Grim Dawn
Grim Dawn offers a ton of content, skills points, gear and customization, as you travel through the dark, gloomy and gory world, filled with undead, witchcraft, sorcery, demons, knights and everything in between. This is a must have for any fan of the Hack and Slash Action RPG genre, or someone just looking for a Diablo alternative
PROS
- Amount of Content
- Addictive Gameplay
- Amount of Skill Customization
CONS
- Not the best graphics and animation
Release Date: 25 February 2016 | Developer: Crate Entertainment
Howzit Internet and welcome to this Gram Dawn Review.
I’ve had this game on my Steam wishlist for a long time now, but never went through with the purchase until recently, when I wanted to create this list of the best hack and slash games. Something about the cover image and the game graphics of the trailers, felt very hard on the edges and weren’t as polished as games like Diablo and Wolcen.
Grim Dawn is part of my Best Hack and Slash Games list, so check that out as well if you like this genre.
Grim Dawn’s graphics just reminded me of a game from the 90’s, so I assumed this was an older game like Titan Quest, that was re-released on Steam. However, it was actually newly created in 2016 and as they say, “don’t judge a book by its cover”, because Grim Dawn is amazing and very addictive.
I actually bought the newly released Definitive Edition, which includes all the expansions.
As the name states, this game is all about the grim undead, witchcraft, sorcery, demons, knights and everything in between all wrapped up in loads of gory gameplay. The animations and graphics are a bit rough but the gameplay makes up for it tenfold.
I can see that the developers played a lot of Titan Quest in the past, as this game has many of its features, which isn’t a bad thing at all, as you can see in my Titan Quest overview I am crazy for it.
If you played both games, you will quickly see the resemblances such as how the tiered skill tree works, giving you only two abilities to start off with, but as you reach Tier 2 on the tree, you get more abilities etc. The world design in the way that it’s all one big map with no load times is similar to Titan Quest.
Grim Dawn is however a much faster paced game than Titan Quest, as you will find yourself leveling up more rapidly, allowing you to unlock more skills at a faster rate.
It also drops a lot more loot and you can one shot a lot of the enemies, while group farming them in hordes with little chance of dying. You can clearly see the difference in progression from my level 7 character to my level 20.
While there are also Health Potions in Grim Dawn, I rarely had to use any until I reached level 20 and was in a big boss fight like the Warden. Even then you just smash him down, while popping a few potion during the fight for an easy win.
Compared to Titan Quest, where you have to be very careful about your potions and the amount of enemies you pull at once, the difficulty level of Titan Quest is much higher. I would actually recommend playing Grim Dawn on ‘Hard’ instead of ‘Normal’ as it felt too easy for me.
Grim Dawn is also very different and offers some great features not only apart from Titan Quest but other hack and Slash games on this list as well.
There are shrines that you can activate for loot either by fighting a few waves of enemies, or by inserting an Aether Crystal (which drops from voids in the game). Some of the Portals are also unlocked after having to clear enemies, which is a nice little feature.
One amazing feature I wish all Hack and Slash games had was the item drop filters. Here you can set anything to your needs to make sure you don’t get loot you don’t want cluttering the floor.
As I played an Oathkeeper I only wanted Shields and One handers, that gave me Physical damage, so I ticked those. I also didn’t want to see common items, so unticked that, once I was all geared out in Yellow gear (common) I unticked that to only see gear drops of Rae and above.
You get the point, it’s great to have. With this you can also set to auto pick up all gear, knowing that you will now only get gear in your bag that you can very likely use.
There is also a reputation system, not only for discount in towns, but the monsters you kill as well. The more monsters you kill of a certain type (say Beasts for example) the more Hostile you will become with them.
The more Hostile you become, the more will spawn as you encounter them, thereby increasing the difficulty as well as XP gained in small increments, so a very nice feature really.
There are a whopping 9 classes to choose from in Grim Dawn. As I already had a club and a shield I decided to choose an Oathkeeper, which is similar to a Paladin from World of Warcraft. He also throws his Aegis (shield), while reflecting damage.
He can also charge into battle and then pull enemies toward himself, before AOE damaging them down. All in all, a nice smooth combo, perfect for killing mass creatures and fast leveling. I haven’t played any of the other classes but I’m sure they are just as good and diverse.
I later found out that you can actually select two classes at once, letting you be the combination of your dreams. I decided to stay with my Shield and chose Soldier as my second.
I then saw that there is a Devotion skill tree on top of the two Class Skill trees as well. This is based on the star constellations, of creatures and weapons such as hawks and hammers, which unlock even more passive upgrades and as well as a little bit extra when you complete a certain constellation.
Grim Dawn is a fantastic Hack and Slash RPG that does not have a soul that is looked over by anyone who is a fan of the genre.
The developers have done a great job at the level progression making it fast enough that you are leveling up every 10mins or so, giving you that satisfaction of distributing skill points and unlocking new abilities often enough, while not making it too fast either.
This alone makes you want to keep playing for “just one more level” until you find yourself 5 more levels in and your girlfriend upset with you 🙂
With 2 Expansions and an added Horde Mode DLC, there is a ton of content to get through, so check this one out
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The Review
Grim Dawn
Grim Dawn offers a ton of content, skills points, gear and customization, as you travel through the dark, gloomy and gory world, filled with undead, witchcraft, sorcery, demons, knights and everything in between. This is a must have for any fan of the Hack and Slash Action RPG genre, or someone just looking for a Diablo alternative
PROS
- Amount of Content
- Addictive Gameplay
- Amount of Skill Customization
CONS
- Not the best graphics and animation