Is Grim Dawn An ARPG Worth Your Time?
Grim Dawn is an action role-playing game for PC (and TBA for Xbox One(?)) released in early 2016 by Crate Entertainment. It has been on my radar for a few years, notably, because of the very positive reviews it gets on Steam, and the overall Victorian Gothic style the game conveys helps to engage my interest a lot more than your bog-standard dark fantasy offering.
Pricing
GOG are selling Grim Dawn for £4. The game usually sells on various platforms at a fairly static price of £19.99. This -80% reduction is why I felt it was finally time to give this title a try, especially after I have played a fair amount Path of Exile recently (link to my review).
To confirm: my judgement of this game assumes it’s a £19.99 game.
Beginning The Campaign / Main Story Mode
Once the game menu loads, you’ll have to create a character before you can start the campaign, which seems backward. I was a little thrown back after clicking ‘create character’ to see that one click created my entire character, of whom was now stood there now on the screen title menu brandishing a one-handed sword and makeshift wooden shield. I understand this is an ARPG and not a full-blown Dungeons and Dragons-esque affair, but I assumed I’d at least get to pick my gender and class.
The game has a decent cinematic opening that addresses why monsters are in the world, which let’s face it: it’s usually the same story throughout all of these hack’n’slash ARPGs. The cutscene showed me that pistols and bullish no-nonsense Victorian hangmen exist in this game, and sets up the overall dark and apocalyptic vibe the game’s got going for it.
Start The Game Already!
After talking to someone that for whatever reason either feels sorry for me and then, of course, has a job for me to clear out their cellar of rats, it’s the usual the standard affair…, you know how it goes…
— remember back in Diablo II (released in 2000), the very first quest you get is to clear out a cave of monsters? Same sort of thing here.
Are we ever going to get a game that doesn’t revolve around fetch quests and clearing out unwanted cave dwellers?
Oldschool In Design… But Does That Work?
The first thing that really struck me was hitting <TAB> did nothing. I’m expecting a transparent onscreen map to appear, that shows my character and my progress in the map. In most ARPGs, you can even leave the map overlay on as you move around, make progress, and even fight your way through areas with it on screen. What happens instead is the map overlay… isn’t an overlay at all. It’s its own separate window that takes over your whole perspective. The mini-map isn’t that useful either, so I can see this map reference becoming highly frustrating later on, depending on area design having multiple routes through dungeons and moving through one area to another. Bind it to a mouse thumb button and start running before you open the map and it’s not so bad, but still a design decision I don’t agree with at all.
When I was talking with NPCs, even running the game on the highest possible graphical settings, I was surprised that this game is just four years old and yet the portraits for the characters remind me of the quality of those blocky character portraits you’d get back in the early '00s.
Remember how cool the original StarCraft UI was at the time, with it’s animated portraits? They were low-res, but were animated and had nice backgrounds. It’s just that background shade of blue behind the blocky character portrait that grates me. Very few parts of the dialogue are voiced, yet they’re actually quite good.
I Find Myself Squinting
One major niggle I have with Grim Dawn is that as you can see in my screenshots, the game doesn’t seem to appreciate that it was 2016 at the time of release, with most of us wanting to run the game at our native 1920x1080 resolutions, yet the UI is too small. You will have even more issues on a 4K monitor.
Thankfully, there is UI scaling. It seems to work wonders for me so far, but I can imagine — and have read — that there’s going to be overlap and word wrap issues for 4K res users in quest windows, item descriptions, etc. It’s a shame the game doesn’t seem to have been built from the ground up to support 1080p as a standard. Could this be because Grim Dawn uses the old Titan Quest (2006) engine? The highest quality on all of the terrain looks like it’s targeted for lower resolutions as well.
However, it’s not just the UI. I find that in most games that come with a zoomable scroll perspective, it’s nice to have that feature there, but I’ll never use — and use the default panned out view anyway. With Grim Dawn, I do zoom in, just a tad from the default — just so I can actually see a little bit of graphical detail. There’s something strange about the anti-aliasing and other graphical detail at the default zoom level. As I said, It’s almost as if the entire rendered world just doesn’t seem like it was originally built for a 1080p resolution. The aspect ratio of buildings, my character, and trees just seem a little off unless I really fiddle with camera perspective and zoom, and this overall gives the game an overall budgetary feel, and to be fair, I expected something better looking and more modern for a 2016 release priced at £19.99.
Levelling Up
When I achieved my first level, this is where the game finally allowed me to choose from one of six classes. My options, along with my then interpretation of each class (which is based on my familiarity with RPG classes) were as follows:
- Soldier: close-combat, melee guy. Sword and shield, perhaps? Sounds a little boring for my tastes, but it’s a standard these games, whether they’re called Fighters, Warriors, Barbarians, or Soldiers.
- Nightblade: that’s a Rogue, for me. Daggers, illusions and trickery, traps? High damage per second, critical hits, yet overall glass cannons — rogues are usually my go-to in RPGs.
- Demolitionist: this is where I got a little confused. It seems like it’s a pyro and explosion mage. Why would I solely want just fire magic?
- Arcanist: your all-round Mage/Sorcerer/Wizard. Fire, ice/water, and lightning. All of the main Magey elements.
- Occultist: curses, diseases… and yes, summoning is here as well. For me, that’s a Necromancer/Summoner.
- Shaman: uh. OK, it’s another type of Summoner, but this guy gets a pet companion and is a supposedly decent fighter, specifically two-handed weapons.
Inquisitor and Necromancer are classes that are available to you after you purchase the Ashes of Malmouth expansion (there are I believe, two main DLCs/expansions forGrim Dawn). Inquisitor seems very much like the Arcanist at first glance, and Necromancer (which I thought we basically already had!) seems like the Occultist.
I appreciate the designers of Grim Dawn creating their own classes to fit within the world and setting of the game, but for me, there appears to be too much overlap between each choice, and lack of clarity in the descriptions offered.
I went with Shaman, for better or worse. My plan: I’ll wield a big two-handed axe, have a cool pet wolf and throw some wind/force-of-nature-type-magic at people. I think that’s what I’m meant to do anyway. I’ve still not got an animal companion, despite skills in the skill tree offering buffs for one.
Difficulty
Grim Dawn has a Normal difficulty, and also a Veteran difficulty. The other two difficulties are locked, presumably until you complete the game.
I’d definitely not recommend playing on ‘Normal’. It’s just not fun. Go and check ‘Veteran’.
Skill/Spell/Abilities
In the skill menu, I have just three main branches. The first was for my two-handed weapon prowess. I didn’t have a two-handed weapon then, so I didn’t bother investing in that one. I did later on, of course.
Each starting node in each of the respective three branches can be upgraded to a max of sixteen, or twelve, etc. Other nodes, which are greyed out, required me to spend at least six and nine points across the board to be able to unlock them. Or so I thought…
I must admit, I don’t really like this system, nor the interface, but my plan is to try and figure out what is worth investing in to get the best damage available, as right now I want to be dealing damage and level up as quick as possible, as I’m not really taking much damage from monsters.
Wait A Second. This Is Slightly Embarrassing… Or Will You Agree — It’s Simply Bad UI?
Do you see the blue + icon in the lower left of the skills tree?
That’s actually a button. Because there’s no visible shadow around it, therefore making the design flat; it doesn’t represent itself as something clickable. I wanted to unlock further skills. I’m getting bored of only having one castable skill. I’ve gone and read the tooltip of the blanked out skills that says I “must invest x number of points into Shaman”. Sigh. I’ve invested all 12 points into the top left skill when all I had to do was realise the button actually was a button. It does make sense, as that progress bar is a meter level of what skills you’re then eligible to unlock and start using.
I really, really don’t like this system at all. On paper, yes, the equivalent has been done before and it’s simple enough and it works. It’s just the interface and execution that’s the main problem.
Devotion
Devotion. It’s another aspect of character/skill levelling. You do my favourite thing of all time to do in video games: clear out caves!… then you get the reward and can spend it in this interface.
Personally, I feel this screen would be move effective to use for the overall skills interface, but that’s probably my bias at the aforementioned interface not working for me, but also the lesser information displayed here in the hover-overs being easier to absorb and straight forward.
Character Stats
There are just three main character stats in Grim Dawn:
- Physique: your hit points and defence, and what armour you can strap on yourself.
- Cunning: how much damage you can do, and what weapons you can use. Pretty bad choice of word. In the RPG world, Thieves and Rogues are cunning. For example, take a Conan-like Barbarian cleaving his way through swathes of foul beasts, dealing unstoppable damage with his trusty blade… he isn’t being cunning. He’s not using deceit.
- Spirit: it just seems like a mana pool to me. It is. There’s some tucked away multiplier-type stat thing about how quickly to generate and/or convert x to Spirit to y (or whatever) mentioned in some items, but I couldn’t figure it out.
I have no idea how to build my character. I usually like to min-max and go in heavily for one thing, but with this Shaman class, it seems I need a bit of everything.
I need Physique because I’m a strong lad, look at the image of him… looks like a Barbarian to me!… But also because a lot of armour and these two-handed weapons require me to have Physique. So it’s sort of max health, how beefy you are, how much damage you can take. It’s basically vitality and strength as we understand them rolled into one.
Cunning. I dunno. I use weapons, so I’ll need to deal damage with them. But then some of my skills… they’re magic, right? I’m throwing weather at people like Storm from X-Men, does that mean I’ll need Spirit as well? I’ll also be spamming mana (sorry, Spirit)-depleting skills as well… so I’ll need that. So you need it all. No real choices to be made but to spread it all out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, and I’m seeing skills in the tree to increase the x and y of my pet. My animal companion. Guess what? I don’t bloody have one. How mean is that? It was the sole reason I chose the class and I don’t actually have what was advertised. This Shaman just seems to play like a Fighter type with a couple of nature-based spells to me. Guess what my best melee mana-based attack keeps doing though? Basically my two-handed power skill, which surely is using damage based on the Cunning stat(!?)… Well, Lightning’s on the screen. Lightning damage is mentioned all over the stat of some items I keep finding. So is it Spirit damage, or Cunning damage, or… both?
Yet Path of Exile’s meant to be the more complicated of the games…
Combat
In the options for Grim Dawn, there are two unchecked targeting options. That means there are three targeting options in the game. It really is quite frustrating to be using a melee combat character and trying to hit an enemy and instead I’m running around and doing nothing because it isn’t picking up a target. Obviously, with three targeting options, the developer realises this.
Combat’s not bad. The animations are alright, the spell effects are cool enough. It’s pretty standard, so gets a thumbs up from me. Nothing special, though. I’d probably need to unlock a lot more skills, abilities, spells, and try out other characters before I could make any more comments.
At least in the normal difficulty, as I mentioned being too easy, things get stale quite fast, especially with how long it takes to unlock more spells and abilities with the skill upgrades requiring your overall skill rating to be a certain level.
The game works best when you do find mobs that are more densely packed, otherwise it gets frustrating fiddly as it shows the issues with the targeting system. I’m still fiddling with my sensitivity and DPI settings, but it’s not helping. Unless enemies are packed together, I’ve even resorted to using two-handed ranged weapons and holding down shift (so I fire and don’t move) to avoid moving when I want to attack.
ARPGs can get tiresome and monotonous if the combat doesn’t give the player enough sense of gruesome achievement. It’s a formulaic, spammy, clickfest genre, but game developers and designers have to make it satisfying in both the combat and upgrade system rewards.
They’ve got to create the incentive for me as the player to continue the cycle. If they build in a good, engaging story, with lore and world-building snippets that can be delivered and absorbed in snippets, that perform to break up the monotony of gameplay, and fundamentally do it all in a non-intrusive way — that’s the killer formula. It’s that sense of achievement and engagement that keeps my finger’s RSI as just a trivial byproduct of a good ARPG, and the drudgery of yet another cave clear-out won’t be seen as a chore, as I’ll be looking at it through loot-tinted glasses.
Whilst the combat isn’t bad — it’s still not something I find myself taking enough pleasure in. I find myself traversing through areas in the world and clearing out yet another bloody cave (that they literally made as part of the Devotion upgrade system!) as more of a chore rather than me taking pleasure in bringing along my destructive monster-slaying machine, fully equipped and at my disposal. I’m not exactly confident enough to say I somewhat understand the inner workings of my character. You know, because I should — I’m designing him.
Conclusion
Grim Dawn, sadly, fails to bring anything new or fresh to the table, even at its release in 2016, (that’s four years after Blizzard’s Diablo III in 2012). The Victorian-style theme doesn’t come across, or resonate with me at all — as I’m mostly looking at the same textures, and not engaging enough with the characters or the world via story or anything to drive home this setting. To be honest, the world feels no different from that depicted in Diablo titles or Path of Exile.
The bits that were voice-acted were actually quite good, and it’s a shame more of it wasn’t done, I’d even forgive those character portraits… It would make the theme shine and come across as more immersive.
The fundamental good aspects of an (A)RPG seem to be lacking. In ARPGs, let’s just admit it, when you want to feel in control, it’s all just about comparing the stats of items and skills against another, and then using these numbers to make investment choices for your character’s build. We are fundamentally honing and shaping our fella (or lady, which I don’t recall ever getting the choice to play (something I missed in the UI again?)) into the most optimal killing machine they can be.
As the player, you want to have an objective in your character’s progression. What is the next skill you want to unlock, and why?
With only three core character properties, and the interface chosen in the skill tree, also using three main branches, it doesn’t allow me to understand what I want to be working towards, and this hindrance is also supported by the lack of divisive design in its character classes.
Grim Dawn can’t hide the negative aspects of its budget and comes across as old-school for all the wrong reasons. It’s even little quality of life things I didn’t mention earlier like the placement of characters in the town and your stash, all the way up the stairs. Stash should simply be a big inventory box I can dump items into. I shouldn’t have to do it via an NPC. If I right-click (which they assigned as ‘quick sell’ and item equip respectively), I end up equipping the item, rather than moving it. It means I’m there dropping and dragging items.
Whilst this game might offer something fresh to a veteran of the genre, I can’t see it appealing to anyone else, and there is currently more fun to be had in other ARPG titles. Grim Dawn tries to pay homage to the Diablo II of old and does so very well on a basic level. It’s original content, however, is poorly implemented and the core aspects of the game are made more complex through lack of transparency in how the skill tree and character screens correlate to a character’s overall damage, defence, and magic output stats.
I can overlook the graphics and other trivial problems, and I’d even say Grim Dawn is not a bad game, especially when you can grab it on sale, but I certainly had many gripes with the systems of character design both at face value and the inner intricacies within the numbers that far outweigh what I enjoyed about it.
