With the confirmed release of Diablo Immortal later this year, I figured it would be a good time to talk about Grim Dawn, a game that is closer to the classic actionRPG experience.
Before I get into the gameplay, I think it is a good idea to look at some data and make some comparisons so that I can explain why I think it is “a good ARPG game.”
Developed and published by a rather small independent developer named Crate Entertainment, Grim Dawn is an ARPG game that focuses on loot gathering and character building.
Grim Dawn is often described as a “spiritual successor” of Diablo 2 by many members of its community and critics, which says a lot about the game.
Diablo 3 is a sequel to Diablo 2 developed by Blizzard Entertainment, the company that is known for making highly praised games such as World of Warcraft and Starcraft.
The development of Diablo 3 took the company around 11 years to finish, and only one major and one minor expansion pack have been released ever since it’s initial launch.
The last expansion pack of Diablo 3 was released five years after the initial release, and it bearly had any content.
Crate Entertainment, on the other hand, announced the development of Grim Dawn in 2010 and later revealed that there were only two full-time employees in the company on their kickstart page.
Grim Dawn was eventually released in 2016.
Crate Entertainment has released two major and one minor expansion packs for the game in just three years.
While Diablo 3 is not necessarily a bad game, it is hard to think of a reason why a small company with 13 employees and mostly crowdfunded budget can spend almost half as much time to make a similar, if not better, game than a multi-million dollar company with a huge amount of resources.
There is definitely more information that needs to be looked at when it comes to comparing two similar things.
With that out of the way, let’s look at the gameplay.
Grim Dawn has its own unique style of world design and choice of music.
Like the title suggests, the visuals and soundtracks of the game are grim and often gives the player a sense of dread.
The world is falling apart and people are turning against each other, but there are still exotic locations to visit and cool gears to find.
While elements such as storytelling and character designs are important to a game, I think what makes this type of ARPG fun is the character and class customizations, and Grim Dawn is a very good example of this.
From a gunslinging necromancer to a greatswordwielding mage, Grim Dawn offers its players a huge variety of choices.
In Grim Dawn, the player gets to choose from one of the six bases plus three DLC classes once they reach to level two.
Each class has many different skills for a player to choose from, and the play style within a single class can even vary from the player’s choice.
In addition, the player will get to choose a second class specialization once they reach level 10, and the chosen class will be combined with the first class to become a completely new class.
This means that there are a total of 72 classes for the players to discover and experiment with.
On top of that, when the player get their first devotion point, they will meet the devotion menu, a passive skill system that allows the player to gain additional modifiers and abilities to further customize their character.
It is also worth mentioning that Grim Dawn features replayable content such as endless dungeons, harder difficulties and online co-op up to four players.
To conclude, Grim Dawn is an ARPG game with classic gameplay of the genre and a huge variety of customizations, and it is frequently being updated by the developers.
The game is currently available on PC and Xbox One.
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