It'd be pretty interesting to hear from someone who had played Path of Exile or Torchlight, to get some comparisons. Both those games have major flaws, but are somewhat favoured by many codexers in the sea of current aRPG alternatives to Diablo 3. How Grim Dawn would hold up against those would be interesting to know.
There's really not much to say right now, as GD is still in Alpha and as Cursed Platypus already mentioned PoE and GD just feel different. PoE tried to jump out of the rut aRPGs have been in the last decade with the perk-system, the FF7-esque skillgem mechanic and the crafting system, but other than that it really feels very similar to D2 in many aspects. Trading yourself without any auction house or shit like that, the different currencies used to trade and their respective value when using them on your items and even the amount of monsters, with a few being unique and the rest of them being randomly generated, it all copies D2 and successfully so. I still enjoy PoE right now, mainly due to the changes that come pretty much every other week (really loving the anarchy exiles), and the possibility to play both efficient builds and builds that are just fun, even though your killspeed might suffer. I also enjoy that some Uniques got special Mods on them that makes them a requirement for specific builds, reminds me of the old bear-sorc back in D2. You really get the feeling that the devs care about their game, and don't just want to throw it out there for a couple of months, making a buttload of money just to create a sequel or some shitty ipad game to get even more cash. For a game that is still in Open Beta it really is fun, even after a while. And when it stops being fun, you come back a few months later, and have quite alot of new stuff to discover, or deliberately roll retarded mods on a hard map to make you sweat. Thats how I enjoy my aRPGs.
GD is of a different breed, mainly because it is still hard to anticipate where the game is going. I really enjoyed the atmosphere, music and while the setting is somewhat generic, GD actually manages to intrigue. The little hidden notes, while rare, add to the atmosphere aswell and I am hoping to see more of them in the future. The class system still isn't fleshed out, but I already managed to find a couple of viable builds for every class and I haven't even played around with dual-classing yet. Builds aren't as item dependant as they are in PoE too, which makes it easier to get into. The monsters later into the game also use abilities you yourself have access to which is a nice touch. Since you would get raped otherwise, the lower monster density mitigates the difficulty increase somewhat. All in all it feels pretty polished for an alpha, bugs are getting fixed quickly and I am really looking forward to the future development of this game. I still prefer PoE, and will do so for a while, but GD is on a good way - lets hope they keep it up. The deciding factor will be how multiplayer pans out and what endgame GD is going to offer. Development cycles will also be very important.
Regarding the level-scaling discussion: In your average RPG it sucks monkeyballs, but why the fuck would you complain about it in an aRPG? I'm glad that I am able to actually choose between areas when not progressing, what monsters I will encounter, and not having to keep farming the same region a hundred times just because it is easier to farm thanks to linearity or mob density. The limited level scaling, the way it is in GD, is how it should be when you decide to implement level scaling in the first place, and in a game that revolves around grinding loot and experience, you need to give the player different options to do it.
