…
The game is way too easy, there is no challenge whatsoever. You have all these complicated talents, stats, devotions, crafting, set bonuses, but at the end of the day none of it matters. You can run around naked with a stick and still beat the game. After finishing the game on Normal we upped the difficulty to Elite to see what happens. And….unfortunately, basically the same thing. We still beat the Act I boss while being seriously underleveled and not applying any thinking or tactics to the fight.
The Co-Op
I could get over all the things mentioned above. Okay, the combat is kinda boring, but the setting is cool, and I really want a druid in a pilgrim’s hat. However, when it comes to being a cooperative game, it falls flat. Both of our characters are there, yes, but we do not really interact. We did not have assigned roles in our group, we did not need a tank, or a healer, or someone on crowd control. Sometimes we split up just to find things faster. And we were both fine on our own. We sort of shared our adventures afterwards, or called the other to come to our rift because we found the next area. If one of us dies the other can open a rift to help them get back, that as pretty much what cooperation means in Grim Dawn.
The Recommendation
Do not get me wrong, Grim Dawn is not a bad game. We did finish it, played through it all, so there was something there. But it is not a great game, and it is certainly not a memorable game. If you like ARPGs, you should play it by all means. Or if you cannot stop yourself after seeing the character class chart, you should at least give it a shot. A big chunk of the game works really well, but for me, the story was not engaging enough to care about what is going on, and if you take out the story then the game becomes a series of extremely repetitive quests with a level of complexity that becomes a nuisance after a while because Grim Dawn is just way too easy.
Info
| Release Year | 2016 |
| Genre | ARPG |
| Difficulty | Very Easy |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | 20 - 25 hours (to beat once) |
Rating
| Overall | Bad |
| Story | Bad |
| Co-Operation | Bad |