this is my first time playing these type of games. I finally beat it, I'm probably half way on the dlc . I want to complete every side mission so hopefully it will take me another 2 weeks to complete it. Great video btw !
It’s always best to be realistic about games you love. We’re in a good time to be ARPG fans since it feels like there’s something for everyone right now.
Navigating devotion is so much easier with your tip about searching for an element or damage type. Otherwise, choosing a second class is difficult because i see things just turn up "not viable", but when asking good options online there's always five answers. :D
Isn't this a case study for blaming a gaming because players have limited intelligence ? Complaints are increasingly infuriating. On one hand players complains games are too dumbed down, yet when they're not they complain they're too hard to understand
Bruh... Almost that whole list is stuff that would be an issue with ANY aRPG. Not disagreeing that these things are True for GD, just that they are as true for D2-4, LE, PoE1/2... Fr fr: if a slow starting, single player game, with deep systems and tons of loot isn't your jam; why you playing aRPGs? And it looks dated because it IS dated; OG release was almost NINE years ago. (Great video, just got to defend my favorite aRPG of all time, as a RABID aRPG Stan.)
from the top i like they have the guts to make a diferent interface...to set themself apart from Diablo HP and Mana Orbs...a practic i like to see more in isometric arpgs.
Am I the only one that doesn't enjoy boss mechanics and multiple phases? I hate every PoE boss. I'm not playing an ARPG so I can play some stupid minigame during a boss fight.
I am just now getting into Grim Dawn. I bought it a while back, but bounced off it the first time. I was a D3 fan from RoS until recently. In D3 the lack of build diversity gets old. The first few hours of GD are way faster than D3.
So, how's the Grim Dawn modding community ? (That you seem to very quickly mention at the end ?) One thing that is so depressing about D3/D4/PoE1/PoE2 is how them being online-only means that despite their enormous popularity, they have zero mods. So eventually they will die, while the likes of D2 and Grim Dawn will keep chugging on. (And on an even longer timeline, I expect open source games to slowly gain ground, as modding closed source games, especially ones that haven't been made with modding in mind, has a lot of friction.)
I haven’t interacted with the community league but I’m thinking about catching the next one. But in general, people are still actively modding. There are different mods that add new masteries and rework skills. There’s a mod that rebuilds diablo 2 inside grim dawn. I haven’t messed with mods too much as I haven’t run out of stuff to do in the base game.
The game is PERFECT. I'll take the Grim Dawn boss fights over Path of Exile 2's any day. Also the hand crafted game world is far superior than the randomly generated, unrealistic maze worlds.
With the DLC it costs about as much as Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls that has way more polish, a more recent engine with much better handled mobility (barbarian can leap over void and walls, teleportation can pass through walls up to a certain extent, while GD mobility is constantly hindered by every small obstacle on the terrain, some smaller than your character, and the game has way too many random obstacles on the ground that ruin pathing, small bridges are horrible to cross due to the pathing again...). D3 has equipment you want to put on your character while most GD equipment looks uglier than the base model. D3 has 7 classes and each of them has a male and female model. GD has way more classes and sub-classes, yet every character looks the same, the only way to differentiate your characters on the loading screen is to name them in a way that makes their build obvious. GD has lots of damage types, but they all do the exact same thing with different colors. Pointless fluff that could have been put into, I don't know, character customization that makes you want to play your character, or cleaning the map of small obstacles that ruin pathing so that you can actually move properly during fights and exploration if we're focusing more on gameplay? GD mods give much more gameplay value than the game you pay for (just like Elder Scrolls games) because the class mechanics and mobility skills are more interesting, although things like transformation (D2 druid) are made impossible because of the lack of character models for GD, and the lack of beast form on the GD druid (it's got a savagery skill but it doesn't offer anything different from soldier class, except soldier can play 1h, shield and cross class with dual wielding classes, savagery would be so much better if your character turned beastly when you use it). D3 has an ultimate form for every class in comparison, your model changes size, shape, effects, the skills change to suit the ultimate state, everything looks good and polished and plays smoothly. GD monsters come back too often, in the first 3 acts there are zombies and skeletons way too often, the same corrupt disproportionate green or red monstrosities that drop their arms as weapons, the first few times it's cool and new but then it gets repetitive, I'd rather fight the monsters specific to this area than the same I've been fighting since act 1. At least the D3 recolors have different skills that actually have different effects with distinct visuals (like the cows from act 1 vs the cows from act 3, the act 3 ones are bulkier, hit the ground and empower their group). GD mechanics are too basic, feels like playing D1-D2 with worse mobility (Diablo 1 TP could actually cross unpassable terrain back in 1996, GD's mobility plays like a potato game in comparison, and Blizzard was not a big company back in 1996). It's clunky (pathing, quests, backtracking way too much, inventory too small to pick up and sell so that you need to apply more and more filters to avoid filling your inventory with crap, the components take half of your inventory's first bag by act 3 like in D2 and PoE instead of stacking in a window outside of your inventory like in D3, a game that came out BEFORE GD). I think for its' price with DLCs (not the base price), it's quite basic and unrefined. The DLCs don't get sales, so you can't buy them for cheap like the base game to justfy the original price. Malmouth is constantly being complained about for its' clunky pathing and areas, impractical to navigate. You paid full price for it, and it's hard to enjoy it. Devotion end up replacing your main skills if your build isn't one of the top meta because most skills are passive effects, passives with %activation chances (the worst type of skill IMO) or auras/buffs/debuffs (cries, curses). Which makes the entire point of having so many subclasses moot because most of your homebrew builds can't even deal with veteran difficulty at a decent pace, lots of classes have trash clear or 0 attack replacer to activate all of your % activation chance skills with (soldier only has cadence for attack replacer that activates on hit effects, blade arc doesn't work with on-hit builds despite starting without cooldown, which means your awesome dual wielding blademaster can't play blade arc at all if you want them to use their dual wielding style, and cadence is really bad with big crowds compared with blade arc that has a near-360° arc where it damages up to 11 targets to clear these crowds fast, and cadence only has 1 subskill that deals damage on all attacks while the first 2 only affect every 3rd attack). For a game that is all about custom builds and cross classing, the viability of your options relies way too much on devotion (that starts at a crowl to the point I use a cheating program to unlock constellations with each shrine instead of single points on the devotion milky way just to make my energy thirsty builds even playable at all like blade arc maxed out that costs way too much energy per attack if used without cooldown, or most assassin builds that cost nearly as much energy as aether ray arcanist with half the energy bar and regen of arcanists). Fans of D2 and GD mention how D3 is bad by tying skill viability to items (sets and legendaries that modify a skill) but I'd rather have 4x damage and a new effect on my skill by wearing a specific belt that I can bargain for at Kadala's shop than relying on randomized affixes to give me +30-80% damage on a skill with maybe added DoT (like assassin's acid % chance dual wielding skill gaining 1400 poison damage over 5 sec from an item...still doesn't change any of the skill's mechanics, doesn't make it activate with every attack to make it viable, doesn't increase the number of targets it hits...). D3 with LoD/LoN and skill enhancing items can completely change the gameplay of your build. GD doesn't have anything like that apart from devotions and they're the same for every class with the same skills to link to your build. GD is fine to busy yourself while listening to the radio, audiobooks, videos etc, but the more attention you can put into the game, the more bland it feels. Just the fact that you have 80+ possible builds and that these characters will all look like scrap put together with very little difference in aesthetic, especially in the levelling phase (the one everyone actually experiences from the beginning and that decides if you keep playing or get a refund), meaning you can't even feel the uniqueness of your build, already lowers the satisfaction of putting a build together.
In D3, Each set looks different, plays differently, each class has different gameplay (DH can even play melee with a specific build, making the fact that they can equip melee weapons all the more gameplay altering), there are even support builds that work well for multiplayer high end content. Even better: in D3 you can change the appearance of your equipment to look cool, ugly, terrifying, to look like an inquisitor or a paladin, like Sun Wukong or like a healing monk, like an assassin or a mechanist, like an angel or a demon. This gives personality to your character, this makes the roleplaying aspect much better than playing your 500th character walking around wearing scrap metal gear. GD is based on a Victorian-Conquest of the West setting in the 1800s, has some Native American-like headbands and shamanic helms, yet it doesn't have bows. What do people associate with Native Americans? Tomahawk, bolas and bows. Of these, you will only find hand axes made of pieces of chainsaw/circular saw blades, not even close to the Native American aesthetic you might want for a shaman build. There are few spears in the game to play a hunter-like character and basically none in act 1. So, GD has dated mechanics and engine, very low graphic quality (some armors are even misshaped when you wear them because of the crappy models on top of already looking like crap), no customization of your looks to roleplay your build, no refinement of the gameplay and maps, bad pathing like an early 2000s MMO, too many damage types that all do the same things (but some do it better than others, like how bleeding can't damage aether crystals thus bleeding builds are bad at clearing earlygame with the sheer number of aether crystals to destroy). It plays slightly smoother than D2, and that's mostly because you can actually use more than just your mouse to activate skills. AoM and FG cost easily 35 euros, probably around the same price in $, without even counting the price you put into the base game that plays like a flash game without the DLC dash skill and QoL of DLCs, since you could find it for 9 euros on sale (so 44 euros). Diablo 3 was 40-50 when it came out full price, RoS is 20 euros. If we add Crucible to GD, add 10 euros to the price tag. So D3 at most cost you 70 euros without the necro DLC (totally optional) full price, while Just the expansions of GD already cost more than D3 base game and if you bought the base game at full price (why would you do that?), GD costs MORE THAN or AS MUCH AS full price D3+RoS. The difference is that D3 is a finished product nowadays, while GD might sell you another expansion for 10-20 euros that won't solve any of the issues with pathing, clunky early 2000s mechanics, lack of customization, there will never be bows in the game and you won't be able to change into a beast like in D2 with your shaman or pet occultist, you won't be able to change into an undead with your necromancer. The only good thing is that you can play offline and you can make a Kimimaro Kaguya knock-off build with the GD necromancer unlike the D2 version. Most of the QoL issues in D2 can be found in GD (inventory management, high amount of trash loot, randomized affixes on equipment rather than well thought-out pieces that alter the gameplay in a meaningful way like in D3 where some items take trash skills and make them competitive), despite D2 being a game from 1999 and GD coming after D3 and around RoS (an expansion that completely overhauled D3's gameplay and that could be considered as mostly a different game from the original, fixing a lot of the issues of the base game like legendary drops, build variety, progress rate and endgame content). TL;DR: GD with all DLCs costs about the same as D3 RoS without the necromancer expansion (which I think is a scam for the same price as RoS). D3 is a much more refined product than GD, RoS was a game changing expansion while GD got a few QoL changes but not that many from expansions and still has most of the issues it had at launch and plays too much like a game from the early 2000s instead of a game that came out in 2016 (2014 alpha/beta) and the engine and code are potatoes, you can't even make a good D2 mod with it because your character can't have a different model than the base M/F so you can't shapeshift (which is a big part of shaman/druid builds' theme), I understand supporting the devs by buying but at some point they should deliver a product worth the price. D2 was not a 60 $ game in the early 2000s AFAIK, I got the LoD version for 15 euros 10 years ago. If I want to play D2, I can play it for much cheaper than GD and have a pleasant medieval setting with armor that looks better than scrap, weapons that look like actual historical weapons, classes with distinct appearances, armors that look different based on build and I could do all this 15 years before GD came out. If GD was online only, it wouldn't be played half as much as it is as one of the rare offline 10+ish YO ARPG/HnS. And the fanboys of GD are about as insufferable as D2's, spitting on progress and more features and acting like suggestions of QoL, visual improvements and build viability are personal insults to the devs or like making bow animations would take half a year to the lone animator of the studio when they have fan-made content from mods ON THEIR OWN WEBSITE, they can contact the creator and ask for a partnership (they already outsource some of the animation work) or to buy some features from their mods (like animations and assets for bows, spears and other fan-made stuff that would enhance the experience and immersion). I'm certain some modders would love to get paid for their free work on offering an enhanced experience (like the color mod for damage types that already exists and should be part of the game instead of an outside resource).
Wow. That is one very well put together RUclips comment. I’m not one to hate on the Diablo franchise. Those games are fun in their own right. I do enjoy me some grim dawn too. At the end of the day that’s what it’s about. I’ve definitely gotten my moneys worth out of GD at this point. (I also got my moneys worth out of D3, D4 is debatable lol)
@@Goomba_YT D4 I couldn't even launch, it crashed repeatedly on start so I got a refund. Best decision for my wallet. GD is fine if you don't expect much out of it except for mindless grinding and some very basic build with maybe some cool visual effects (mostly lightning shaman). Some builds are still broken (sky shards still useless in lots of inside areas or with ceiling clutter like rafters intercepting the projectiles before they land) 8 years after the final release, which is a shame (I'd love to use a meteor ice build, but it doesn't work). That's why I compare GD to D2 but not in the positive way fanboys do, mostly in the outdated perspective. GD plays like a 20 YO game despite being a 10-8 YO game that came out after D3 and that's sad. If PoE was an offline game, I'd definitely play it instead of D2/GD (unless it crashed still, but I think it's the connection with the server rather than my PC that makes it crash, and maybe Steam launcher crap in the background).
@@jacobmansfield-go9fz Then D2 and GD would be horrid games because D3 is a much better gameplay experience, doesn't need to be a 2nd job to get anywhere near endgame and gives a much fuller experience for your buck with a reasonable play time. Just the variety of LoD and set builds D3 has far eclipses the illusory build variety of GD and Diablo 2 (you can literally use a spell in 3-8 different ways based on runes, spell modifying items and sets), you can level a character to 70 in a few hours/days in solo self found and start looting your endgame equipment, while by that time in D2/GD you would still be in mid game and D2 is the worst with needing to finish the same game 3x to consider it finished with dumb monsters with immunities that completely ruin your build. I like them for what they are, a distraction for the hands and eyes while listening to stuff, but I wouldn't call them good games, not even for the time they came out. But it has something to do with the genre being lackluster. Beating monsters is funny, but with very little intersting challenge (and I mean challenge like in Zelda games with boss mechanics and weak points to target, intersting gameplay, not just fighting the same monsters with more stats and immunities and more numbers on the screen which all HnS tend to stop at), I get bored quickly. As such, with a life, D3 is the most respectful game towards your time among these 3 and probably around top 3 in the most well-known titles of the genre (hell D3 even has actual boss mechanics and phases like a Zelda/Dark Souls game, same for PoE, they just need more focus on weak points to make the fights shorter but more dynamic). D3 actually provides the A of ARPG, something both D2 and GD cruelly lack in mechanics and gameplay, focusing too much on surface level "depth" like resistance stacking, stat checks and damage types over actual mechanics and active gameplay. In GD, beside dodging projectiles/areas, you're basically just mashing the attack button(s) and piling up passive/active stat buffs/debuffs. In D3 you can and have to use good positioning, which the map design often makes possible (at least against bosses), every character has some form of class specific mobility (barbs even have 2 mobility skills) to reposition your character and pass through overcrowded areas without having to manually kill everything to stop being body blocked (and D3 mobility >>> GD space key evasion skill). So while D3 is not a game I'd play daily for years, I don't NEED to play that long to get a character to the intersting part I want them. When I want a cadence character in GD, I have to level up a lot of times to get deadly momentum, the most valuable part of the skill just to make it playable and in the meantime either I play force wave for the 50th time or I level up at a sluggish pace with garbage pre-DM cadence. In D3 I'm done levelling a character to 70 by that time and all the equipment I loot is endgame equipment that won't increase the buffs it gives (only the stats) by getting a better version of it and I can play t10 with a lot of sets without optimizing any of the bad rolls, just from the excellent build it offers, the skill changes and the damage from the set/key items. In GD you're expected to have maxed out res like in D2 to get anywhere without being instantly killed and there are too many resists to boost. Every stat spent on resists is not spent on damage, energy/hp regen, cdr, stun duration reduction and so on and it takes much longer to get to a part of the game where you don't really have anything higher level to equip later, so there's no point in optimizing your character until you reach your goal and if you want good equipment you need to get high level to get meaningful items, devotions and so on. I like making a character for a few hours, trying out a build and having fun or deleting it if the build is garbage (honestly most non-meta builds or endgame builds are garbage in the level up phase, same as D2, I'd rather have damage based on my weapon and a weapon for my level than having to wait levels just to be able to put more points into my spells so that they actually do something instead of decorating my skill bar with their 1-5% buff/debuff for the first 5 levels I have them).
I just started Grim Dawn yesterday, and so far the only thing that is disappointing FOR ME PERSONALLY are abilities. There's a lot of nothing in each's character skillset. Let say I wanna play soldier, you'd think big swords, maybe big 2H weapons, big slams, whirlwind, some nice aoe? Nah, there's a spammable upgraded auto attack and a shield bash. Occultist? You'd think a lot of DoTs and CC, well there are slows, DoTs are disappointing. You'd love to play something like pure sorcerer and go ballistics with fire/ice/lightning etc? Well there is something but not quite like that (I'm talking purely about abilities). I know there's stuff like Devotion that makes things spicy but I'd love more better choices when it comes to skills.
That's part of the steep learning curve mentioned near the start of the video. For example, Occultist has strong area attacks in both Bloody Pox (my favourite version is acid-damage converted) and Dreeg's Evil Eye which affects groups and can be buffed early game to an overpowered one-shot boss killer. In my defence, I have invested/wasted a few thousand hours in the game and I'm not at all surprised you are disappointed after starting the game yesterday because it's not instantly gratifying and can take 'a while' to learn.
You may feel like that because there are a lot of skills that are gained on items, slam skills stuff like that, they are mostly cool down skills cause you are ment to spam your noncooldown skill you get with your character class and once in a while use the big slam skill from your item.
When i started grim dawn I didn't know where to go. Most of the time I still don't. I just walk around til I randomly accidentally stumbled upon a mission. That what I don't like not a clear direction to go to do mission.
Im trying to enjoy it but ive tried multiple classes and they all feel the same. Also your character never looks cool, i feel like im wearing garbage lol im gonna keep playing but it really isnt holding me
There is a transmog aspect. You can make your gear look like any price you’ve collected before. The skill choice and mastery combo is what makes a character feel different. It could be that the game just isn’t for you. And that’s okay.
this is my first time playing these type of games. I finally beat it, I'm probably half way on the dlc . I want to complete every side mission so hopefully it will take me another 2 weeks to complete it. Great video btw !
Thank you for all your recent support. ❤️
It’s always best to be realistic about games you love. We’re in a good time to be ARPG fans since it feels like there’s something for everyone right now.
💯
Navigating devotion is so much easier with your tip about searching for an element or damage type. Otherwise, choosing a second class is difficult because i see things just turn up "not viable", but when asking good options online there's always five answers. :D
Yeah. Pretty much every combos seems to work due to damage conversions.
Isn't this a case study for blaming a gaming because players have limited intelligence ?
Complaints are increasingly infuriating.
On one hand players complains games are too dumbed down, yet when they're not they complain they're too hard to understand
Can't please everyone.
The community seasons are awesome with crazy bosses and lots more builds
I wanna try out the next one.
Played the game once. Wanted to replay with a new character but the early game, specially after feeling the endgame really holds me back.
If you unlock potion of clarity and lokarrs set with your main character you can level your other characters way faster.
Great video bro 👊
Appreciate it
Bruh... Almost that whole list is stuff that would be an issue with ANY aRPG. Not disagreeing that these things are True for GD, just that they are as true for D2-4, LE, PoE1/2...
Fr fr: if a slow starting, single player game, with deep systems and tons of loot isn't your jam; why you playing aRPGs?
And it looks dated because it IS dated; OG release was almost NINE years ago.
(Great video, just got to defend my favorite aRPG of all time, as a RABID aRPG Stan.)
I'm not mad atcha. Valid points.
Good presentations about Grim Dawn never disappoints me
Thank you 🙏
from the top i like they have the guts to make a diferent interface...to set themself apart from Diablo HP and Mana Orbs...a practic i like to see more in isometric arpgs.
Grim Dawn is really fun and has a really unique setting, but the static world kind of chokes the replayability for me.
Yeah. The replayability comes from rerolling and optimizing new builds.
Why? It makes it less tedious than randomly generated maps. I can cut straight to where I want i go, if that's what I feel like
@@jacobmansfield-go9fzk
Am I the only one that doesn't enjoy boss mechanics and multiple phases? I hate every PoE boss. I'm not playing an ARPG so I can play some stupid minigame during a boss fight.
It can be overdone. I don’t mind it occasionally.
You actually have 1 mobility skill from the getgo, with more unlocking after 30m-1h, fair points overall
You're not wrong.
what else can we expect from this after all. It's dirty cheap, they still update the game. Let's have common sense.
I like grim dawn except the outdated graphics
I am just now getting into Grim Dawn. I bought it a while back, but bounced off it the first time. I was a D3 fan from RoS until recently. In D3 the lack of build diversity gets old. The first few hours of GD are way faster than D3.
Yeah D3 was fun in it's own right, but yeah, the builds were real bare bones. I'd always end up with a teleport spamming disintegrate wizard lol.
yeah, repetitiveness is what made me realize these types of games are not my thing. I got bored to death after 20 hours.
Fair Enough.
Great video, Great game!
Thanks!
So, how's the Grim Dawn modding community ? (That you seem to very quickly mention at the end ?)
One thing that is so depressing about D3/D4/PoE1/PoE2 is how them being online-only means that despite their enormous popularity, they have zero mods.
So eventually they will die, while the likes of D2 and Grim Dawn will keep chugging on.
(And on an even longer timeline, I expect open source games to slowly gain ground, as modding closed source games, especially ones that haven't been made with modding in mind, has a lot of friction.)
I haven’t interacted with the community league but I’m thinking about catching the next one.
But in general, people are still actively modding.
There are different mods that add new masteries and rework skills. There’s a mod that rebuilds diablo 2 inside grim dawn.
I haven’t messed with mods too much as I haven’t run out of stuff to do in the base game.
Dawn of masteries adds like 36 classes
I started this game since I watched your videos.
Hope you’re enjoying it. 🍻
The game is PERFECT. I'll take the Grim Dawn boss fights over Path of Exile 2's any day. Also the hand crafted game world is far superior than the randomly generated, unrealistic maze worlds.
It’s funny reading this comment right after one where the person doesn’t like it lol. Different strokes for different folks.
With the DLC it costs about as much as Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls that has way more polish, a more recent engine with much better handled mobility (barbarian can leap over void and walls, teleportation can pass through walls up to a certain extent, while GD mobility is constantly hindered by every small obstacle on the terrain, some smaller than your character, and the game has way too many random obstacles on the ground that ruin pathing, small bridges are horrible to cross due to the pathing again...).
D3 has equipment you want to put on your character while most GD equipment looks uglier than the base model. D3 has 7 classes and each of them has a male and female model. GD has way more classes and sub-classes, yet every character looks the same, the only way to differentiate your characters on the loading screen is to name them in a way that makes their build obvious.
GD has lots of damage types, but they all do the exact same thing with different colors. Pointless fluff that could have been put into, I don't know, character customization that makes you want to play your character, or cleaning the map of small obstacles that ruin pathing so that you can actually move properly during fights and exploration if we're focusing more on gameplay?
GD mods give much more gameplay value than the game you pay for (just like Elder Scrolls games) because the class mechanics and mobility skills are more interesting, although things like transformation (D2 druid) are made impossible because of the lack of character models for GD, and the lack of beast form on the GD druid (it's got a savagery skill but it doesn't offer anything different from soldier class, except soldier can play 1h, shield and cross class with dual wielding classes, savagery would be so much better if your character turned beastly when you use it).
D3 has an ultimate form for every class in comparison, your model changes size, shape, effects, the skills change to suit the ultimate state, everything looks good and polished and plays smoothly.
GD monsters come back too often, in the first 3 acts there are zombies and skeletons way too often, the same corrupt disproportionate green or red monstrosities that drop their arms as weapons, the first few times it's cool and new but then it gets repetitive, I'd rather fight the monsters specific to this area than the same I've been fighting since act 1. At least the D3 recolors have different skills that actually have different effects with distinct visuals (like the cows from act 1 vs the cows from act 3, the act 3 ones are bulkier, hit the ground and empower their group).
GD mechanics are too basic, feels like playing D1-D2 with worse mobility (Diablo 1 TP could actually cross unpassable terrain back in 1996, GD's mobility plays like a potato game in comparison, and Blizzard was not a big company back in 1996). It's clunky (pathing, quests, backtracking way too much, inventory too small to pick up and sell so that you need to apply more and more filters to avoid filling your inventory with crap, the components take half of your inventory's first bag by act 3 like in D2 and PoE instead of stacking in a window outside of your inventory like in D3, a game that came out BEFORE GD).
I think for its' price with DLCs (not the base price), it's quite basic and unrefined. The DLCs don't get sales, so you can't buy them for cheap like the base game to justfy the original price. Malmouth is constantly being complained about for its' clunky pathing and areas, impractical to navigate. You paid full price for it, and it's hard to enjoy it.
Devotion end up replacing your main skills if your build isn't one of the top meta because most skills are passive effects, passives with %activation chances (the worst type of skill IMO) or auras/buffs/debuffs (cries, curses). Which makes the entire point of having so many subclasses moot because most of your homebrew builds can't even deal with veteran difficulty at a decent pace, lots of classes have trash clear or 0 attack replacer to activate all of your % activation chance skills with (soldier only has cadence for attack replacer that activates on hit effects, blade arc doesn't work with on-hit builds despite starting without cooldown, which means your awesome dual wielding blademaster can't play blade arc at all if you want them to use their dual wielding style, and cadence is really bad with big crowds compared with blade arc that has a near-360° arc where it damages up to 11 targets to clear these crowds fast, and cadence only has 1 subskill that deals damage on all attacks while the first 2 only affect every 3rd attack).
For a game that is all about custom builds and cross classing, the viability of your options relies way too much on devotion (that starts at a crowl to the point I use a cheating program to unlock constellations with each shrine instead of single points on the devotion milky way just to make my energy thirsty builds even playable at all like blade arc maxed out that costs way too much energy per attack if used without cooldown, or most assassin builds that cost nearly as much energy as aether ray arcanist with half the energy bar and regen of arcanists).
Fans of D2 and GD mention how D3 is bad by tying skill viability to items (sets and legendaries that modify a skill) but I'd rather have 4x damage and a new effect on my skill by wearing a specific belt that I can bargain for at Kadala's shop than relying on randomized affixes to give me +30-80% damage on a skill with maybe added DoT (like assassin's acid % chance dual wielding skill gaining 1400 poison damage over 5 sec from an item...still doesn't change any of the skill's mechanics, doesn't make it activate with every attack to make it viable, doesn't increase the number of targets it hits...). D3 with LoD/LoN and skill enhancing items can completely change the gameplay of your build. GD doesn't have anything like that apart from devotions and they're the same for every class with the same skills to link to your build.
GD is fine to busy yourself while listening to the radio, audiobooks, videos etc, but the more attention you can put into the game, the more bland it feels. Just the fact that you have 80+ possible builds and that these characters will all look like scrap put together with very little difference in aesthetic, especially in the levelling phase (the one everyone actually experiences from the beginning and that decides if you keep playing or get a refund), meaning you can't even feel the uniqueness of your build, already lowers the satisfaction of putting a build together.
In D3, Each set looks different, plays differently, each class has different gameplay (DH can even play melee with a specific build, making the fact that they can equip melee weapons all the more gameplay altering), there are even support builds that work well for multiplayer high end content. Even better: in D3 you can change the appearance of your equipment to look cool, ugly, terrifying, to look like an inquisitor or a paladin, like Sun Wukong or like a healing monk, like an assassin or a mechanist, like an angel or a demon. This gives personality to your character, this makes the roleplaying aspect much better than playing your 500th character walking around wearing scrap metal gear.
GD is based on a Victorian-Conquest of the West setting in the 1800s, has some Native American-like headbands and shamanic helms, yet it doesn't have bows. What do people associate with Native Americans? Tomahawk, bolas and bows. Of these, you will only find hand axes made of pieces of chainsaw/circular saw blades, not even close to the Native American aesthetic you might want for a shaman build. There are few spears in the game to play a hunter-like character and basically none in act 1.
So, GD has dated mechanics and engine, very low graphic quality (some armors are even misshaped when you wear them because of the crappy models on top of already looking like crap), no customization of your looks to roleplay your build, no refinement of the gameplay and maps, bad pathing like an early 2000s MMO, too many damage types that all do the same things (but some do it better than others, like how bleeding can't damage aether crystals thus bleeding builds are bad at clearing earlygame with the sheer number of aether crystals to destroy). It plays slightly smoother than D2, and that's mostly because you can actually use more than just your mouse to activate skills.
AoM and FG cost easily 35 euros, probably around the same price in $, without even counting the price you put into the base game that plays like a flash game without the DLC dash skill and QoL of DLCs, since you could find it for 9 euros on sale (so 44 euros). Diablo 3 was 40-50 when it came out full price, RoS is 20 euros. If we add Crucible to GD, add 10 euros to the price tag. So D3 at most cost you 70 euros without the necro DLC (totally optional) full price, while Just the expansions of GD already cost more than D3 base game and if you bought the base game at full price (why would you do that?), GD costs MORE THAN or AS MUCH AS full price D3+RoS. The difference is that D3 is a finished product nowadays, while GD might sell you another expansion for 10-20 euros that won't solve any of the issues with pathing, clunky early 2000s mechanics, lack of customization, there will never be bows in the game and you won't be able to change into a beast like in D2 with your shaman or pet occultist, you won't be able to change into an undead with your necromancer.
The only good thing is that you can play offline and you can make a Kimimaro Kaguya knock-off build with the GD necromancer unlike the D2 version. Most of the QoL issues in D2 can be found in GD (inventory management, high amount of trash loot, randomized affixes on equipment rather than well thought-out pieces that alter the gameplay in a meaningful way like in D3 where some items take trash skills and make them competitive), despite D2 being a game from 1999 and GD coming after D3 and around RoS (an expansion that completely overhauled D3's gameplay and that could be considered as mostly a different game from the original, fixing a lot of the issues of the base game like legendary drops, build variety, progress rate and endgame content).
TL;DR: GD with all DLCs costs about the same as D3 RoS without the necromancer expansion (which I think is a scam for the same price as RoS). D3 is a much more refined product than GD, RoS was a game changing expansion while GD got a few QoL changes but not that many from expansions and still has most of the issues it had at launch and plays too much like a game from the early 2000s instead of a game that came out in 2016 (2014 alpha/beta) and the engine and code are potatoes, you can't even make a good D2 mod with it because your character can't have a different model than the base M/F so you can't shapeshift (which is a big part of shaman/druid builds' theme), I understand supporting the devs by buying but at some point they should deliver a product worth the price.
D2 was not a 60 $ game in the early 2000s AFAIK, I got the LoD version for 15 euros 10 years ago. If I want to play D2, I can play it for much cheaper than GD and have a pleasant medieval setting with armor that looks better than scrap, weapons that look like actual historical weapons, classes with distinct appearances, armors that look different based on build and I could do all this 15 years before GD came out.
If GD was online only, it wouldn't be played half as much as it is as one of the rare offline 10+ish YO ARPG/HnS. And the fanboys of GD are about as insufferable as D2's, spitting on progress and more features and acting like suggestions of QoL, visual improvements and build viability are personal insults to the devs or like making bow animations would take half a year to the lone animator of the studio when they have fan-made content from mods ON THEIR OWN WEBSITE, they can contact the creator and ask for a partnership (they already outsource some of the animation work) or to buy some features from their mods (like animations and assets for bows, spears and other fan-made stuff that would enhance the experience and immersion). I'm certain some modders would love to get paid for their free work on offering an enhanced experience (like the color mod for damage types that already exists and should be part of the game instead of an outside resource).
Wow. That is one very well put together RUclips comment.
I’m not one to hate on the Diablo franchise. Those games are fun in their own right. I do enjoy me some grim dawn too. At the end of the day that’s what it’s about.
I’ve definitely gotten my moneys worth out of GD at this point. (I also got my moneys worth out of D3, D4 is debatable lol)
@@Goomba_YT D4 I couldn't even launch, it crashed repeatedly on start so I got a refund. Best decision for my wallet.
GD is fine if you don't expect much out of it except for mindless grinding and some very basic build with maybe some cool visual effects (mostly lightning shaman). Some builds are still broken (sky shards still useless in lots of inside areas or with ceiling clutter like rafters intercepting the projectiles before they land) 8 years after the final release, which is a shame (I'd love to use a meteor ice build, but it doesn't work).
That's why I compare GD to D2 but not in the positive way fanboys do, mostly in the outdated perspective. GD plays like a 20 YO game despite being a 10-8 YO game that came out after D3 and that's sad.
If PoE was an offline game, I'd definitely play it instead of D2/GD (unless it crashed still, but I think it's the connection with the server rather than my PC that makes it crash, and maybe Steam launcher crap in the background).
D3 is god awful
@@jacobmansfield-go9fz Then D2 and GD would be horrid games because D3 is a much better gameplay experience, doesn't need to be a 2nd job to get anywhere near endgame and gives a much fuller experience for your buck with a reasonable play time.
Just the variety of LoD and set builds D3 has far eclipses the illusory build variety of GD and Diablo 2 (you can literally use a spell in 3-8 different ways based on runes, spell modifying items and sets), you can level a character to 70 in a few hours/days in solo self found and start looting your endgame equipment, while by that time in D2/GD you would still be in mid game and D2 is the worst with needing to finish the same game 3x to consider it finished with dumb monsters with immunities that completely ruin your build.
I like them for what they are, a distraction for the hands and eyes while listening to stuff, but I wouldn't call them good games, not even for the time they came out. But it has something to do with the genre being lackluster. Beating monsters is funny, but with very little intersting challenge (and I mean challenge like in Zelda games with boss mechanics and weak points to target, intersting gameplay, not just fighting the same monsters with more stats and immunities and more numbers on the screen which all HnS tend to stop at), I get bored quickly.
As such, with a life, D3 is the most respectful game towards your time among these 3 and probably around top 3 in the most well-known titles of the genre (hell D3 even has actual boss mechanics and phases like a Zelda/Dark Souls game, same for PoE, they just need more focus on weak points to make the fights shorter but more dynamic).
D3 actually provides the A of ARPG, something both D2 and GD cruelly lack in mechanics and gameplay, focusing too much on surface level "depth" like resistance stacking, stat checks and damage types over actual mechanics and active gameplay. In GD, beside dodging projectiles/areas, you're basically just mashing the attack button(s) and piling up passive/active stat buffs/debuffs.
In D3 you can and have to use good positioning, which the map design often makes possible (at least against bosses), every character has some form of class specific mobility (barbs even have 2 mobility skills) to reposition your character and pass through overcrowded areas without having to manually kill everything to stop being body blocked (and D3 mobility >>> GD space key evasion skill).
So while D3 is not a game I'd play daily for years, I don't NEED to play that long to get a character to the intersting part I want them. When I want a cadence character in GD, I have to level up a lot of times to get deadly momentum, the most valuable part of the skill just to make it playable and in the meantime either I play force wave for the 50th time or I level up at a sluggish pace with garbage pre-DM cadence.
In D3 I'm done levelling a character to 70 by that time and all the equipment I loot is endgame equipment that won't increase the buffs it gives (only the stats) by getting a better version of it and I can play t10 with a lot of sets without optimizing any of the bad rolls, just from the excellent build it offers, the skill changes and the damage from the set/key items.
In GD you're expected to have maxed out res like in D2 to get anywhere without being instantly killed and there are too many resists to boost. Every stat spent on resists is not spent on damage, energy/hp regen, cdr, stun duration reduction and so on and it takes much longer to get to a part of the game where you don't really have anything higher level to equip later, so there's no point in optimizing your character until you reach your goal and if you want good equipment you need to get high level to get meaningful items, devotions and so on.
I like making a character for a few hours, trying out a build and having fun or deleting it if the build is garbage (honestly most non-meta builds or endgame builds are garbage in the level up phase, same as D2, I'd rather have damage based on my weapon and a weapon for my level than having to wait levels just to be able to put more points into my spells so that they actually do something instead of decorating my skill bar with their 1-5% buff/debuff for the first 5 levels I have them).
This game seems like a hybrid of Diablo and path of exile.
I could see that. Plays more like Diablo 2, complexity more like PoE.
I just started Grim Dawn yesterday, and so far the only thing that is disappointing FOR ME PERSONALLY are abilities. There's a lot of nothing in each's character skillset. Let say I wanna play soldier, you'd think big swords, maybe big 2H weapons, big slams, whirlwind, some nice aoe? Nah, there's a spammable upgraded auto attack and a shield bash. Occultist? You'd think a lot of DoTs and CC, well there are slows, DoTs are disappointing. You'd love to play something like pure sorcerer and go ballistics with fire/ice/lightning etc? Well there is something but not quite like that (I'm talking purely about abilities). I know there's stuff like Devotion that makes things spicy but I'd love more better choices when it comes to skills.
Yeah that’s a fair take. Each mastery on its own can feel “incomplete”, which is by design I guess, but still….
That's part of the steep learning curve mentioned near the start of the video. For example, Occultist has strong area attacks in both Bloody Pox (my favourite version is acid-damage converted) and Dreeg's Evil Eye which affects groups and can be buffed early game to an overpowered one-shot boss killer. In my defence, I have invested/wasted a few thousand hours in the game and I'm not at all surprised you are disappointed after starting the game yesterday because it's not instantly gratifying and can take 'a while' to learn.
@@Arcadelife1well I’m not giving up on it, it’s still a great game, but I like your comment and I like there’s some kind of learning curve to it.
You may feel like that because there are a lot of skills that are gained on items, slam skills stuff like that, they are mostly cool down skills cause you are ment to spam your noncooldown skill you get with your character class and once in a while use the big slam skill from your item.
If you want to slam, try Bone Harvest on the necromancer. You can get it to 26/16 pretty early on.
When i started grim dawn I didn't know where to go. Most of the time I still don't.
I just walk around til I randomly accidentally stumbled upon a mission.
That what I don't like not a clear direction to go to do mission.
Yep...it makes you read.
Im trying to enjoy it but ive tried multiple classes and they all feel the same. Also your character never looks cool, i feel like im wearing garbage lol im gonna keep playing but it really isnt holding me
There is a transmog aspect. You can make your gear look like any price you’ve collected before.
The skill choice and mastery combo is what makes a character feel different.
It could be that the game just isn’t for you. And that’s okay.