Attributes: Check - you can win or fail by selection
Skill trees: Check - omg, where do I start. Synergy heaven!
Items: One of the best points - sooooo much awesome loot. I’ve danced around the room after getting a super lucky item. eg. I was lvl 55 Shieldbreaker. At about 5k damage. Got a weapon that doubled it. It was green but hey no probs! Still waiting for that perfect epic weapon.
Game world: Freeking gorgeous. Such attention to detail with level design. I have to stop just to take it in sometimes.
Mobs (AI): So many variations, some I hate so much, it makes my blood boil. Some catch me off guard when I’m getting cocky. They work together - I hate the healers, but my nemesis is the Cthonic dudes that debuff and dot you. They have killed me so many times when I was lax because my build was raping everything. I forgot to drop a portal - rage!
Story and lore: Lots of good reading for lore lovers. Hints of comedy throughout. My favorite meme: “I’ll put it to good use!” or “Put it to good use!”. That started making me laugh when it recurred more than what would be necessary if it wasn’t some kind of inside joke. I think I got it!
Builds: This is the shining glory of this game. It took Titan quest and went up several levels from that. I LOVED Titan quest. To be honest, it was next gen ARPG. But Grim Dawn takes that and raises it to heights never before reached in the ARPG world.
Level Design: This is where GD shines! I feel like the lead designer of levels simply LOVES designing areas. The areas are STUNNING, and really well thought out. I like that you are forced to explore by various blocked connections in areas. This, in my opinion is a great strategy for designing areas; to make a map and then block certain doorways to encourage exploration - and more XP!
Quests: I feel like this is kind of tedious for the devs, because, I find myself often lost looking for a location based on pretty vague directions. I would really love to see (and from what I’ve seen from the community would also) is persistent quest markers that don’t depend on you being close to them. Let’s face it the game world is HUGE, I don’t want to spend unnecessary time searching for places that I need to go. Please mark quests on the map regardless of what you have revealed and regardless of proximity.
Content: With the expansions, tons and tons and tons - enough to keep you going for up to 60 hours right up to lvl 100+
Game effects: Super awesome. You really feel the power of your character when they start getting really strong. Each upgrade to your skill tree is reflected in a really satisfying way with the physics and particle effects in the game. I was taking a break one time and a mob happened to wander to my character (I was in inventory). Playing a Shieldbreaker with tons of retaliation damage and related skills, this thing just exploded upon touching me and scared the bejesus out of me. I chuckled after because it never stood a chance.
Sound: My pet bird talks to the various bird calls in some areas. That aside, the sound is intense! It really adds to the immersion of the game! The music I can take or leave (in any game, really. That’s just me) but I find myself familiar with some of the recurring tunes in the game and quite like them. They actually add to the immersion rather than detract from it.
Overall, this game takes the powerful concept of stat points that can make or break a build (DII). Augments that can add abilities that really make a difference (without restricting it to slot configurations etc like POE). A choice of 2 classes with associated skill trees, with tons of synergies and multiple possible synergies within each class. You can spend hours playing with the GD calc and try to find good builds and then go in game and try them out.
My Soldier / Nightblade was at 10k dps by lvl 49, but I soon took an interest in an oathkeeper / demo build, and while I was skeptical, it started slow, but at lvl 60m I am smashing whole screens at a time with 15k dps. the concept is fire, reflection / reflection converted to dps / phys damage build and its freekin, stupid!
My final appraisal of this game is that its the best in the genre by far!
On a side note; I coded over 1m lines in a NWN mod “Shadows of Darkmoon” where I basically rewrote the whole game from the ground up including creature AI and custom spells / abilities / henchman synergy abilities (after you’ve fought together long enough) and a painstaking but finally successful henchman resurrection system where they res you at the expense of their own life! - no matter what! I really made the kind of game I want to play over and over with a unique and fun loot system with resetting and farmable dungeons and eventually procedurally generated mobs and bosses with random gear sets, buffs and debuffs. I would love to get to know the GD engine and help code the next expansion / classes / mobs / story / combat mechanics. This game doesn’t have to end, and I don’t want it to!
For credibility purposes, I also coded what was called a “groundbreaking” mod in the “Arena of Champions” replete with full PDF game guides and a build compendium (min / max ). Also my first mod that I later recoded for multiplayer was Dragon’s Bane - Rebirth of the Surface Alliance. Though that was more of a learning experience because it ended up with some bugs that I haven’t (but should have) gotten to yet!
Hey CRATE, reach out to me if you want an obsessive coder to help make the next expansion something absolutely insane! God, Im tired of teaching English in Japan. I’d give my soul to be onboard this amazing ship!
