Thoughts on: Grim Dawn (with 2 expansions)

Back in 2006 a studio called Iron Lore Entertainment released Titan Quest, a “Diablo-like” action RPG that didn’t break any new grounds, but felt like one of the best all-rounder aRPG experiences out there. It also used the Greek mythology as its setting, something that still remains a novelty for the genre. Unfortunately, while developing a new game pitch called “Black Legion”, the studio failed to get enough interest and had to eventually close down. Part of the team created a new studio called Crate Entertainment, bought out the rights for the pitch, acquired the license for using the same engine and continued development. Despite having a core team of just 2 people at the earliest years of development and supported by volunteers (many of whom were also from Iron Lore), the project was finally unveiled in 2010 as Grim Dawn – a spiritual successor to Titan Quest, but this time with Eldritch-themed setting.

Game went through long development, a successful Kickstarter campaign to expand the funding, and a long Early Access period before being released in 2016. Since then, there was an additional mode DLC and two expansions, Ashes of Malmouth and Forgotten Gods, the second of which has been released just a month and a half ago. And it’s at this point, I finally decided to give it a go.

If you’re unfamiliar with Diablo-like action RPGs, unlike some other forms of aRPGs, these games have several things in common: they all play in some form of top-down/isometric view, all focus on killing really big groups of enemies (some of which might have special harder “hero” variants) and all emphasize gathering “loot”, since even if you don’t plan to use the new items you found, you can sell/trade them. Grim Dawn is no different in this regard. It luckily avoids the issue with fully controllable perspective a lot of games used to have, where rotating the camera was absolutely necessary to play. Only some of the secret areas might be hidden in default perspective, but otherwise, you never need to spin the camera around.

One of the most defining features of Titan Quest returns in Grim Dawn – your character starts without a class, can choose a class a few levels in and then gets to choose another class, creating a unique blend of skills that allow for a huge variety of choice for the player. For example, as someone who rarely plays ranged, I decided to play as a purely ranged character this time around and created a blend that specifically emphasized the use of two one-handed guns to such a degree that I only ever used the passive skills that activated off my main attack. That said, I could’ve used the exact same blend (just less efficiently) with, say, a two-handed axe. Or blended a backstabbing wizard instead. What’s also nice is that your choice of class can influence some of your NPC interactions in the game and even the ability to get along with Factions.

Said factions are a new addition to this game and, to my knowledge, might be unique to Grim Dawn as far as aRPGs go. This is a pretty neat concept, where when you meet a specific faction (like the people of the starting town, or, on the opposite side, Undead enemies) you can start getting reputation with them. With friendly factions, you do it by killing specific enemies (sometimes in specific areas), doing quests for them and, occasionally, via making certain story decisions. As your reputation grows, you get new quests expanding story on the faction and things like new items in their store, discounts and etc. With enemy factions, you grow your reputation via, well, killing their representatives, so the more enemies of a specific faction you kill, the more they hate you. The more they hate you, the more enemies of their type will spawn and as the infamy grows, more special enemies will spawn among them.

And here’s where the problem with the idea lies – it makes things, that you expect to just happen as you play, grindy instead. For example, several friendly factions, including the starting town that is the very first faction of the game, hadn’t given their last faction quest to me because I haven’t reached the necessary level of reputation with them. After 50 hours of playing the game, killing everything on every map at least once and doing all the other quests in the game. To “fix” this, each of them have infinitely spawning Bounty quests that raise the reputation, but it’s a boring grind. I would’ve had to run at least 5 bounty quests to finally get that quest from the starting town and it’s in the area that you can discover immediately after starting the game, you just can’t progress into the final part of it without the quest. And same goes for the enemies – there are special “Nemesis” spawns that are advertised, except you get them on the maximum level of infamy (and rarely too) and I don’t think I was even halfway there with any of the hostile factions when I finished playing.

Which, I guess, is all feeding into the “endgame” that so many people seem to crave for. To me, a solo player who loves these games for the ability to explore interesting worlds with interesting stories, this borrowed from MMORPGs concept is baffling. In MMOs it’s present so you have “stuff to do” when you have completed the story quests. It’s an understandable design choice to keep the world alive, because MMOs are all about the world being alive and full of players. In singleplayer aRPGs, even ones that have cooperative and competitive multiplayer, this concept feels pointless. Time spent on “endgame” could be spent on playing the game again from the fresh start or on higher difficulty. Or playing another game, since there are lots of good games out there. Or even doing other non-game related things.

But this is what players demand (no, really, you can check the forums or reviews), so it was what developers balanced the game around. Which is a shame, since there are some interesting concepts here that could’ve been developed further instead. There’s a whole concept of occasional usage of special resources to clear paths or trying to solve an issue without resorting to violence, the first even letting you explore the later story sections of the game early. There are countless tiny story decisions for both main quest and side content, where your dialogue decisions have permanent consequences for the story. There’s a lot of interesting depth and story to the world, and a lot of notes to read, though these often feel more like flavor text or lore dumps instead.

Speaking of that, the biggest disappointment for me is just how bland the story is. The world is great, the mood is fantastic, but the characters are forgettable and the story just kinda happens. You have an Eldritch apocalypse with two completely different ancient being factions tearing the world apart, society has collapsed, undead are on the rise and it doesn’t seem to matter which of the horrifying sides wins since either way the world is screwed. It’s dark, it’s moody, it’s appropriately grim and horrifying, yet the story is just… present. Despite a promising opening cutscene (out of total 2, by the way, the second is the intro to the first expansion), you’re just yet another nameless chosen one, always there to save the day (sometimes you screw things up on accident or by choice too) and the NPCs are just a roster of typical stereotypes for the occasion. After the fantastic The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, released same year as the first Early Access version of Grim Dawn was made, I expected a push for that kind of engaging story.

It’s a shame, really. It had the potential to be unforgettable as a more story-focused game. A lot of locations are really awesome, both in terms of style and in terms of the mood they try to get across. The world is fully interconnected with only a few areas that are essentially a teleport away from the rest of the world. The mood is perfect. Oh and the soundtrack here… It is just absolutely incredible. Steve Pardo did an amazing job that rivals, dare I even say it, the soundtracks of Matt Uelmen for Diablo and Torchlight. Seriously, give it a listen. I’ll embed one of my favorites here:

The two expansions for the game are also a bit of a mixed bag. Ashes of Malmouth, for example, expands on the strongest themes of the game and focuses even more on the apocalyptic eldritch side of things. There are more disturbing moments, revelations and implications and its closing act in the city the expansion is named for is really good. The first act, though, has terrible level design for its areas, almost fully consisting of gigantic open fields of nothingness (and gigantic open black wastes of Fuk’ol). Also swamps. The quests and the story in the first act is solid, luckily, but the areas you have to traverse are just tedious. Of course, apart from that, the expansion also adds new items, increases level cap and all that good stuff and is in general still worth a check, especially if you’re already invested in the main game.

Forgotten Gods is kind of the opposite. Its levels are fun, new enemies are exciting, things progress really smoothly and the expansion is super fun to play, but story/world-wise it’s a complete tone change. There’s still a lot of dark in this, but it feels far more like Diablo’s dark fantasy or Egyptian mythology-themed Titan Quest than Grim Dawn. Another strange decision is making the content available for playing right after finishing Act 1 of the main quest, despite the fact that like the previous expansion, it’s clearly meant to happen after the main game. And playing it first, like I did, makes some of the story situations in the main game make little sense. Like being presented with a choice to join with a faction, the leader of which was killed by me in the expansion just a few hours ago. I guess, the choice to start the expansion early is there just for the sake of unlocking some new things (like Transmutation for set items) to the players as early as possible, but I would’ve preferred if it was added to the main game quest instead, as it really made my playthrough far more confusing than it was meant to be.

Grim Dawn is a game that disappointed me, yet also a game that I can recommend to anyone who likes Diablo-like action RPGs quite easily. It has a great world, amazing soundtrack, fun gameplay, with lots of quality of life things you come to expect from modern aRPGs… But it also competes with games that might interest you more. If you want a deeper story with more interesting characters, check out the original The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing (just not the sequels) or even the classic Divine Divinity. If you want something more gamepad-friendly and with some interesting mechanics, Victor Vran is a thing to check, I found it a bit boring, but maybe you won’t. If you want something that is both meditative and chill yet with interesting (if simple) story and mechanics, Torchlight games are still great. Of course, Diablo games are also available for gritty classic gameplay, or in case of III killing time. And Path of Exile would’ve been brought up just for the sake of it being completely free to play, but apart from that it’s also genuinely great.

With so many options, it’s hard to give Grim Dawn a clear win in anything, really, and that’s what disappoints me. I wish this could’ve been a very high recommendation and I wish I could’ve been praising the game throughout, being all excited and loving it. But instead, I’m just glad I played it. And slightly tired.