izigame.me

Grim Dawn is a great ARPG that does a LOT of things right. I am a huge fan of the genre (3k+ hours on PoE, who knows how many on Diablo 1, 2 and 3 over the years, Chronicon, etc.) and I had a fantastic time playing this.
You're a human finding themselves in the middle of an extinction event, due to a fight between two factions known as the Aetherials and the Chthonians. The story is well written and interesting. After being possessed by an aetherial and surviving the ordeal, you find yourself empowered beyond normal human means. You have a chance to fight alongside what remains of the human race, and hopefully take back Cairn from its otherworldly assailants.
I would recommend you play solo for your first time. For some reason, when someone does story progression in multiplayer, only the person speaking to the NPC gets the dialogue. I think only the host gets to see the cutscenes too, which is kinda lame. I really hope they change that eventually.
The progression is pretty much what you'd expect out of an ARPG: Start out weak, killing zombies and random monsters, and eventually you end up as basically the strongest being alive, able to kill demi-gods and whatnot. There's a lot of customization available: This game uses a mastery system that allows you to choose 2 classes to combine them and make your build out of the passives they both offer. It's pretty easy to pick up and make your own build, and there's also tons of very good builds available on the Grim Dawn forums if you'd prefer to pick something that has been proven to work.
This game uses level scaling, so enemies get stronger with you. That means you can go back to areas you've already explored, and get level appropriate gear. There's a lot of monsters that drop specific gear, so deterministic farming is a pretty big element of the game. They've also recently introduced level scaling up to level 100 (the max level) in normal difficulty, so if you're more of a casual player you'll still get to have proper level scaling on normal difficulty.
You get tons of level up points, and there's also a passive bonus system called Devotions. You encounter shrines as you explore the world and restore them, and get Devotion Points as a result. You invest them into constellations for powerful bonuses/abilities that can be tied to your skills.
The gameplay feels pretty good overall, despite some issues. Some skills feel pretty clunky/don't work as you would expect them to, like the Bloody Pox skill, which is basically a plague that spreads from one enemy to another. I tried to make a build around that, but quickly found out that if the damage was too high, the original target would die so quickly that the plague didn't get the chance to spread... kinda burst my bubble when I realized that I was too strong for the build to work the way I wanted it to. There's a lot of skills that have very lowkey animations, which makes it feel like there's a lack of feedback when you're using them. Despite that, there's a lot of skills that do feel great and look awesome, so it's certainly not all bad in that department: In fact it's nowhere close to being bad, just a bit lacking, I think.
There's 3 difficulties like the old days of Diablo 2, and normal difficulty has a veteran mode that makes monsters much stronger in exchange for 10% experience. Do yourself a favor and just don't touch veteran mode: It's absolutely not worth it.
There's also a hardcore mode, which means permanent death if your character's health reaches 0. In my opinion the game is pretty well balanced, so if you're a fan of permadeath then you'll definitely enjoy that mode. Most of my playtime was in hardcore mode.
The game currently has two expansions, and a third one has just been announced in late August, coming 2024. The two that are currently out are fantastic additions to the game, and I would definitely encourage you to buy both of them along the base game if you pick this up: There really isn't that much content otherwise, which leads me to the endgame: Or, well, the lack of the endgame. There isn't really an "end point" like Path of Exile's maps, for example. You're mostly going to be travelling back to areas of the game you've already explored to grind better gear.
You can also craft your own gear. There are a lot of materials that you'll find on your adventure, and they get automatically picked up and put in your inventory. You'll find lots of blueprints from monsters, quest rewards, random drops out of chests, etc. that you can learn and then use at a blacksmith to make yourself items. Most of these items have specific stats and bonuses to abilities for specific classes. There's currently over 600 blueprints in the game: There are items for literally every build you can make.
There are two other game modes besides the typical story one: The Crucible, and the Shattered Realm.
The Crucible is a separate DLC that you have to purchase. It's basically an arena with monster spawn points. You kill them, earn points, and when you win, tap out, or die, you get to open chests with a bunch of loot.
The Shattered Realm is a collection of maps that have tons of enemies in them. You kill them, the progress bar fills up and you move onto the next map. After doing that 3 times, you get a boss fight and then you go up 1 floor, and repeat until you can't go any further. Like Crucible, you get chests with a bunch of loot at the end.
My gripe with the endgame is that, while the Crucible and Shattered Realm are fun, they require a significant time investment and do not give much loot in return. This might be because I'm coming from Path of Exile, but getting to open about 10 chests and maybe get a handful of decent items after doing a 3 hour run of Shattered Realm doesn't feel great at all. I wish the game had mechanics that were engaging and rewarding on smaller timescales, so that I could just hop in for 20-30 minutes and feel rewarded for my time, instead of having to plan for a significant amount of time to get anything that feels rewarding. There IS a mechanic that spawns a lot of strong enemies and drops loot right after the encounter: It's totems that spawn in set spots in the main story's zones, but there's generally quite a bit of walking involved and once you do the totem, you have to restart your session or move on to another area to find other totems. It's rewarding, but the downtime from travelling from one to the other makes it feel pretty boring to me.
There are also PoE style leagues that are organized by the community, called Grim League. It's basically a mod with its own launcher that lets you play with the community on that league, so if you get tired of the vanilla game, you can always give that a shot. Grim Leagues remain accessible even after they end, as they are standalone mods.
The only other negative thing I can think of about this game is the pathing. It's generally good, but in some areas it's SO freaking bad. You click on a spot and your character just can't figure it out: This happens a lot in areas that have multiple floors that you can walk on. I swear when I die and go to hell, my eternal punishment is going to be navigating the stupid houses in Candle District until I lose my sanity.
Ultimately, this is a fantastic game and I would absolutely recommend it to anybody who likes ARPGs. It's got its quirks like any other games, and you can still get hundreds and hundreds of hours and enjoyment out of this game despite its lack of a solid endgame. I personally got about 300 of my playtime in hardcore mode, and the rest was in softcore. I am writing this review after achieving 100% achievement completion, and I am definitely planning on going back soon when the expansion releases, and when the next Grim League starts!