Grim Dawn Review

Introduction to grim dawn
The first review will be about Grim Dawn. It is a game I have enjoyed for more than 750 hours. Yes indeed it is a huge time sink and it can be a complete grind. I feel like that Grim Dawn is what Diablo 3 should have been. The gameplay is crossed somewhere between Diablo 3 and Path of Exile. For me, Grim Dawn takes the crown! I like Diablo 3 and Path of Exile a lot and have similar hours of gameplay (I can’t wait for Path of exile 2!) A word of advice: follow a guide online for the best build, because your first build will utterly fail. I still use builds after all the hours of gameplay. When I try to do my own way, I keep dying.

This review will contain spoilers.

Game story
The story of Grim Dawn is quite simple and complicated at the same time. You’ve got multiple bad guys and lots of beasts that want to kill you. There are a lot of lore and lots of fanfiction of this game but in this review, I tell from my perspective. I believe this is what happens. Before the game begins there is an apocalyptic event called the grim dawn, which basically means the world ended.

A high mage in a lab in the main city of Cairn ( side note: Cairn is the country where Grim Dawn takes place) thought it was a very good idea to mess around with dimensional portals to harvest unlimited energy. Well of course this goes terribly wrong (I haven’t found a game/series/movie where this goes flawless) and these beings called the aetherials came out of the portals. They decided straight up to murder everyone, not only that they can possess people and mutate them into horrendous ugly beasts. A few people managed to escape the aetherials massacre, they scattered throughout the world. These are the people you will encounter on your journey to save Cairn and it’s people. Some will be good people others will be evil people and try to kill you.

If this situation is not bad enough there is a group of people, a cult named the chthonic that wants to summon a demon. They have summoned a demon in the past that wanted to eat the world but that was prevented by Ulgrim. The chthonic people that want to summon a demon that will eat the world and they were kept in check by the people in the main capital who kept them in check, but the aetherials killed most of them and that is why the chthonic are trying again. You and Ulgrim will be working alongside to prevent the demon from arising. The regular people have lost hope and decided to join the chthonic. The chthonic use their blood to open a portal to hell to summon the demon. Meanwhile, the aetherials are killing everyone and are trying to make this dimension their own. It will be your job to end their shenanigans and stop the summoning of this demon before it destroys the world while you are also battling the aetherials. All the beasts in Grim Dawn are out to kill you. They have been poisoned by the energy from the aetherials called aether.

To make matters worse, the dead are coming back to life in the form of skeletons ghosts. Basically, you get to kill loads of enemies for lootsplosions. To equip your character with items you see fit for your build. When you enter the game the main events have been a while ago and you get to see the world scattered and broke. It is your job to help the people out and defeat aetherials, cultists alike in a lot of quests. Lucky for you there are still nice people in Cairn who do want to help you. You need to gain their trust so they are willing to help you. You can gain their trust by killing aetherials, beast, chthonic, undead. The more they trust you, the better the items are they are willing to sell you. Grim Dawn has 2 big DLC expansions, called “Malmouth and the forgotten Gods” and a smaller DLC expansion: “The Crucible”.

Your character – the protaganist
It is not very clear who you are because you have amnesia. You are found being strung up, hanging from a noose. Let’s back up for a bit.

When you start Grim Dawn you have been possessed by an aetherial! How this came to have be has never been explained, the question of who you were before is also unanswered. I think you were a royal knight in the main capital, you have been possessed for a while and where being used by the aetherials to perform elite tasks. For this, you need to keep your human form. With this infiltration, you destroy human settlements. The aetherial sent you to destroy the city Devils Crossing. This City is the biggest threat to the aetherials even though it is a small settlement. Devils Crossing has laid a trap to capture you for your intelligence about the aetherial. They want to use this information to destroy the aetherials for good. You get caught in the trap. You get captured and when you won’t spill the information they need, they set you up to get hung from the gallows noose.

When they still won’t get the information from you, they decide to hang you. While hanging from the noose you reach for your neck. As you feel the life leaving your body the aetherial inside you decide to part from you and run back to its leader. One person wants to let you die but the other two decide you are still of use. One of them shoots the rope to release you from the noose’s grip. (I would like to see the probabilities in Mythbusters) You wake up with no memory of who you are. You decide to help Devils Crossing fight the aetherials. I think that is how aetherials greatest asset becomes their greatest threat because for some reason you can’t be possessed by the aetherials anymore. You also have special powers as you have become half aetherial half-human.

Gameplay
The most important part of the review; the gameplay. Grim Dawn is an Action Role-Playing Game (ARPG) that uses a lot of mouse clicking and skills using set on your keyboard, 1 2 3 etc. But beware the mechanics in Grim Dawn are deeper and more complicated as you might think. Just click on the enemy you want to attack and your character will walk toward the enemy and start hitting it. Simple right? No, it’s not that simple! There is a lot you need to learn. Let’s go over a couple of mechanics available in Grim Dawn.

There is a smith. He/she can craft items that can be useful but also requires grinding for the materials. I don’t use the smith option a lot because most (better) items can be found from enemy drops. The smith is used for endgame min-maxing, to get the best possible stats for your endgame armor. You are able to summon a rift with the L key to quickly teleport to town to sell your bag of useless loot and store the good items in a bank. Throughout the world, there are a lot of secret nooks and crannies with treasure chests hidden. You need to keep an eye out for those nooks and crannies since special items are also hidden there. The quests are mostly to guide you to where you need to go. They are very basic, kill this enemy or gather this item-quests. There are also bigger quests who have you tracking through multiple areas to earn an extra skill point. I feel like it sounds a bit negative but don’t get me wrong. I did like the quests! Only after 15+ playthroughs I barely notice they exist and I stop reading the text that the quest giver is saying. It’s been on autopilot for me. I just go towards the goal and kill stuff during the walk to the quest marker.

With the skills you will gather you will need to keep your buffs up and simultaneously keep using special skills for stronger hits. This keeps you focused. If you do not do this you will be defeated by the enemies before you can blink. I think this is to keep you interested in what is happening on your screen. Usually, the enemies are gathered in big groups ready to swarm and surround you. The game feels very solid and flows well as enemy after enemy fall down before your feet (with loot!) Some may find it a problem that when you complete the normal difficulty and you go to the elite difficulty you have to play the exact same game again and after you’ve finished that run, you will have to repeat it on the ultimate difficulty. With each difficulty spike, you need to make sure you have all the different resistances to enemy attacks capped at 80% or else you will die. It is a great feeling when you kill an enemy and it dorps a blue epic item. After level 50 you are able to find purple legendary items. You have the option to block for example the common items. I have this option on. You will find enough loot as you can see in the print screen below.

I have to mention the biggest downfall in Grim Dawn; the epic and legendary items, they are so many of them, and stats can be different each time. This makes it very difficult to find a full armor set for your job. The drop rate is because of this too low. For example, my wife found a legendary item when I did not even receive a blue item. This shows you need to be lucky. I have grinded the same enemy over and over and when finally a legendary item drops…. it turns out that it is not for your job.

Luckily there is a transfer stash. In this stash, you can store items for another character. If you feel it is worthless to you can dismantle it with dynamite. (only for epic and legendary items) You can blow up your legendary item but why is not clear to me. You will get scrap and maybe one rare crafting item that you might need for new equipment in endgame gear. There are already various options to customize your character and build! (big pro). And if you’re not satisfied yet you also can use components to upgrade your equipment. In my opinion, it makes it more complicated. You can retrieve the used components to reuse them in new equipment. For example, you have boots and you find a component called “mark of the traveler”. You can put this in the boots and you will get more health regeneration. When you find new, better boots, you can salvage the component and equip it in the new boots.

Once you get the hang of it this will become easier and you be very glad you started Grim Dawn. Multiplayer is an option in Grim Dawn which I will explain later it is an awesome function but also very flawed. You may have noticed in the picture with a loot explosion that this was made in co-op mode.

The developer crate put a lot of work into this game and it shows! You can see this throughout the whole gameplay and in the building system for the job choices.

With every level up you get 3 skill points (2 after level 50 and only 1 after level 90) and 1 attribute point. Skill points are for the job choices and attribute is for physique, cunning, spirit. Physique is for more health and more health regeneration. In many build, it is often recommended to put in 80 points. Cunning is for more damage and critical hit chance, this is not recommended a lot. Spirit is for equipping jewelry. Usually, 0 to 20 points is enough depending on your job. Also, a devotion skill tree which is complicated and hard to understand but can be of enormous help in killing your foes. Before you can learn a skill you need to put a point in mastery bar which goes up all the way to 50, this also gives points in physique, spirit, and cunning. In Grim Dawn, you can choose 2 jobs and mix them. This gives a lot of build choices! What are your choices and what can they do? A short info nothing too detailed.

The soldier class

If you like to be tanky you should definitely choose this class. You will get skills that can increase your defense and health point also you can be very strong with a sword and shield. A soldier can use other weapons than the sword but this class is mostly focused on a shield. A skill called blitz will quickly rush you toward an enemy so you can pummel him. You can also use a modifier called trauma damage. Soldier is a job that can take a few hits but also has plenty of damage per second. I prefer this class.

Demolitionist class

I have had no much success with this class. I find this class to be very squishy and that makes it hard to survive. Then again I never excel in ARPG with a gun. I’m more a run into the crowd and hope I don’t die guy. You can use a gun or two guns to shoot your enemies and keep them at a safe distance with stunning bombs or throw other elemental bombs at them. It’s very fun and entertaining but it is not my style, When you combine demolitionist with soldier you can make more shooting tank character. You can basically set Cairn on fire! Burn Burn Burn to the ground Burn!!!!!! ( If you get this easter egg, please say so in the comments!)

Occultist class

This is a very fun job which can be put to many different uses. You can summon a familiar to help you. Or you can summon a hellhound to rip at the flesh of enemy”s. The hellhound is basically your decoy. You are able to put a curse on enemies and weaken them. When weakened you or your pets can finish them off. With this job, there is a skill to quickly heal you and get out of nasty situations. Also very welcome in multiplayer. This is a class that is good to combine with a lot of different jobs. It’s a fun play.

Nightblade class

This is a job with high damage per second and quick gameplay. Since that is what you need in a nightblade end a battle quickly. It had good passive skills and matches with most jobs. To increase your damage per second you can dual wield swords with this job but this is instead of your defense, you have to end battles quickly or you will die. There is one very useful skill with this job called “pneumatic burst: which will heal you for a fair amount and increase your health regeneration. This might save you if you are not able to kill the enemies before they attack you. The downside of this job is that you are very squishy even when combined with the soldier. I ended up regretting this combination when entering the ultimate difficulty.

Arcanist class

This is one of the jobs I did not like at all because it only becomes strong later in the game, around level 50. Until then it is very weak. In my opinion, this job does not have powerful skills but you can use the arcanist as a nice side job for the passive skills. I do not recommend this job for a beginner.

Shaman class

This is very useful and a strong job. Even in the beginning! You can use two-handed weapons very well. It has a nice savagery attack that replaces basic attack. You can learn many powerful skills to take out multiple enemies. I recommend this job to be combined with the occultist to summon even more pets. It’s also a good job for multiplayer where one is the tank and the other a glass cannon. But without co-op, you can choose to combine shaman with soldier.

Inquisitor class (Malmouth DLC)

This is a mage class that uses guns and skills that provide runes. I was not able to figure out what the runes do. If you have I would like to know. I tried to combine this job with the demolitionist and go to town with guns but I failed. I still like the idea though.

Necromancer class (Malmouth DLC)

With the necromancer, you can summon the undead and let them kill the enemies or be a decoy. When they die or run out of time you can resummon them and repeat until the enemies are all defeated. Make sure you do not stand still so that the enemies target the undead instead of you. You can get other cool abilities like drain essence where you can drain their health points. Imagine a soldier and a necromancer with the draining life essence of enemies while being a tank….good times, that was a fun playthrough!

Oathkeeper class (Forgotten Gods DLC)

This is a paladin job, that in my opinion is a glorified soldier but with other skills. I do like this job, you can get the eye of reckoning skill and spin to glory! (without getting dizzy) Do you want to be Captain America? You can with the skill “aegis of menhir” and throw your shield! If this is the job you want I recommend to choose a reflecting build. This means that you will damage and kill enemies by being attacked fun times, if they didn’t already die from a shield to their head.

Devotion points

This is a mechanic where you can gain devotion points by cleansing shrines. By offering an item or killing enemies. You can spend the devotion points in a giant constellation, for each spent point you get bonus status and with most finished constellation you get an extra bonus. I highly recommend to follow a guide for this.

Factions

Factions can either be good or evil. Sometimes you’ll get to choose. Others are set to be always good or evil. For example, Devils Crossing will always be friendly. To let them like you more you will need to kill cronley members and help them with the quest. There are other species that will give a positive reputation towards Devils Crossing. The more they like them, the better the items are in the shops. When you upgrade factions to the maximum reputation you can unlock special items. For example, the experience potion in the Malmouth resistance will increase your experience point rate by 100%. This is a big pro to help a new character level up much faster. When you hit revered with the factions you can buy faction mandates to increase the reputation gain with a new character to get to the status of revered faster.

DLC and MISC Sound

The sound in the game is awesome and next to music in the background you will keep you hearing death screams and creepy texts from dying enemies. Mostly the bigger ones. The ambiance sound is good, so is the music. No complaints.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is very flawed in this game but possible. You can join each others game through steam but most of the time you will be unable to connect with each other. This is not a restart and try again. It can last for days! I found a solution for me and my wife to install a random mod and play a customized game. This is only an option if you have a LAN- connection. I did not try this with ethernet. Co-op is a lot of fun in this game. I highly recommend this. Of course this makes the bad guys stronger and there will be more enemies but more loot, yay!

Malmouth DLC

You really need to get this DLC if you want to continue the story! It feels like a good addition to the main storyline. Also more items, more classes, more items, more everything. I recommend you buy this from the get-go. If there are people interested I’m willing to write a separate review for the Malmouth DLC.

Forgotten Gods DLC

This DLC continues the story after the Malmouth DLC. You can go to a desert and join more factions and defeat new enemies. I recommend that you buy and play this DLC. If there are people interested I’m willing to write a separate review for the Forgotten Gods DLC.

Crucible DLC

This DLC is optional. It is a new modus where you defeat enemies wave after wave until you die or quit. You’ll get a lot of loot from these waves. It’s fun to do for a couple of times but not mandatory.

Summary of the Grim Dawn review

Pro’s

• Highly addictive – Big replay value
• Lots of hidden mechanics to explore
• Great story – You get to choose your own dual-class
• Lots of loot
• Fun to play in co-op mode
• You can reset your skill points and devotion points with a potion from malmouth DLC

Cons

• The journey to level 100 can be long*
• When you fail a build you need to start all over if you want to try a different class
• Story gets repetitive if you want to try all build
• The graphics are from an old engine
• In multiplayer there are lag spikes

* There are multiple options to make the grinding easier in Grim Dawn. In the factions section are a few examples but you will need to own the Malmouth DLC. The Lokar set for a level 1 character can be obtained in the ultimate difficulty for your new character. Lokar is a secret boss who can be very strong and needs to be killed multiple times to gain the complete Lokarr set. When the Ultimate difficulty is completed, you can buy an item called a merit stone for new characters. This will unlock all the rift gates and you will get all five inventory bags. I will still list this as a con because this was my experience after 750+ hours but this can be different for every player.

I give Grim Dawn ….. (drumroll!)

8,5

I hope you have fun playing Grim dawn!