Grim Dawn Review (WerK)
As an ARPG junkie, I tried a lot of them. Put so much time to D2, D3, PoE, had great fun with them all. But Grim Dawn stands above them all, let me tell you why:
GD has RPG systems that are not over complicated, like in Path of Exile. But at the same they are a bit more complex than Diablo 3. Perfect balance in my opinion. Same goes for crafting. Two class combinations are great and really increase the variety of build. Devotion system complements everything nicely.
Maps are not randomized, like in other ARPGs, but they are so vast and beautifully hand-crafted, it does not hurt much. There are still some random elements though. I had initially issue with finding stuff like devotion shrines, but there is really nice website called Grim Tools, that has all maps and their points of interest. Not a shame to use it, IMHO.
But GD has one absolutely killer feature, that is becoming very rare in any game. It can be played completely offline, with LAN connectivity. Multiplayer games over internet works perfectly fine also, but they are completely optional. For me, this is really important, because you can play this masterpiece at any point in the future, without being dependent on some servers, which will sometimes shut down.
Only flaw of GD is its engine, which is quite old and cannot utilize modern multi-core CPUs. Fortunately, there is an x64 build, that works much better. Just make sure, you are always launching the game by clicking Play in the library and then selecting x64 version. If you launch GD by right clicking on Steam tray icon, you will always get x32 binary, which is way worse performing.