… and it made me appreciate Grim Dawn even more (how more could it get, I already preach this game above and beyond).
Not to shit on LE: it’s a good game (imo), it has it’s merits and I like many thing about it.
However getting back to GD feels like home.
To me the contrast is especially stark in the way the character feels like it belongs in the world.
Even though the engine is old, the way the characters moves and interacts with objects and mobs feels very… cohesive, for lack of a better word.
Ye, there’s something uncomfortable with LE, from the very early development. It feels bland. Either it is the monster design, or overall gameplay design, I can’t tell. But feels like generic walking simulator with extra steps. Crafting system is top though.
It was serviceable, but the mid-late game kind of felt tedious so I never really got into the end-game content (Not that it really existed at the time, the end-game content updates came after I left the game).
Then of course, builds were limited to which class you picked so I more quickly ran out of options.
As far as the story/world went, it was okay. The time hopping thing was kind of neat, to see places in different times… But it was very bland. Like “Oh, fight random dudes in this ancient ruin” to “Oh, fight random dudes in this ancient city” where really the only difference was colour palette…
It’s not like Shadows: Awakening where the game was actively about swapping between Demon and Human forms to traverse the map (By having the Demon and Human worlds be different, with paths being blocked in one world but not the other)
It was “Just fight through the map and sometimes there was Rift with a teeny tiny area that was set in a different time to fight through before returning to the main map”
But outside of that it was kind of light on story. Mostly just focusing on the single main story that lead to your time hopping powers and you time hopping to interact with “Important” events for “Reasons”
I play LE too. Ive always felt the devs were amateurs compared to GD. They dont address bugs very well. But I still play. I switch between games alot. Play GD in the morning a diff game in the afternoon lol. The campaign isnt finished yet. Supposely next year. I like making alts in that game as well. I find the end game boring. But I find most end games boring. Ive been trying the new tidewalker pet this season.
LE’s deterministic crafting is great for gearing up smoothly, but Grim Dawn’s itemization has much more staying power.
Hunting for specific Monster Infrequents with the right affixes, along with mapping out complex Devotion constellations across two masteries, gives an unmatched sense of progression and build depth.
I played LE at launch. The campaign was such a slog and the world felt so uninteresting that I haven’t played it again since then. By the world being uninteresting, I don’t just mean the subpar lore, I also feel the areas themselves didn’t have much going for them.
The only ARPG that I enjoy besides Grim Dawn is Svarog’s Dream. Its itemization and class system isn’t as elaborate as GD, but the reactivity and C&C are top notch.
Diablo 3 had a serviceable campaign. Though post-game (Or seasonal runs where you play new characters and don’t care for the campaign) was boring af, even more so when itemisation when wacko…
PoE has some interesting gameplay. My only critiques are:
That the SSF mode is designed horribly (In that, because you can at any point turn a SSF character into a regular one then SSF still has the god awful drop rates and socket manipulation rates designed for regular mode to encourage trading which is lame af because who tf plays an ARPG to just buy your full build from other players instead of farming it?).
I also had qualms with the nature of how you only got 1 piece of equipment with 6 sockets (Unless you used a 2 handed weapon but they were gimped) so you only had 1 skill that was full power. Which lead to boring 1 button gameplay (A design from old-school ARPG’s that I abhor)
Torchlight 1 & 2 were okay. They were fun enough to run through the campaign with. Story was whatever, but gameplay was decent.
Titan Quest is pretty cool. You can’t really go too wrong with a setting of Ancient Mythology. Gameplay was serviceable though very much “Hold Left Click and win” with very few active skills.
Various Roguelite ARPG’s have also been fun to play for a bit, Shape of Dreams, Hades, Ravenwatch… Not really the same style of game as the others, but some solid gameplay (Although Shape of Dreams very much felt like it was balanced around multiplayer. Like, I still was able to unlock everything including doing the various speed runs and such, but it always felt like it was not really balanced for solo - Even as someone who only plays games on the hardest difficulties)
I’ve not yet tried TQ2 or PoE2 but I’m curious as to how they (And GD2) will turn out when they finish Early Access. How much modern design they adopt (From the Roguelites) or how much they copy the old stuff.
If we’re getting into older ARPGs, I’ve tried a couple:
I enjoyed both the Torchlights. Story and questing were pretty decent. A lot of it was clearly a throwback to Diablo. I agree with your take on the campaign being whatever.
Loved Sacred:Gold and I think it has the best open world in an isometric ARPG.
Tried Inquisitor and didn’t have fun time despite its unique setting and aesthetics.
Don’t recommend Lionheart since it’ll break your heart after Barcelona.
The always online is what has prevented me from trying either of the two Path of Exile games so far.
I tried it last weekend and it felt like it was Hollywood’s interpretation of mythology. Sure, the enemies aren’t your usual fantasy RPG monsters, but it felt super shallow and uninteresting from a questing perspective. Titan Quest 2 has the same problems.
Although, I give TQ points for not trying to do yet another medieval fantasy setting.
I’m curious to know how the engine is shaping up. They plan to use the same engine for the RTS, which is an interesting choice.
PoE2 seems to be quite well liked, I think you might enjoy it. Even I’m feeling tempted to try it despite my aversion for always online games.
I haven’t played enough modern games to know what enticing mechanics can be adopted by the devs for a sequel. But Crate devs have a knack for good quest design. I hope they expand upon the C&C system and reactivity in the sequel. They also have an excellent sense of world design, while a proper open-world game from Crate might not be practical but that’s the dream for me.
You must not have reached late game then, or at least level 50+ territory. One of the best things about Titan Quest compared to GD is that you can eventually pick up multiple skills from both masteries and have them be useful. The game is also quite generous with all/mastery skill bonuses (+2 all being somewhat common on end-game legendaries), and with the max overcap being +4, you eventually get a LOT of skill points to play around with as you can start uncapping skills and put the points elsewhere.
Yes, on Normal, you can generally steamroll the game with one button, at least until late Act 3-early Act 4. But on later difficulties is when the game keeps getting more interesting. 5-6 or even more active skills (excluding stuff like passives and summons) being regularly used on late game characters is pretty much a given.
It doesn’t matter if you can pick up many skills when there just doesn’t exist that many active skills in the first place.
You have to go out of your way to pick masteries that have multiple active skills. Many masteries are mostly DAR/WPS/Passive skills with like 2-3 actives. (Then sometimes, like with Ternion Attack or Flame Surge you might end up putting these actives on LMB anyway…)
IMO the deterministic crafting in LE actually holds it back. Stats on GD items imo are more interesting because the items aren’t designed to be broken down and allow upgrading singular stat lines one at a time to T7 etc.
Holds it back is probably the wrong choice of words, as it’s the main appeal to a lot of LE gamers. But I’m glad they’re adding more uniques with interesting effects.
My point is that what GD gets very right is that it doesn’t let its systems take away from the immediate excitement of good raw monster drops. I kill stuff, I see good or interesting stuff drop, I get immediately excited. This feeling is too infrequent for me in other ARPGs
You can a 100% steamroll Titan Quest on all difficulties with one button. Game has next to no challenge, everything dies too fast, you are too powerful.
Also, too many skill points is a massive issue in Titan Quest. There’s no choices to be made, you have far too many points, so you can just pick everything. But because the game has less skills and buffs overall, eventually you have nothing to spend on.
Makes sense. I hear a lot of good things about D2. I just never found myself in a position to play it.
D3 was fine enough just putzing through stuff, messing around with different skills and runes. With story being “Okay” (It wasn’t great, but it’s not insufferable)
Aye, despite its name Titan Quest is a rather shallow game. With little to interact with across the game. Also, slight disjointed nature when you randomly go to Chinese mythology for Act 3.
Still, the aesthetics are good because that vibe of “Mythological Greece” is pretty cool. If often rather hilariously inaccurate (The recent Odyssey film is an embodiment of that)
Makes sense. Several MOBAs utilise RTS engines and MOBAs tend to use similar player controls to ARPGs (While RTS use many individual units so high enemy density is not a problem for them)
I’ll have to look into it. Namely how they do SSF and skills. If it’s a repeat of PoE1 then I won’t be interested at all.
To be fair, it’s mostly the sort of stuff GD has trended towards for a while. More active gameplay (More moving to avoid telegraphs and less facetanking), incorporation of Twinstick controls (WASD/Controller movement), the dedicated evade button etc.
The only other major thing is skills. Whereby you have like 4-5 skills always, so no piano and no 1-button-wonder builds. But to be fair that’s mostly due to these games being Roguelites with specific characters than an overall modern ARPG thing (Though Diablo did do it in 3, where you only had the like 5 slots to put skills into… Though that didn’t stop itemisation making the game 1-button-wonder gameplay…)
Compared to old school design where it’s all left-click gaming. Move with left click, attack with left click, loot with left click, scratch your balls with left click, pick your nose with left click…
I have an impression that those who say LE has deterministic crafting probably haven’t played long enough to finish campaign.
If by crafting you mean the ability to upgrade affixes to T5 (T6 and T7 are drop only + some non-deterministic crafting options which are expensive for casual play) — then kinda yeah, but that’s not the endgame crafting.
Getting 2+ LP legendary is a huge random gamble.
Then getting good exalt with useful T7’s is random OR crafting useful T7-T5-T5 is expensive and also somewhat random, then slamming the two together is also kinda random with a chance to end up with a “meh” item, starting all over again.
You know you can reroll the affix to get T7 right?
Its pretty easy and almost free. Same to 2lp unique except some high end uniques. The real problem of LE is getting multiple 2t7 3t7 to slam, not getting 2lp+ unique.
Lol. I’ve beaten Uber Aberroth.
I’m well aware of the rarity of LPs (honestly not bad to find on the less rare uniques)
You’ve misunderstood me entirely, but that’s because I wasn’t very specific.
The entire slot machine aspect of crafting in LE imo makes items more bland. I’m essentially seeing the same items drop again and again and praying that one drops with the right base requirements for me to try to craft into something completed. But as a result of this design, I feel a lot of the equipment lacks character or identity.
I much prefer GD where uniques and MIs are designed with an identity in mind, and come with a fixed set of stats to try to piece together with other items that have a fixed set of stats.
The current setup is also quite good. There are end game builds that wear all purples in every slots, builds that mix in some greens, mostly MI builds, builds that have a blue or two, and now even builds with some ascended commons.
I find the loot to be much more enjoyable in GD. I don’t think it’s actually too LE’s long term benefit that every single non unique stat can be broken down into shards. It sort of homogenizes crafting.
But like I said, for other players, that is exactly what they DO like. I just think a lot of the friction between player and gear in LE is the kind of padding I don’t like in games. Oh I need to watch the game drop the same unique over and over until I get a good one.
In GD, the unique I want drops, I’m instantly happy.
In GD the MI I want drops? Great, the core stats are good and I’ll be happy with passable affixes even if they’re not BiS. Ascended affixes feel pretty good on the majority of builds because I don’t feel I need to get the exact best ones to do fine in ascendant mode. The raw drops in GD seem vastly superior to me than in LE.
You need to slam these t7 affixes to your unique.
And Im not even mentioning corrupting item which sucks hard because there are many ways it can ruin your item - unlike GD, you may get the ascended affix you dont want, but your item is still there. AND YOU CAN REROLL ASCENDED AFFIX
Oh, meta and build balancing in this game is a joke lmao.
Speaking from an old LE player with 3k hours playing.
LE forces you to play Monolith only for end-game. No freedom.
And when you spent 100 hours for the core item drops (MG is quite boring, you have no joy of loot drop), it automatically starts another tedious farming for a good t7 exalted and Sanctum run for gamble. The loop is so boring like you want to farm again and again the next 30 hours for an extra 1% crit chance. They also add too much crafting options every season instead of gameplay.
And the world is pretty bad design, like 200 mini dungeons with no real connection.
Thank you for the detailed explanation, that helps.
Not sure if I agree with “bland”, but I definitely understand the sentiment.
For me LE feels like “craft your own legendary”, which adds a bit to diversity and items actually not feeling bland.
Though Admittedly I play one character a year, so I don’t have enough exposure to the situation where 10 of my characters need the same legendary but with different crafted affixes.
GD, in constrast, has legendaries set in stone and pre-defined (ascended affixes aside). So eventual build crafting is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces are already made, I just need to clue them together. (pretty much like in Diablo 3).
Whereas in LE pieces are molds, but the material to fill it is up to me.
NGL, on paper LE’s itemisation aspect looks much more interesting (to my taste).
Though in reality, GD makes this interesting by the sheer amount of items and mastery combinations, all of which are appealing in their own right.
And of course now with ascended affixes we can finally grind for another layer of power ups.
I mean, you like what you like. I’m happy for those who enjoy it. I enjoyed it at first, but I don’t think it has as much staying power. I think your creation of only 1 character per year is influencing your outlook.
On paper, I’d argue LE’s itemisation creates the illusion of being much more interesting.
The jigsaw puzzle analogy for GD is mostly apt, except that unlike a jigsaw puzzle, in GD there is more than one right answer. Between devotion, components, augments, affixes, blacksmith bonuses, potion bonuses, and the actual items, there are multiple ways to assemble a functional build. You can very often pick to optimize more for damage or defense, with choices for utility in between. There is more than one way to get damage reduction on monsters, to help get the amount of sustain you need, etc. Not only do the jigsaw pieces fit together in different acceptable ways, I also find the jigsaw pieces to be much more interesting individually as well. Yes, the legendaries are set in stone, but they are hand-crafted with thought and love; that’s what makes them great. The MI’s are also not set in stone, and many affixes can be used serviceably with them. GD affixes have multiple stats, are, imo, way more interesting than last epoch having each stat mostly separated out as affix shards… and then I just upgrade them. Games function around having gaps, limits, etc. Sometimes being able to have whatever you want actually homogenizes an experience.
Sure, some things get mostly min-maxed with enough experimentation, but even on finished builds I find that I often make some different choices to suit my preferences/playstyle. Now, I haven’t played LE in a while, so maybe the build diversity and itemization choices have improved since then.
I also just like that in GD I think there are more stats every build has to care about. The sheer volume of important stats required to thrive creates the need for choices and build experimentation.
