I did play in the extended development portion of the game, but didn’t get too much into it. Finally getting back into it now that the game is released. Just wanted to give my impressions of what’s good and bad in the game so far, in no particular order. I have not reached the endgame yet - currently playing an Arcanist (level 41) and just starting Act 4. Also starting a Shaman.
Good
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Aesthetics. Graphics, feel, spell effects, music, etc. Basically, all the aesthetics are great. Maybe a little darker and grittier than I prefer, but it goes with the story well.
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Combat, hit detection, spells and abilities in general, damage numbers, etc. It’s fluid, easy to grasp, works well. Constitution is a nice new thing, potions and things to restore Constitution don’t seem overly rare or costly, and it doesn’t seem like the caster classes are overly screwed by the system. The enemies are somewhat varied, and enemy heroes appear at a good clip even though I’m not on Veteran. And I haven’t gotten to Nemesis and such yet, so looking forward to that.
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Items. Love the variety, and the rarity seems good. There’s a lot of rare/epic drops, even on Normal, and after playing with Diablo III’s restrictive 4/2 system, items with a plethora of stats are very nice indeed. The sheer amount of damage modifiers is a bit daunting, but hopefully the scaling isn’t too out of control. There’s plenty of item slots, as well.
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Crafting. I haven’t delved much into the crafting system yet, but it looks good. I’m throwing the components here too. The component effects are varied and there’s a lot of them (though, once again the game seems to want me to use shields). You can augment your character in various ways, and craft slots that have been elusive.
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Multiplayer, when I can find players, is fun. Difficulty doesn’t scale too high with additional players and the synergy you can get going with group effects, spells, and buffs is nice.
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Story - even though post-apocalyptic stuff in pretty much every time period has been done to death, I think Grim Dawn is original enough. I like the story and am eager to discover more about it as I play.
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Class/Skill system is great. Mastery bar is a nice way of dividing things and adding stats, and I like the additional effects and modifications to earlier skills. And the fact that I can undo my choices (though I don’t know the cost of undoing more than a couple points) is also huge. I like that part of our character’s power comes from the investment into Mastery and our chosen skills. Supported dual classing is a nice option as well, although I haven’t used it yet.
Bad
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Multiplayer. I don’t mean that multiplayer itself is bad, I mean getting to multiplayer is bad. There’s no clan/guild system, which is probably the biggest letdown for me overall. Nobody ever joins my games, 90% of games are locked on the server screen, and the ones I join are either behind or ahead of me in questing. I hope this gets better as I get closer to the endgame on the higher difficulties, but the interface is just atrocious. I know, I know - it calls back to Diablo I, scroll down and find a game you like (with more options!), but I hate it. I feel that both PoE and Diablo III have much better multiplayer search options. Which leads me into 2) on this list…
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Chat. I feel so alone in the game, and I can’t talk to anyone who isn’t in my game (as far as I know). There needs to be some sort of universal chat so it’s easier to find people and find games. I play games like these mostly for multiplayer experiences, and it’s been pretty frustrating so far. I’m willing to push levels for now and hope for the best at the end.
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Spells. Certain spells seem worthless. Thus far, Grim Dawn appears to be largely like Diablo III in terms of combat. That is, you want to be moving and avoiding the crapstorm of bullets, spells, effects, and monsters that come your way. The combination of groups of monsters plus movement means that spells which rely on you standing in 1 spot seem… very bad. For example, I love the concept of the Arcanist’s Aether Ray. But I can never use it effectively… unless I’m in a multiplayer game and others are keeping the monsters occupied. At the moment, though, I’m solo 95% of the time and the spell is basically dead weight. Makes me sad.
3a) Also on the subject of spells - sometimes the environmental interactions can be very annoying. If I cast Sky Shards, sometimes 2 or 3 will hit a tree or whatever and expire in midair. Or if I’m inside, they’ll hit the top of a doorway or something. As much as I laud the graphics and interaction with scenery and such, this just sucks. What’s the explanation with the top of the doorway - the ceiling doesn’t exist except when it’s part of a doorway? Come on. Either let me make full use of the spell indoors or don’t let it be used inside buildings.
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Items. Items are both good and bad, as I said above. The problem is with desirable items. As in, I’m not finding much. Everything is the wrong weapon type (I get a metric ton of shields, for instance), the wrong damage type (IE large amounts of Vitality and/or Poison damage when I’m Lightning/Cold/Elemental with a splash of Fire), or has the wrong stats. Not that I’m entirely sure what stats I should be going for in the first place, which is another problem, but I assume I can do more about that in the endgame and I don’t care too much about it for leveling.
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Leveling. Leveling seems to take just a tad too long, or maybe I’m just not used to the pace yet. It seems like I’m falling slowly further and further behind the enemies, even though I’m exploring a lot and doing all the sidequests I can find. The bright side of that is mobs appear to be dying just the same, although it feels a little weird to be able to kill a boss 4 or so levels above me.
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Story. Once again, good and bad. Bad that a lot of my questions about it are still unanswered, but then I haven’t finished it yet. I was a little disappointed about the 2 factions in Act 3. Given the nature of the game’s world at the moment, it doesn’t seem like a smart idea to effectively declare genocide on the faction you didn’t choose. For me, this is the only part where the story doesn’t mesh so well with what’s been established so far.
Worst Experience - Was in a group of 3 and we killed the high priest that drops the skeleton key that opens the dungeon behind him. One of us opened it, and one of us went to sell in town. Me and the other guy went in a little ways, got the message that we couldn’t make rifts, and then thought it’d be a good idea to go back and sell and wait for our other guy before we went down there.
Turns out the gate locked behind us, shutting the 3rd guy out and forcing the 2 of us to go through that special dungeon with basically full inventories and no preparation. Bottom line: It sucked, and the game needs to do a better job of notifying the player(s) when these dungeons are happening. 3rd guy ended up leaving since he couldn’t join us, and the other guy left after he died. Also, the dungeon doesn’t seem to modify itself based on who is left alive… soloing a 1-life dungeon with other players in the game isn’t fun either.
All in all it’s a good experience, and naturally some things that still need work.