First and foremost - i am humbly asking to answer my question only people who have completed Titan Quest(TQ) as well as Grim Dawn(GD) several times on legendary(ultimate) difficulty without mods/character editors.
I have heard many times that GD is a big step over TQ and those who has played GD will never have a desire to return in TQ. I for myself have yet to confirm that.
I have some experience in both games, but i have no time for both games to fully devote myself to.
Thus, I am asking experienced players : what exactly is making GD superior game?
After completing both expansions for GD at veteran difficulty, I have, unfortunately, found nothing spectacular in this game, but rather disappointing in comparison with TQ.
Please, point me, what am I possibly missing?
Please… I rather play TQ than GD. The only thing I like in GD is combat and some things in character development. Everything else goes to TQ. Nice world, story, skills. TQ can suck me in for even 12 hours a day, while I can’t play GD for more than 6 hours a day (often 3 hours every 2+ days).
You can read more in here, if you want: My honest as fuck opinion about GD and comparison to TQ (should read everything in there, iirc, or only my posts - the first message is not everything)
Welcome to the forum. 
I don’t think it’s a question of what you’re missing that others aren’t. It’s more about personal taste/enjoyment. There are many people who prefer TQ over GD and vice versa and then there are others like me who enjoy both games equally.
thanks, but I have read and heard so many, oh, times that GD is a step forward, that after playing it without noticing something outstanding is a bit… you know, frustrating…
Well for me it’s neither a question of “return” back to Titan Quest or not, because i don’t exclude the possibility to replay it once in a while, due Games which i like i enjoy to replay them again from time to time… (infact i tried with TQ but the Nintendo Switch Port, which was rather horrible) but rather which Games keeps me addicting for a longterm, and in this Aspect Grim Dawn offers me something which Titan Quest never was able to, only Diablo-Series and to an certain dagree the Torchlight Series.
I’ve to admit the last time i really finished TQ was long time ago, that’s when i still used the physical Edition, but compared to Grim Dawn (what serves my mind - and after playing some bits with the Anniversary plus Edition it confirms that) does lack with many Features, and also felt way more clunky and slow than Grim Dawn does… Animations and such are also less smooth which also effect how you feel the Gameplay. Than you have no Devotion, which add another huge layer of Build Diversity, no (if my memory serves right again) roguelike Dungeons, also the Components which while they where there wasn’t as big of a part as in GD the same goes for Augments, Rune-Movement etc etc…
If you fairly compare Grim Dawn with Titan Quest, without any kind of nostalgic goggles you will see, that GD simply have way more to offer than Titan Quest… besides that TQ might have a more unique Scenario. Than Again, while you might’ve seen the Story and Lore, and Atmosphere etc of GD many times, i’d still argue compared to TQ it’s more fleshed out and polished than what TQ offered.
/Edit:
I’ve to point out, if someone feel offended, while i have this Viewpoint, it doesn’t change anything if you still have fun with this Game. As you can tell, i have a Diablo 1 Avatar and i recently 've gotten Diablo 1 again on GoG and i still love and enjoy the Game like the first day i played, and it still have some “unique” things which is why i appreciate this Game so much and enjoy modern Alternatives like the first Torchlight or Book of Demons, but that doesn’t change that compared to Diablo 1, Diablo 2 already have more to offer and is overall the better Game and more fleshed. And even if it’s controversal i would argue the same with Diablo 3 compared to Diablo 2.
Same as medea, I’m enjoying them both.
TQ and GD are equally great.
Thanks, I have read it, but all i got is that the combat in GD is much better, may I ask how so?
I’m currently playing both games actually. After about 5 years I returned to Titan Quest to try the Ragnarok expansion, after completing, and playing several thousand hours of, Grim Dawn.
The verdict? I will never go back to TQ again. GD has such an overwhelmingly superior quality in so many aspects that TQ now just feels empty and flat. The Ragnarok expansion feels even worse in this regard; my very first run of the expansion felt easy and boring: played it once and quit. I’m NOT going to try, or buy the other Atlantis expansion. I only went back to TQ to play it in coop with my girlfriend and the number of bugs, lags, connections and out-of-sync issues is unbelievable, and made us both angry at the game tbh.
But let’s assume they fix all the bugs (unlikely, since I saw several forum posts about the same connection issues I had, without response, since 2009). The game still feels bland - the scenery is very large but sparsely populated; you spend most of the time just… walking.
But GD is stacked full of enemies and decorations to destroy. In GD the maps are very detailed and littered with small objects, and even though there’s very little “sunshine”, it looks much more stunning in it’s “dark and gritty” style - which I love. The combinations of builds, skills, items and devotions have a lot more depth in GD. It just feels more satisfying and addictive, like Diablo 2 felt almost 20 years ago.
Ah! And the most important of all: the challenge! TQ is a cakewalk without mods, period. In GD, even regular leveling through Veteran can kill you. If that’s not enough, you have rogue-like dungeons which make you feel absolutely on-edge. If that’s not enough, you can test your skills further by entering the Crucible and trying to last as long as possible. If that’s not enough, there’s always some crazy secret superboss or nemesis that is greatly challenging even after reaching max level.
This is all just my opinion and personal experience, obviously. But for me, GD is clearly the winner in the overall gameplay experience.
Edit: To be fair, I loved TQ (with Imortal Throne) when I played it first, but at this point it has just aged a bit…
Anyway, come to think of it, there are 2 things I believe TQ does better than GD:
- THE TRAILER. This is a big one to attract people and the “mainstream”. The original full-motion intro video of TQ felt absolutely epic and made me want to buy the game. The intro from GD is kinda… “meh”.
- Music. Small difference. The music in GD is quite good actually, but TQ’s music is catchy, and feels inspiring and heroic as hell. And the piano pieces from Elysium are outright brilliant and beautiful - something I would like to rip to mp3 so I could listen while working or reading.
I couldn’t even get through 1 playthrough of TQ because I thought everything about it was dull and clunky so 
Well, you could also give some insight why you in the contrary find that TQ is more Outstanding or better than Grim Dawn… because with that i’m rather curious, why does it frustrates you that many People find Grim Dawn better than TQ?
I find it pretty interesting, even more nowdays, that some People have to question a certain hype of an Game, or why the enjoy / like / love a Game so much (more) than others… maybe even seek the fault within said crowd instead of go the route of the simple truth, that everyone have “different” “Tastes”. For me it doesn’t matter if someone likes Titan Quest more than Grim Dawn, or people in general find Path of Exile amazing, while i’ve a different viewpoint of this Game (PoE). And sure, sometimes there are also thrown out wrong facts only to discredit or push a certain Game, but if you feel that way it would easier for us to Answer what specific aspects you talking about. But in general it shouldn’t influence how you experience your favorite Games, simply because some other People enjoy alternatives or other Games than yours.
And in my Experience, if some people feel a certain “hype” is undeserved but seek for honest answers so they understand better, it’s hard to explain / show them, because they already have an final verdict, but aren’t open enough to truly see behind their own verdict.
When I tried the Titan Quest anniversary edition because I got it for free and I was curious, I didn’t even finish act 2 before I quit. It’s just so clunky, slow, the crafting system with those individual recipes is a nightmare and so on. It once was great but they shouldn’t have bothered with these last two expansions, their efforts would have been better spent on creating a new game instead.
I enjoyed the original TQ/TQ:IT (TQ Gold) greatly. I even enjoyed the THQ Nordic version TQ:AE when it first came out. It lost its appeal when long standing bugs were not addressed, even though many players were reporting the same bugs, over and over, and THQ Nordic would respond by telling us the bugs had been fixed. And the next run… we had the same game-breaking bug occur again.
Honestly, it wasn’t the game that drove me away, it was the attitude of the publisher, and how they responded to players that did. The choice to add DLC-only items to all games, not only games that had the DLCs installed, making my non-DLC game have vendors whose shops were half filled with items I could not buy, or use, and the number of items I could buy or use cut in half (and the same thing with loot drops half filled with DLC-only items I could only look at and not touch…). I rarely play MP, I don’t need or want crap added to make MP a bigger “thing”, added to my SP game.
I enjoy Grim Dawn more for completely subjective reasons. The devs are approachable, and communicate with players well, both on the online forums and Steam forums. They address bug reports and do their best to patch them efficiently and quickly. I like the darker, more gloomy setting and story. I enjoy the masteries I can play with and customize. I do miss having rebirth fountains to save progress in GD, that feature was nice in Titan Quest, on the RARE occasions I used them. I like the setting and art more. And the over-the-top ragdoll physics. I like the addition of Devotions, to give my character more advantages that I choose, not ones that are arbitrarily set by gear stats and limited choices in components only. The combat feels more fluid, the lore notes I can find and read, the shit I get to just destroy for fun and maybe get a loot drop from it as well…
I still dip back into Titan Quest from time to time, but Grim Dawn just has the “high fantasy” look and feel I enjoy more in aRPGs and traditional RPGs. So, I enjoy it more. YMMV.
I have hundred of hours in both game, and am speaking only of vanilla gameplay, no mods or save editors. Both games have many great options for modding your game to customize it to suit individual tastes.
TQ doesn’t have conversion and some builds basically doesn’t work well as they do not support both damage types. For example, you have a fire mastery and vitality mastery, you can’t make both of them work together, the character will be fun, but way weaker than others. It’s still preference dependant, I actually don’t really mind that but I also really like having one damage type oriented builds, which in TQ it sometimes forces me to pick secondary mastery as a support or “troll” or fun build - nothing I’d really love to play for long.
I don’t know, i wouldn’t go that far either. Titan Quest still have a loyal Fanbase who enjoy the Game, and don’t feel it as clunky as me or you… so i’d say it’s still a good thing to support said Community… i mean if that’s an issue we also could start blaming every fan who adds new Content via Mods for pretty old Games, which might compared to modern Games feel dated and / or bad aged. Again i rebought and played Diablo 1, and from an more neutral viewpoint to the modern Standarts the game didn’t age that well either. Compared to Diablo 1 and 2 i’d argue in general that Titan Quest did overall age better.
So as long as there are people who enjoy to get more content for their stuff, i don’t see how the Devs or Publishers did anything wrong.
Because as I have said, I am, probably, missing something, ARPG games require a lot of time investment, sometimes you can judge game only at highest difficulty levels or after several finished characters
To me it is in the small things, move speed, auto-pickup of gold etc, small inventory / storage. GD does that better. That can get tedious in TQ for me.
I prefer the TQ setting however and thanks to the latest expansion have returned to it (bounced off the previous one hard, back then I assumed TQ had aged, but since I have no issue returning to vanilla / the new areas of Atlantis now, I believe it actually was Ragnarok I had issues with in hindsight)
Nah, i don’t think you missed something in that sense, so rather it seems you simple find the Aspects which People enjoy with Grim Dawn aren’t appealing or important to you, because i’d argue this are things you mostly encounter already early on.
You don’t need to have an full playthrough to feel / see the difference of how Skilltree’s work, like USER_NAME_01 already pointed out, it already begin with the Class-System itself. TQ did have a rather distinctive Masterys which have quite their own role to play, compared to GD where there still might be some of that, but overall offer more freedom and synergy. So to pick a class in TQ defines more what you play than GD because GD is in this aspect more build-focused in that aspect… builds define more what you actually play. You will get your first shrine with the first Quest, so you encounter the Devotion to so another layer of building etc etc huge Gameplay-Aspect up to QoL and so on…
Titan Quest hands down wins in terms of art design, setting in general and aesthetics. Also it terms of being able to make fun broken builds with 100% cooldown reduction (AE ruined this).
Grim Dawn, however, has billion times better gameplay, a lot of stuff to do outside of beating the game thrice, actual endgame content, great lore and worldbuilding. It improves in every department as a game and only lacks higher budget.
I have found the challenge at the similar level, no deaths at veteran with a 4th character(while i dint play for long with other 3), you wont venture in these dungeons until well-prepared, not to mention it makes no difference at hardcore at all
IMHO music and movies doesn’t matter in ARPG genre at all
I won’t never play Titan Quest again but there are things that bother me. Mainly the fact that undead is basically immune to poison. Also bows not being affected by OA/DA bothers me. Devotions is a nice feature even though I didn’t like it much initially. Personally I like GD atmosphere better and the combat is smoother, ultimate dungeons are nice end game feature. I prefer GD classes to TQ. I like both games.