KickStarter Grim Dawn

Can't wait to play this, Underrail and The Age of Decadence in 2025.

 

They're taken so long they've missed the arpg craze by years now.

 

Don't forget Grimoire......

 

Jaesun You are Mr. 'Take your time,' so why are you brofisting that?

Next time maybe you'll agree with me when I tell a dev to hurry the fuck up and release their game! Although Grim Derp is certainly among the most egregious of offenders. Think it's been in development in some form for at least six years now. Approaching Overgrowth levels.

 

I actually have high hopes for Underrail being finished relatively soon. Keyword: "Hopes."

That said I enjoyed Grim Dawn as well but haven't played it for a while because I hit the "End of the Act Wall" and

 

One dude is making Underrail so that's more than understandable. Don't even think he had a KS, did he? GD has a decent stable of developers and they've been selling their game via their website years before their KS which netted them quite a bit of additional money. It's been a good two or so years since the Diablo 3/Torchlight 2/Path of Exile wave. And GD is now forced to sell their game on Steam at 60% discounts during sales when it hasn't even been released yet. These guys are going to run out of money... again.

 

You expected complex faction interaction on a Diablo II clone?

 

That hasn't been true since 2013.

I agree that the game is late, even the developers do and have said so on multiple occasions, but I wouldn't call Crate a very big team. They started out with two full time developers and now have eight. Most of the new people were hired after the Kickstarter, in late 2012. For the type of game they're doing it's a pretty small team.

Eh, you're really reaching here. Considering these two features were pretty important points in their Kickstarter campaign, I was expecting for the game to atleast have them in some shape or form.

 

^ Grim Dawn apologist.

 

If you want an open world with C&C and multiple factions in an ARPG Diablo-like then I shall direct you over here. http://store.steampowered.com/app/23600/

Not to say it's a particularly good game, but eh.

 

But I don't. I've never said so. What I said was that these features were promised in the pitch and I'd like to see them in the game. What I wanted from the game was a Titan Quest clone and that I've already received. But in it's current form, although the basic gameplay is still fun to me, the game is starting to feel somewhat bland due to the length and samneyness of the content, just like Titan Quest did. So I'd like to see the two features they promised in their pitch to be in the game to spice things up. The open world is probably less likely to happen, seeing as the world is already very restricted for the first two acts, but the developers have said that in Build 25 a big faction rework is coming, which might or might not be interesting.

 

I wouldn't get my hopes up over the faction update if I was you. http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19389
Grinding rep for 4% discount and faction specific pants.

 

Har har har. What I meant was that I don't want the game to solely revolve around those two features, like DoP does, nor do I see the need for them to be anything too complex. I'd just like something to spice up the current gameplay which has started to get stale. But I'm still waiting to see how the Homestead area turns out and what they come up with the two opposing factions and how joining one affects the gameplay. I doubt it's going to be anything spectacular, but could make the game a bit more interesting.

 

I hoped for a nice gothic victorian atmosphere and more depth of gameplay, essentially what they promised... I don't think I'll get what I want though.

 

Are you saying it's not like that?

 

Basically my feelings on the game...have something like 80 hours already and the fact they have expanded their initial vision and are delivering a game above and beyond their initial kickstarter pitch is just gravy. From what I understand the toolsets will also be much better this time around, so if the game gets the same amount of modder lover as Titan Quest I can see myself playing Grim Dawn for a long time.

 

Nope, seems like they made good on setting and atmosphere; I'm saying that I don't see the expanded depth they touted... Still seems to me it'll be a great atmospheric arpg and I will play it... once it's finished.

 

I straight up believed Grim Dawn would trump Titan Quest when it was announced on Kickstarter a while back. I liked Titan Quest + Immortal Throne a whole hell of a lot, especially for being the simple hack & slash ARPG that it is. The Greco-Roman setting, excellent visuals, and impressive physics made the game for me. Sure, it brought nothing "new" to the table, but I prefer it to Nox, Torchlight, Divine Divinity, Fate, and even Diablo II itself. Between Path of Exile and Diablo III, I still haven't found a game to replace Titan Quest. I'm hoping that Grim Dawn will be this game once released in its full state... *IF* that ever happens.

 

If you like the endless theorycrafting of a few dozen hybrid builds in Titan Quest, have at it. The gameplay itself, though, was atrocious and the setting was awful. Obviously Grim Dawn will remedy the boring Ancient Greece setting but without a demo I'm still unsure if they've improved combat. For $5 or so during a Steam sale I'll check it out... and they'll hit that point eventually when they're out of cash.

 

THQ ruined Titan Quest with that retarded idea that having no blood or any mention of greek gods and mythology on a game about greek mythology would somehow make the game "family" friendly and consumable by sensitive fundamentalist christians out there or something. Now that there are no retards in suits right now, there is no excuse for uther boredom and lack of imagination again. Please, no more absurd asset recycling and forcing you to kill the same reskinned monster over and over. From all Diablo II clones I played, Titan Quest was the only one that had the face of recycling even fucking end of acts boss monsters. Yep, the first three end of act boss monsters are just versions of the same monster. I want to fight fucking decent monsters too and not turtles, giant worms, generic insects, tigermen, wolfmen, goatmen, horsemen, demonmen, catmen, fishmen and other creative monsters of that kind.

 

I'm afraid I have some bad news.

On the plus side, it does reuse enemies marginally less than TQ and it's slightly less padded and "Oh Jesus give me the strength to get through the rest of this fucking act" than TQ. It still suffers in both of those areas in comparison to D3 and PoE, and kinda even Torchlight 2 though. Unfortunately it also has a bit less of TQ's highs. The lewtz aren't as plentiful or as enjoyable as TQ and I felt the class combinations and skill trees weren't as interesting as TQ either. Still seems like a pretty good clicker overall but considering it's up against D3 (Ultimate casual unfocus your eyes and slap the mouse and keyboard game) and PoE (Ultimate build wanking poopsocking item farming masterpiece) it kinda goes for the middle ground between the two which kinda just makes me want to lean one direction or the other.

 

That is really bad news, Titan Quest just took the asset recycling thing to another level to a point where the game became unenjoyable. The moment that broke me on Titan Quest was when I was exploring the Giza pyramids and discovered there wasn't an unique boss fight under there and the whole thing was a waste of time killing generic mobs I killed before. Man, Titan Quest was a Diablo II clone so lazily done... boy it made Diablo II look varied in comparison, and that is a fucking achievement as Diablo II was repetitive as fuck already.

 

The enemy recycling actually got a lot worse in the first part of act 3. It kind of made thematical sense for them to do it for the area, but felt like a really lazy solution. I'm hoping the area is still subject to heavy change.

 

Grim Dawn is - by far - the best ARPG of recent times. A few comparisons:

TQ/IT - The easiest comparison, as GD is a lineal descendant from the same developers (more or less). GD adds weightiness to combat (through graphical feedback, mainly) that was severely lacking in TQ/IT, while preserving its best features. It also has five character classes that are each far more fleshed out, when compared to TQ/IT's offerings.

Diablo 3 - D3 has an edge on GD in graphical fidelity, polish and item pool (size-wise). But GD trumps it by not asking you to sink three hundred hours into stimulating the reward centers of your brain. The RNG is friendlier, and item upgrades more consistent. The biggest and most important difference, however, is that they did not decide to make each class' secondary attributes irrelevant. In D3, any item without +Strength might as well be scrap to a Barbarian in all but a handful of cases. GD does away with this nonsense by narrowing the item pool with +Attribute, and making the +Attribute characteristic less impactful. Since Smart Loot 2.0 or whatever came out, the problem has only gotten worse in D3. GD encourages a variety of play styles by making itemization more about supporting a build-theme. For example, a Nightblade could concentrate on +Pierce, +Damage and +AttackSpeed, for dual wield combat. Or +ColdDamage for Night Chill. Or +ChaosDamage, +AttackSpeed for a Witchblade (Nightblade/Occultist) that relies on Solael's Witchfire. Right now, a D3 Wizard is either a Firebird-set DoT machine, or a bit behind the curve. GD goes for a more balanced approach, where there is greater synergy between class selections, skill point allocations, attribute point allocations and itemization.

Van Helsing - I like VH quite a bit; it has character. In fact, probably more character than GD/D3/TQ/IT. But it also massively lacks the weightiness of GD combat, and the itemization is a bit amateurish, missing some basic genre staples. Upside-wise, the character system does have a lot of scope for different builds that are viable for the end game (Scenarios). This game, too, treats your time with respect, and you'll probably build up a small pool of Godlike (highest tier) items within twenty hours. The downside here is that the Godlike items are so far superior to everything else that you'd never want to use anything that wasn't Godlike. Regardless of your build. Particularly because VH takes its attribute system cue from D3...

Torchlight/Torchlight 2 - Very enjoyable series, with interesting mechanics, but in the feel and pace of the combat GD is a far superior product. That said, Torchlight 2 is easily my number #2 behind GD over the last five years.

Loot is very much as consistent as it was in TQ, and probably more so. I believe that the dev confirmed the drop rates are higher (marginally). Also, each class skill set is larger than the ones in TQ/IT, offering more build options. Sure, there are fewer classes than TQ, but just as many interesting (and viable) builds.

It's much, much improved. By a long way. TQ feels like an antiquated piece of crap, after playing GD.

 

Path of Exile is better IMHO except combat "feel" maybe.
And it's free!