INTRO
They say that most engineers make for terrible actors and vice versa because it is too much for one person to have creative proclivity for both. The fascinating fact about an indie software company is that a handful of people need to cover a huge set of skills. The result is that no matter how much an indie (and in most cases a triple A) game may excel in some particular aspect, it will be lacking in other respects. People tend to put it on business priorities and wave it off, but I believe that the root cause in most cases is the personal passion of the developers. SpiderWeb Software produces engaging worlds, excellent stories and dialogue, and more than a decent gameplay but the esthetics (video and audio) seem to be done by a pre-school artist who rather preferred math. Lilith Battle of Jalavia (one of the biggest mods for Titan Quest) features some of the best maps and world esthetics present in a video game, yet the combat and drop balance go out of the window, with merchants trading items almost non-existent. I can only think of very few exceptions. Enderal, a huge conversion mod for Skyrim, has strengths without any glaring holes perhaps?
This brings me to the comparison between Titan Quest (TQ) and Grim Dawn (GD). Yes, I am aware that I am late to the party. Yet, I feel like the subject is deeper than the coverage available and skimming through dozens of threads feels like reconstructing a book from short reviews or from one-liner posts which provide different (albeit valuable!) viewpoints and sometimes even different views for the same point.
For example, some players claim that since this is ARPG and GD evolved out of the TQ engine, GD is like TQ2. I believe the vibe could hardly be more different, despite the noticable similarity, e.g., in the engine. Of my thousands of hours spent with TQ, I remember marveling at the murals in the tombs, the geometric forms, statues, and flowers of the Hanging Gardens, or the wind blowing the sand in Thebes at night. Or how the bosses say a catchy phrase and evaporate in a puff. I also remember the slog in the start, miniscule stash, and farming for a stupid component completion bonus forever. On the other hand, my brightest GD memories would be contemplating the sea of information readily accessible in the character sheet, sleek interaction with the UI, overheating my brain over the decision whether to get more resistance through the component or constellation, or the chain reaction of events that happen on the screen when I press one skill button. The picture would be incomplete, however, without mentioning how hard I try to mentally block the images of sickly green goo bloated monsters on a sickly green ground, or the dark gray angular monsters on the black background, sprinkled with black spiky interactable objects and dark gray debris. Yes, I agree with one-liners saying that TQ wins in esthetics while GD hands down wins in gameplay and QoL but I believe that only an in-depth analysis could do justice to this claim and convey the depth of the chasm.
Perhaps publishing the comparison now, in the close of 2023, is not so untimely, with the new expansion of GD and new ARPGs such as PoE2 looming on the horizon.
First, my goal is to be mindful of the fine line between subjective and objective and focus on the objective to the best of my abilities. A lot of the elements are a matter of taste, including the story, lore, art direction for the world design, art direction for the weapon and armor design, the visual style of class skills, etc. While some players may like or dislike the story in TQ or GD, most would say that the story is not so important in ARPGs. The two games are very different in terms of the lore: TQ takes it from the famous ancient myths whereas GD invents its own lore and presents it in fragmented lines of dialogue and written notes found in the world. Liking one over the other is obviously subject to the personal taste. Regarding the art direction, TQ presents an ancient mythological world while GD is a horror post-apocalyptic fantasy. There are people who swear by one or the other. I personally like both but as the review indicates, I believe that TQ implements mythology in the best way I have seen in a video game while the fantasy elements in GD are really uninspiring. As for the skill visuals, most players would agree that they are decent in both games, with no significant edge to any, albeit some may have favorites.
Second, the attitude of Crate Entertainment towards the players is leaps and bounds better compared to that of THQ Nordic. For some players this is enough of a reason to pick GD over TQ but this review is going to focus on the games themselves. The fact that Crate Entertainment lost a treasure trove of information in the forums (the most valuable asset after the game itself) in 2019, when they switched to a new web site, is not relevant either.
The review consists of two parts: âBetter in GDâ and âBetter in TQâ.
BETTER IN GD
THE ENGINE: while the engine of GD is a gradual evolution of that in TQ, the TQ engine feels very unpolished in comparison. There are dozens of bugs and problems in TQ, even though the engine virtually never crashes. None of those is a showstopper but combined together they definitely reduce from the enjoyment: the toons can occasionally get stuck for a couple of seconds, which might turn out to be in the middle of a critical moment in a combat. The controls are not very responsive overall. There is a problem of rubberbanding, which was severe in TQ IT but got incrementally better in the AE. The targeting is not snappy at all and misclicks are common, which is exacerbated by that fact that the toon is small and does not stand out among the environmental objects. Casting spells requires both pressing a keyboard key and clicking a mouse button (though this was fixed in the latest AE expansion). Monster AI can be stupid at times: a monster would timidly wait until its neighbor is killed before making one step towards the toon and then resuming the polite wait until the next neighbor is killed. Monsters occasionally spawn in inaccessible areas (to be fair, this also happens in GD but less frequently). There are minor audio-related bugs, such as an occasional sound being much louder than the normal audio level. All of the above has been fixed in GD.
Random number generation requires a more detailed description. The pure mathematical generator is not a problem; it is rather how the game uses it in complicated ways. Most random distributions are skewed by multiple non-trivial factors, such as the toon and monster levels. As a result, some unique/set/monster-specific items are much more common than the others. The deviations from the expected average are significant: sometimes an item does not appear for many thousands drops and then you get several in a row. The random generation in GD seems to improve that of TQ in several respects: the deviations do not seem as huge, the random seed is updated more frequently and it subjectively seems to have a smaller impact. Finally, GD makes additional efforts to mitigate the negative effect of random generation. For example, if the same recipe rolls multiple times during the same session, the game will try to reroll random numbers so that a different recipe will drop instead.
The engine in GD also provides a wider range of support features. For example, it supports different DX versions and a gamepad.
PACE OF COMBAT: TQ takes the crown as the ARPG with the most masochistic pace of combat, especially in the normal difficulty. A typical approach to combat is first to find a good angle to approach a group of monsters so as to aggro a small number but not the rest of the group. Then, an epic battle with a trash monster ensues where the toon and the monster trade blows for half a minute until the monster is down and a chunk of toonâs life is gone. The toon is not in any danger during the process, mind you, because it is always possible to chug a potion or run away, though the latter makes the pace even more unbearable. Finally, there is a need to wait for another half a minute while the toonâs HP recuperates at snailâs speed. Of course, it is possible to chug another potion after the combat but potions have cooldowns and if you decide to waste a potion on every trash monster, you will be out of potions and money very soon.
Why does it happen? There are many factors, such as the lack of active AoE skills, long skill cooldowns, slow attack speed, low ratio between toonâs damage and trash monsterâs HP, and lack of HP regeneration out of combat. The pace becomes better at later difficulties because of improved attack speed and higher damage compared to monsterâs HP but insufficient AoE skills and long skill cooldowns remain a problem for caster classes, which almost forces spellcasters to use specialized items with cooldown reduction. The Anniversary Edition provides an option to speed up everything happening in the game. While it does mitigate the epicness of the battle with a single trash monster, it takes a lot out of playerâs control, and there are situations in the game when the player needs it. As a result, the pace is incrementally better at the expense of higher risks.
GD fixes almost all of the above issues: the active and triggered skills are much more numerous, the cooldowns are shorter, the ratio of toonâs damage to trash monsterâ HP is higher, and there is HP regeneration out of combat, to mention a few improvements. The pace of combat with a group of monsters feels much better. There is perhaps a much smaller problem of the pace of clearing an area because the areas are big and shapeless and they include many groups of monsters of the same variety.
PACE OF CHARACTER PROGRESSION: Character progression feels better in GD for three reasons. First, a toon gains levels faster throughout the entire gameplay. The difference is especially pronounced towards higher levels where TQ introduces draconian penalties on experience gain so that you need to farm experience for months in order to reach a maximum level with one toon (somewhat mitigated by still bad in the Anniversary Edition). Second, core skills making the build are typically available earlier in GD and become impactful after a small number of allocated skill points. Third, the progression goes in multiple dimensions in GD: in addition to character levels there are also devotion points and a level of constellation skills.
CHARACTER SKILL BALANCE: Crate makes numerous passes on the character skills in GD and even though a small number of the changes are debatable, everyone would agree that overall, GD is a balanced game in terms of the skills available to the character, both class- and constellation-related. Very few skills come across as extremely under- or overpowered and while a skill may only be worth a one-point investment for a particular build, very few if any skills are one-point wonders for all builds. Of course, more difficult to reach constellations include more powerful skills but this is by design. The balancing passes also consider skill progression from the first point to the maximum skill level without skill-raising items and to the ultimate skill level with skill-raising items. The situation is not nearly as balanced in TQ: a significant fraction of skills are either clear winners (shield skills for Defense, onslaught for Warfare or scattershot for any bow character), outright worthless, or one-point wonders. This significantly reduces diversity of builds in TQ. Besides, some skills such as summoning may be very weak in the normal difficulty but strong in the legendary difficulty. While popular mods and the Anniversary Edition all try to rebalance different skills, each does it in a different way, achieving only partial improvement at the end.
SKILL POINT BALANCE: Typically, the number of skill points available to a high-level toon in TQ is sufficient to max out most âgoodâ class skills. There are only few exceptions to this rule, such as a caster would max different skills in the Dream mastery compared to a melee fighter. As a results, different builds using say the Defense mastery would likely play similar. On the other hand, the number of skill points available in GD is only sufficient to max out only some of the skills, which requires the player to prioritize and consider a non-trivial interplay between the skills, items, and constellations. This is another factor contributing to much larger build diversity in GD.
THE NUMBER OF VARIOUS SKILLS AVAILABLE TO A CHARACTER: GD simply blows TQ out of the water in this respect. First, there are constellation skills. Second, many items in GD grant triggered or active skills not available as part of the classes. Such items are almost non-existent in TQ, with the exception of around seven artifacts with such skills. Third, the number of viable active class skills in GD is a bit higher as well, though the difference is not as big as for the skills granted by items. It is also important that a significant fraction of skills in GD is AoE while AoE skills are rare and precious in TQ.
ITEMIZATION: This is a deep topic that includes equipment slots, choice of equipment for the same slot, drop rarity, crafting, and more. I do not cover the artistic style because it is subjective as mentioned above. Itemization is another aspect where GD blows TQ out of the water. GD has decent if not perfect crafting while TQ has almost none (apart from the artifacts). GD has more equipment slots and faction augments (probably the most game-affecting impact of factions in GD). Only GD has two-handed melee weapons and double-wielding of projectile weapons. Drops are much better if not perfectly balanced compared to TQ, especially for monster-specific items but also for components and uniques. There are one-shot chests in GD where a unique is guaranteed to roll. Playing self-found is also more viable thanks to crafting.
There are only one to three BiS items for every slot and for every melee toon in TQ, and the same is true for every slot and every caster toon. For example all melee toons wear Spellbinder Cuffs or Conqueror Braces. There is nothing else remotely comparable. Almost all casters want Archmage Clasp for cooldown reduction. Needless to say, this severely reduces replayability. Even when it comes to affixes, there are few highly sought strong ones (Hallowed or of Pegasus) and there are dozens of useless ones. Components have random completion boni. Here is a typical situation: with the probability of 70 percent you get something totally useless, however, if the luck shines on you, you can get a totally overpowered completion bonus with the probability of say about three percent.
In contrast, the choice of equipment is much richer in GD because there are more items and especially more useful items for a given slot: more (useful) uniques, more (useful) rare and monster-infrequent items, more (useful) components. An item maybe BiS for a particular build but it will never be BiS for all melee or all caster toons, or even for a given class combination. Not only the items and component completion boni but also the affixes and their progression are also better balanced in GD. While there are affixes that no build would ever want to use, the fraction of such affixes is much lower compare to TQ.
CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION AND BUILD DIVERSITY: There are many factors that contribute to both character customization and build diversity. Most are better in GD: I wrote about the character skill balance, skill point balance, number of available skills, and itemization above. Additionally, there are constellations and devotions in GD, which provide another layer of customization. There are factions, some of which are mutually exclusive and hostile to each other. There are quests with multiple different outcomes, though the difference is rarely significant. Finally, there are illusions that contribute to visual diversity of the toons.
However, there are a couple of exceptions: First, character attributes are better in TQ as I explain below. Second, the classes in TQ have very distinct nature; no two classes are alike. The classes in GD are more of a cross-breed. This is by design and not necessarily a bad idea: two toons of the same class may use very different skills. However, there are people who prefer the clear differentiation of classes in TQ.
MONSTER DAMAGE BALANCE: Balance passes in GD have also polished the balance of monster damage. There are monsters that are highly challenging but those are optional and easy to avoid. You do not want to fight Mad Queen? Fine, do not go into her lair. You do not want to meet Iron Maiden with a caster? Fine, do not reach nemesis reputation with Kymon. With the exception of those monsters and dedicated challenge areas, the difficulty is quite balanced across the board. The situation is different in TQ where most monsters do not present any real danger. However, there are a few selected monsters that are unavoidable and that can kill a fully developed and optimized toon in one hit without any warning. If you are unlucky to meet Toxeus in act 1, chances are he will kill you before you see him. If you attempt to fight Yaoguai the bull in melee in the legendary difficulty, no damage mitigation will help you (well, if your toon is warfare/defense and you have tons of life and maximized resistances, and both the colossus form and war banner are on, you may stand a chance but even then, it is scary).
ACCESSIBILITY OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE PLAYING CHARACTER: The game mechanics are quite complicated in both games because of the non-trivial interaction between the attributes, skills, items, components, and in the case of GD, devotions. The character sheet in GD is probably the most impressive I have ever seen. Additionally, there are many useful mouse tooltips and keyboard shortcuts to present even more information. For example, you can compare weapons with or without components by using the corresponding keyboard shortcut. The most central information is shown in TQ as well but the display is much more limited and there are no accompanying keyboard shortcuts. Besides, the display has a few bugs: the vitality and life leech resistances are combined together and presented as a single number. The actual resistance to a damage type can never exceed 80 percent but the display can go well over 100. Some of the bugs have been fixed in the Anniversary Edition but even then, it is only serviceable. To compare, GD clearly presents the maximum resistance, the current resistance, and the amount of overcap if the resistance is at maximum.
PLAYING CHARACTER ANIMATIONS AND POSTURE: While most visual- and presentation-related aspects in GD are a downgrade compared to TQ or in the best case, are at about the same level, this is probably one of the very few exceptions where GD is better. In TQ both idle and combat postures look somehow weird. This is fixed in GD. In GD, there is nice visual feedback when your toon hits a monster. Such feedback is not always present in TQ; if your toon stands in the middle of a group of monsters and summons, it may take a couple of seconds for your mind to register what is going on and which monster your toon is hitting, if at all.
USER INTERFACE: The interface in GD is a gradual evolution of the one in TQ. While the similarity between the two is immediately recognizable, GD introduces quite a few minor improvements. Examples include presentation of quest-related information, the character sheet, location of the HP bar, on-screen notifications, many useful keyboard shortcuts, better popups introducing in-game mechanics, among others.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT: Both games drop many more items of interest than you can put in a limited stash or character inventory. While both games encourage you to collect most interesting items, they do not provide tools to do so. Fortunately, there are good tools developed by the fans for this purpose. Despite the availability of those tools, inventory management is a chore in TQ. The shared stash is very small, which requires you to stop playing and use those tools quite often and besides, it becomes a problem if you like to play multiple toons in parallel. The character inventory is also smaller compared to GD, which results in playing a lot of tetris with items in the inventory. The item sorting button helps but does not eliminate the issue. While the space is at premium, you need a lot of it for components that cannot be stacked. (Stacking of components cannot work in the general case because of their different completion boni but even if you roll the same completion bonus for two copies of the same component, there is no stacking). Managing the inventory requires a lot of mouse clicks because keyboard shortcuts are limited.
GD has improved all of the above. All inventory spaces are bigger and keyboard shortcuts are plentiful. Not only components have a single completion bonus but they also stack. In some cases, you can even search through the inventory.
ADDITIONAL QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS: It would not be a stretch to say that GD is the best ARPG by far in terms of the quality of life. In addition to the user interface and inventory management, there are a lot of other nice features. For example, you can search constellations by attributes of individual nodes. Crafting accepts materials in the inventory, personal stash, or shared stash and even considers the order of those when taking the materials. Loot filters are highly configurable.
BETTER IN TQ
PLAYING CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES: Most underwhelming aspects in GD are matter of deliberate business priorities and designersâ passion, which is inherent in a game development as I suggested in the beginning. Crate Entertainment went all out on quality of life and build diversity but they did not try as hard to make the esthetics impressive. When they do try hard, the result is usually good 
. Toon attributes is a black sheep in this sense. It was one of the very first design elements in GD but by the time the developers realized that there was a problem, it was too late to change it because the balance and equipment had already been built around it.
In short, there are three character attributes in GD but they do not contribute much to build diversity. One could allocate more points to physique and have a somewhat more defensive build or to cunning and play it more offensively but it does not really change the build the way the gear and skills do. The only critical reason to allocate points into a specific attribute is to fulfill item requirements because the impact of attributes on the gameplay is minimal.
TQ has five character attributes. The system is not perfect either but it does contribute more to build variety. The energy attribute is of very limited use: bow and melee toons may add a handful of points to energy while casters never need to increase it because the masteries provide it aplenty. The other four attributes (strength, dexterity, intelligence, and health) provide a somewhat meaningful tradeoff, however, especially for casters and hybrid toons. First, the attribute requirements on gear are higher in TQ, which results in a need for planning and commitment in the builds. Second, the attributes play a relatively more significant role in the calculation of damage, OA, and DA because there are fewer sources of acquiring increased damage, OA, and DA outside of attributes.
CLARIFY OF THE ART STYLE: Every single object on the screen stands out lucidly in TQ, and TQ has boatloads of such objects. This is mostly because of the bright saturated colors that differ between the objects without creating mishmash. The only criticism is that the playing character does not stand out more than the other objects.
The expression âsoup on the screenâ has been used in forums to refer to GD. It is perhaps too harsh but I tend to agree that some criticism is justified. The main reason for that is that the object colors are subdued and quite similar for different objects present simultaneously on the screen, while the theme colors permeate everything. By theme colors I mean the black of the ruins or the black of chthonic rifts or the brown of the fields or the sickly green of the aether ground, etc. Last but not least there is blue fog that you can thankfully turn off.
VISUAL ASSETS FOR BACKGROUND OBJECTS: Visual assets include meshes and textures. There are two factors in TQ and GD that amplify the importance of visual assets. First, there is no dynamic generation of maps so that each time you play through the game, you will see the very same objects in the very same places. Second, the engines of both games emphasize realism compared to say goofiness or cartoonishness of other games. In the absence of stylism, human perception pays more attention to details because it is not diverted by style considerations.
It is remarkable how great background objects that are part of the settings look in TQ. This is by todayâs standards, never mind that the game was released in 2006. It is mostly due to the amount of detail put into the design of those objects. The waterfalls dynamically produce coalescing foam and are surrounded by mysterious mist. The sulphur pools simmer and bubble. You can actually identify specific religious characters and the subject of the scenes depicted in the Egyptian murals inside the tombs and pyramids. When the wind blows in Thebes at night, you can observe the movement of individual sand grains. The statues look like they may have come out of Michelangeloâs workshop.
In GD there are very few background objects that people would call interesting. There are shapeless debris, deformed piles of sagged stones, planks protruding at different angles, and of course, crates. The latter may indeed be entertaining in terms of their content once you break them but definitely not in terms of their looks. The most valuable GD patch for me was when the visuals of Arkovian ruins were enhanced. Not because this was the patch that contributed to GD the most. Not because the new ruins were dramatically better either (the difference was quite nice but perhaps not breathtaking) but because it was a rare step amid many dozens of patches dedicated to rebalancing, improved itemization, and quality-of-life improvements.
I get it that GD aims to portray a post-apocalyptic world. However, there are many other games (Diablo 1 and 2, Path of Exile, Fallout games, Elex) out there that focus on apocalypse yet depict the world in a much more interesting way. First, they realize that in a post-apocalyptic world not all objects need to look post-apocalyptic. The grass can still grow. The mountain peaks can still be magnificent. It is that contrast between the wild nature and remnants of destruction that amplifies the feeling of apocalypse. Second, the post-apocalyptic objects do not need to be all subdued and monotonic (recall the colorful butcher room in Diablo 1). Third, because the theme of the world is drab, it makes the diversity of objects especially important.
MAPS: As mentioned, the maps are static in both games rather than being dynamically generated. Both games have three difficulties. This means that you take one toon three times through the same maps. This is under the assumption that you do not farm the same map over and over again, which you sometimes do. The number of times you might farm the same map varies from a few to a few hundred. Now consider that there is an order of 50 different class combinations in each game and that especially GD has excellent build diversity. With that amount of repetition, the static maps better be damn good!
Now, what does constitute a good map in ARPGs, apart from the monsters placed in it? The most potentially interesting effect is that on the gameplay. For example, enemies could be more easily electrocuted and lightning damage could be stronger on water-filled maps while fire damage could have bigger impact on maps with higher environmental temperature (this sort of interaction exists in Larian games). Or perhaps a monster could ignite the bark you are standing on. Other games have time-limited minor dynamic effects, such as a shrine suddenly materializing next to you, which can bestow a minor boon if used within next few seconds. Another category of interesting effects could be due to the verticality. For example, a skill may require that you are above your enemy, or perhaps you just have a higher chance to hit in a ranged combat.
Unfortunately, map effect on the gameplay is very limited in both TQ and GD. Both games have a very small number of bosses whose skill may create pillars of a damaging substance (water, poison, fire) dynamically coming from the ground or from the skies, which most players find interesting. GD has static ground effects, namely aether and poison ground, which most players seem to dislike. GD also has destroyable objects that the toon or the enemy can hide behind but again, these mechanics are underused. The main effect on the gameplay in both games is the difficulty or ease of kiting when one side wants to use ranged skills while the other side wants to fight in melee. This is arguably less important for GD where the movement is faster and closing the gap is easier. Still, it creates a marginally interesting positioning aspect, e.g., when one of the sides is fighting from above the barricades.
Because the combat pace is slow in TQ, the monster density is lower compared to GD. In a sense, it means that you spend a higher fraction of time in combat in GD compared to TQ. Whether it is a good thing or not is a matter of priorities: some players prefer to take a short break from the combat and enjoy the scenery. I also find an average map to be bigger in GD, which may make it a bit tedious to clear the map rather than just to run through it.
The maps may differ in how you traverse them. For examples, they may be wide open or narrow, have a weird shape or intricate connections to neighbor maps. This may create another memorable element; consider the fantastic maze maps in the aforementioned Lilith mod or in Might and Magic 6.
The main effect of the map in both TQ and GD is on the esthetics: color palette, environments and the objects, layout and connections to other maps, feeling of the size, environmental sounds and music, and above all, diversity. Most players in various forums have opined that TQ is much better in terms of the color palette, environments, and diversity, and somewhat better when it comes to layouts and sounds/music. The color palette in TQ is vivid, whether it is the green pastures, the white snow, the yellow sand, or the blue water. The environments include normal forest, cursed forest, jungle, swamp, snowy mountains, otherworldly white clouds, mazes, tombs, classical/oriental/Egyptian temples, volcanic terrain, and more. No environment in GD is a patch on what TQ offers; the players are clearly supposed to kill the monsters rather than look at the background. The map shapes are also more varied and interesting in TQ. The only map in GD whose shape shows some creativity is that of the Hiveâs Queen Lair: it resembles a Halloween pumpkin.
VISUALS AND ESTHETICS OF MONSTERS: Today, more than a decade after TQ release, it is not difficult to find games with better looking things to hack at. Yet, even today no one would criticize TQ for boring-looking monsters. Bosses such as Typhon, Hades, Charon, and Telkines stand out but even trash monsters such as turtles, automatoi, or ascacophuses have good visual design.
The esthetics goes beyond the superficial looks, however. Ascacophuses curl into a ball upon death, which then explodes in a myriad of leaves. The snakes on medusaâs head slither as if they want to lash at you. Not all monsters are equally interesting but at least players would not call this aspect of TQ a weakness.
I cannot think of any monster in GD that would be a great fun to look at. There are a lot of humanoids that look ok but nothing to write home about. The aetherial enemies look suitably disgusting and ugly and the appearance of the chthonic creatures is suitably otherworldly but all of them are easily forgettable. If a monster has several subtypes, they all look alike apart from a slight difference in coloration and size. If I close my eyes, it is hard for me to recall a single animation of a non-boss monster (the spray of Chthonic Ravagers perhaps). Almost all animations appear as drab as the theme of the world.
MEMORABLE BOSS FIGHTS: Bosses are hands down more memorable in TQ. Almost every boss has unique appearance, unique presentation, unique combat animations, unique death animation, unique dialogue and voiceovers, unique arena for the fight, set of skills unique both visually and in terms of the effect, and sometimes even unique music and a unique type.
The âuniquenessâ of bosses in GD is pretty much limited to the effect of their skills and even then, it is typically a buffed up effect of what normal monsters of the same type use. Still, there are around 20 bosses with wholesomely unique mechanics in the base game, which is good considering that only one or two (Loghorrean and perhaps the two dermapteran queens) have distinctly unique appearance, fight arena, and a unique type. The rest of the bosses simply look like bigger reskins of their respective types. A handful of bosses have a dialogue, but it is not nearly as memorable compared to TQ. While some of the bosses have their own combat and death animations, none of those comes across as interesting.
NPC ANIMATIONS: You can easily discern the mood and traits of NPCs in TQ by their gestures and animations: they can appear pleading, desperate, angry, agitated, projecting authority, or even debating something among themselves. For example a food merchant may pick a fish up from his stock and show it to the potential buyer, then start arguing, apparently about the price. The NPCs in GD are simply lifeless placeholders for their functionality with nothing projecting their personality.
MUSIC AND AMBIENCE: While you can always mute the in-game music and listen to something else, I strongly believe that good music and ambience add to the atmosphere of the game. This is the case with TQ where the ambience reflects the settings. The music of Greece, Babylon, China, and especially Egypt is based on ethnic instruments and tunes. The music of Athens is more regal compared to that of small villages. The music played during boss fights sounds suitably epic. The hard metal of Secret Passage is cheeky making it obvious that the developers had some fun. The main issue with the music in TQ is that it plays too infrequently. There are many areas such as the caves in Greece, without any music and with unremarkable ambient sounds. An additional less significant issue is that while the ambient sound may play in a loop, the music track only plays once. This is not a problem in the main game but it creates some obstacles for mods, as the creator of Lilith pointed out. Besides, the transition of music between areas is not always smooth, which is an artifact of the engine.
The music in GD plays more often and it loops but this is where the advantages end. I cannot recall a single memorable ambient sound in the entire game. Only five areas in the base game (excluding the expansions and boss fights) have area-specific music, and two of them (Gruesome Harvest and Port Valbury) share the track. Only act bosses have special music compared to some 30 bosses in TQ. For the rest of the areas, the track is chosen randomly out of a small pool, which leads to a lot of repetition. Like in TQ, there are areas without music at all. The quality of the tracks is also not as good as in TQ, though this is more subjective. If you want to take many different builds through the game, I highly recommend a mod that improves the music and ambience. Unfortunately, the mods can only replace the area-specific tracks and tracks in the generic pool. They cannot assign a specific track to a specific area (outside of the above five areas) without rebuilding the maps.
VOICEOVERS: Not everything is voiced in TQ but most dialogue is. The voiceovers in TQ are interesting: they are very stylized in attempt to match the settings. For example, the non-playing characters will try to imitate Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese accents, sometimes successfully but other times it feels very forced. They will appeal to divine or mythological beings from their region. The dialogue is rather primitive but there is a wide range of emotions from tears of joy to anger. The result varies from memorable one-liners to comically exaggerated expressions to grating repetitive phrases.
The fraction of voiced dialogue is much smaller in GD but personally I wish it were closer to zero. There are only two voices I enjoy in the entire base game: that of Barnabas and the initial voice of Kasparov that was unfortunately replaced after the actor had passed away. The rest ranges from forgettable to atrocious. I would say that in terms of voice quality, GD is in the bottom two to five percent of all voiced games. I realize that there are players who prefer poor voiceovers over nothing. I also realize that it is unrealistic to expect triple A quality voiceovers in a game produced by a small studio. At the same time, it is clear to me that the passion and quality control were not there because aspiring student actors or even some volunteer players would do a better job. I cannot wrap my head around how good the English voiceovers are in Enderal, which is a free mod for Skyrim. There are hundreds of times more dialogue lines than in GD. It was originally voiced in German, with translation to English done as a side project at a later stage.
DIVERSITY OF ESTHETICS: If I were to name one area where Crate really dropped the ball, it would be this. I find it quite instructive that while announcing the expansions, they presented nice tables with the number of new items, new masteries, new skills, stash size, and similar. It was all very good but I could not find any tables with the number of different monster types, animations, assets, environments and maps types, music tracks, dialogue lines, and other esthetics-related aspects. The diversity of maps, color palettes, and assets is lacking both between different maps and between different areas within the same map. Ashen Waste vs Forsaken Wastes? Wightmire vs Foggy Bank? Warden Cellar vs Underground Transit vs Hidden Laboratory? Cronley âs Hideout vs the mines? The three levels of Arkovian Undercity vs the five levels of the Steps of Torment? Jail ruins appear in around 10 different maps in the game which all reuse the assets. It does not matter that different monsters populate Tyrantâs Hold, Darkvale Gate, Tomb of the Watchers, and Fort Ikon Armory. The maps do look and feel almost the same.
PRESENTATION: This is probably the least important comparison item on my list. The production values were higher for TQ compared to GD. As a result, TQ boasts an inspiring intro movie, in-game presentations such as Medea doing her magic and looking into the crystal ball, nicely done and clearly cut transitions between the acts, as well as other elements not related to the gameplay in any way. In GD these things are minimal. For example, you do not get any indication that you have just started a new act.
While I appreciate the sleek presentation of TQ, I deem the lack of such presentation in GD both less important and more understandable compared to all other points on my list. A better video and act transitions are not as essential for enjoying the game as good visual assets and maps. Besides, presentation is a function of the budget and not just of developersâ skills and passion, which makes it hard for small studios to compete with major game producers.
OUTRO
In summary, it is impossible to create a game like TQ without a passion for esthetics. It is impossible to create a game like GD without a passion for build planning and the gameplay. I wish some game will be created by a team balancing the passion across all the skills needed.
