Grim Dawn, in my humble opinion, remains the greatest ARPG ever created. In terms of story/lore, atmosphere, itemization, music, classes & skills, build progression, etc. it’s simply my favorite game of all time. But I’ve said it all before, so let’s get into FoA.
Overall Review
Fangs is the most I’ve enjoyed Grim Dawn since AoM, and it’s trending toward becoming my favorite DLC of the bunch. I loved Forgotten Gods, and I love the Shattered Realm, but with FG came a level of power creep that resulted in my characters feeling homogenized from the lack of risk in the endgame. Ascendant difficulty and the altar completely remedy this by returning enough threat to enemies, to the point that I can no longer ignore their mechanics. I understand modern audiences may not have received the new challenges as well as you hoped, but I think for all the old-school gamers, this was quite the love letter. Grim Dawn’s entire campaign is exciting again.
New Campaign Content
As usual, Crate finds a way to freshen up old ideas, such as the classic “snowy ice area.” The Mongolian-esque style of the Kurn, the runes carved into stone, the frozen corpses, and other details all brought life to the new regions. The pristine nature of the Voldur River and the new chthonic corrupted areas particularly stood out to me. The latter really emphasized that the world is built of the blood of a primordial God. The organic feel of the red fissures emerging out of stone was something I’ve never seen before, and I loved it. I sort of hoped to see a chthonic ice area of red/pink mixed with white snow, streaks of ash dyeing the white… but I guess chthonic energy would just melt everything. I think there was also a missed opportunity to do more with an area like the transition just before the Aurora Peaks Riftgate, where the ground has pockets of grass, dirt, AND snow, as opposed to just one or two of the three. I would have loved to have a bigger area where the elevation let us experience more of where grassland meets the frost.
The new quests, NPC, and lore notes were all great. As much as I enjoyed the eccentric nature of the Witch God sects, returning to the straightforward warrior nature of the Kurn felt like closing the game on a note that felt somehow grounded and mystical simultaneously. I really appreciate the distinct feel of each DLC, and I think it is as under-appreciated as it is well accomplished.
The main story of Fangs shows a level of thought that I feel has been too overlooked. Yigra somewhat misleading us out of distrust, “lowlander”, the rules of hospitality under Amatok, and all these details you’ve sprinkled in go a long way to breathing fresh life into the noble barbarian trope. What I really loved, though, were the lore notes revealing how the desperation of war with the Erulan Empire caused many of the Kurn to lose their way and almost cost them everything. There is a sense of purity in the ways of the Kurn that makes their struggling state all the more tragic. Underneath their bitterness, you can feel the valiance of their culture. I do think there was not enough dialogue from NPC’s linked to us playing a berserker, and it would have been nice if someone like the skalds could share their thoughts on our other class choices. I also liked how the bloodbound felt like a naturally predatory approach to corrupting the Kurn warrior spirit.
I appreciated the variety and creativity of the side quests… And while I’m definitely freezing that asshole to death every time, the more hopeful tone of Fangs was not lost on me. We gather ingredients for a healing salve, we save the children, we can peacefully put 2/3 of the Wights spirits to rest, we can help a barbarian not give in to his beast side… And to really land the message, the DLC culminates in us not killing, but purifying Beronath. Fangs is the first DLC where we get a sense that we might not just be able to defeat our enemies, but also help heal the world. I’ll be damned if that wasn’t an intentional message.
The new music was fantastic: the Ice Caves, the Dread Wastes… they capture the vibe of the environment so well! It would be hard to overstate how important and how good atmospheric music is for ARPG’s, but GD, as usual, nailed it.
Many of the new bosses feel mechanically superior to those that have come before. This was a big plus for me. I wish every boss in the game could feel like FoA bosses.
The artwork for the new items has never been better. You can feel the love toward the fashionistas among the player base. I love the really bold stuff like Horns of Eternal Nightmare, the Zakull Set, Apocalypton, Voidpiercer pistols… but also just how clean some of them are, like the Kurn faction gear and the Wight Lord MI’s, (Wight Torso MI’s when btw?) the Ironlord Demolisher, etc. I imagine every type of player will find something new and fitting for their aesthetic preferences.
I think FoA’s reception was hurt by the fact that there is already so much previous campaign content. GD felt like a game you could 100% on a character pretty quickly, but FoA is so big that it makes the process of finishing a new build that much longer. It hasn’t bothered my gamer OCD about 100%ing ultimate on all my characters but I definitely feel a significant difference.
New Features
The new features are at the center of why I’m more excited for Grim Dawn than I have been in a long-ass time, but the more I use them, the more I find myself frustrated by where they’re gated and where the limits are. They are a breath of fresh air for Grim Dawn, and I think they should be opened up further.
Potions
- Despite the contention around their balance, they are a triumph. They open up quality-of-life and flexibility to builds that let players embrace what appeals to their playstyle. I frequently run with Phillom both early and late game, and the rest depends on my build. I think alongside the increased availability to +% max resists from skills and gear, the defensive pots really help tank builds feel properly tanky in Grim Dawn. I have never loved playing tanks more than now. Savillus is the only one I feel could use a functional improvement; it already eats up a potion slot, so ideally it’d just work at 40% health with no cooldown (defaulting to the potion’s cooldown). I understand every potion becomes a whole vector of balance concerns, but I’d love to see more added to the game.
- I’d do back alley tricks for a +reputation potion modifier. Idk if it’d fuck with the nemeses and dread spawning system, but if you could make it work, that’d be fantastic. Give me a Charismus potion modifier for Ch-rist-mas please.
Ascendant Difficulty
- I think Ascendant was overly nerfed, but I won’t argue with what was the unhappy majority. My bigger issue with it is the fact that we can only use it at level 100. It stops new and unskilled players from jumping in and then having a bad experience, sure, but it limits those of us who like extreme challenges. I see no reason to stop Ascendant mode from being the “Veteran Difficulty” of Ultimate. Add big, red text in the description: “NOT ADVISED FOR CHARACTERS UNDER LEVEL 100!” Or make it a hidden toggle in the options that unlocks after beating Beronath in Ascendant. Lock it behind a hidden quest. Idk, but I’d love Ascendant to become my default Ultimate playing experience.
- Ascendant in conjunction with the altar feels extremely rewarding in some places and not rewarding enough in others, given how much spongier you can make monsters and thus how much it slows down your clear. I need to think about this more and make a separate thread about it, but right now what I am pretty certain of is that I wish the quantity of purple and blue drops was a bit greater in Ascendant, perhaps tied to the amount of materials you put in the altar.
- I wish Ascendant introduced more “jackpots” to GD. A 1/20 - 1/10 chance for hidden spoils/hidden corpses to drop a blue now that they’re more coveted. A small chance that a hero mob drops 3 uniques instead of one. A small chance (1/2000 - 1/1000) that trash mobs can drop a unique, separate from their ability to sometimes equip one. Bosses and boss chests dropping more uniques based on the amount of materials you’ve used so they feel a bit more loot pinata-y for how much tankier and more dangerous they get. I don’t think Ascendant should compete with SR or Crucible in terms of efficiency of grinding unique drops, but I think the gap is a bit too big.
The Altar
Incredible feature; I will have to make a separate thread about it soon, but in short:
- Again, it would be great if after completing the game, there was a way to access this from level 1. It transforms the campaign and having it gated behind so much quest progress is a bit frustrating.
- The middle-slot for item weighting is the one I have the most mixed feelings about. It’s EXTREMELY powerful on MI’s, making affixes that don’t typically drop on them drop, like fire affixes on a cold MI. This is useful for chasing MI’s with specific rolls, especially for niche builds, but this also tends to brick most other MI drops for your session. Boss MI’s drop once per session, so it’s limited in its usefulness since it’s expensive to keep providing materials to the center slot. As for purple and blue items, I wish it weighted them a bit harder. This might be the dad-gamer with limited time in me talking, but not everyone has time to play for several hours straight, and most players play much less efficiently than I do… so I don’t think the weighting on uniques in conjunction with the anti-duplicate-drop feature is feeling all that impactful for the average Joe. A bunch of the random people I’ve been playing with recently have all told me the random RNG unique drops were frustrating even with the altar.
- Running void-marked, tempest totems, bonus spoils in roguelikes, and resplendent troves is a great way to spice up Ultimate.
- +Experience I think should also affect quest exp. And again, because the altar is gated, by the time I reach it, I tend to be around level 50+ already.
- +Reputation is amazing.
- +Nemesis Spawns is insanely useful for farming their MI’s and just incredibly fun to stack.
- +Iron Bits I think should be buffed since it doesn’t affect SR and is super outclassed by SR.
- As noted in another thread, I wish there were some altar-only materials we could make to do zanier things with the altar. Maybe they could compete with the middle slot.
- I also wish we could juice the difficulty further; a lot of the 6-material combos feel pretty manageable on finished builds.
Build Diversity and Progression
With potions, ascended affixes, awakened epics, upcoming awakened relics, and the potential for more of these being added to the game in the future, it feels like a brand new era of discovery for Grim Dawn, especially now that the extreme outliers have been tuned. There is so much I am excited to try and so little time.
The new items, white ascended items, etc., that (in some cases) help boost the performance of old set builds are particularly fun for the sets that were considered more average or weak in the past. This new era of build discovery is incredible.
Farming Ascendant difficulty at lvl 100 on unfinished characters is just the best. I can’t even adequately describe it. As for early game, the new tools you’ve given us are powerful enough that I am still thoroughly enjoying playing solo self-found while farming up builds. I haven’t even tried running Lokarr + Wilhelm on top of the new potions yet, and I’m looking forward to it if I ever get burnt out from grinding.
The Dread
Sheer perfection, from the design to the moveset to that fucking incredible music that starts playing. In group play, it is a real treat when it spawns against undergeared characters or on a juiced altar. I wish there was an Uber Dread in a smaller arena we could fight, though!
Concluding Thoughts
Best ARPG ever. 10/10, would grim again.
