One man’s opinion:
Grim Dawn vs Diablo 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmhLY_W43Fg
Grim Dawn vs Path of Exile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf_NuWJkVOo
The thing I like about Grim Dawn’s combat is that there are so many % chance procs on items and skills that every battle becomes a powerful feeling pyrotechnics show with relatively few button presses. Every skill can have a bonus skill attached to it, your items can each have a trigger skill on them, etc.
The biggest weakness of the game is that a number of its mechanics want more replaying of the same content than it really supports, since the areas and most of the monster spawns don’t change at all. I’m 2/3rds through NG+ and still haven’t unlocked “Nemesis spawns”. I craft almost nothing both because of low drop rate of recipes and because the key ingredients for many seem to require repeated boss runs.
It does have a little hardcore checkbox when you first create a character.
As for the allure, for me it’s completely the over-the-top physics and abilities and effects. They are just sooooo satisfying. In that regard alone, I would rate this higher than Diablo 3, which in turn is much higher than Path of Exile. There’s not too many super-satisfying visual take-downs in Path of Exile. Diablo 3 has a LOT of amazing looking abilities with a ton of ooomph around each of those abilities. And then there’s abilties in Grim Dawn that literally shake the ground and send enemies flying and have other enemies dissolve from the inside out. I just find it brutally satisfying to play. Even more than Diablo 3, which I didn’t think was possible, since Blizzard really did an amazing job with that in Diablo 3. Grim Dawn just has an extra oomph factor somehow in some of their abilities that just look so darned cool.
I think it’s also coupled with the fact that the game is not easy. Diablo 3 can become too easy too quickly if you don’t keep adjusting the difficulty level yourself. But Grim Dawn can have its super satisfying death and destruction being wrought by the player character while at the same time almost kicking the player’s ass. That’s a really hard balance to achieve, but Grim Dawn manages it somehow. It’s really challenging while at the same time making the player character feel mucho powerful and empowered.
The day before yesterday, I started a necromancer character. I see that creating a character still doesn’t make the character show up right away. I can’t believe that bug is still there this many months after launch. Oh well, I quit for the night. Yesterday, I logged in and there was my new necro! Yay! I played her to Whitmire, level 9. I have to admit, the Necro is the most powerful low-level character in the game by far. It’s going to be tough to beat characters like my Sorceress or my Warder at kicking ass at high levels, but at low levels, the Necro is amazing. Having a big posse of skeletons tagging along that kick ass alongside you almost feels like cheating in the early game, especially considering that all player characters are otherwise essentially the same at low levels.
I agree pretty much with much of what you say, Rock8man. I will say GD doesn’t do UI as well as D3, IMO, and it’s really hard, for instance, with a Necro to see which things are your summons and which are the mobs. The inventory is also–a product I’m sure of the sheer quantity of stuff and number of categories of stuff–quite busy. But it does have a lot of oomph, for sure.
Yeah, I agree. The UI in Diablo 3 is way better. Especially the console version. As is the inventory system, since they did away with the tetris inventory system and went with grouping your inventory by type of item. So all Pants are grouped together in their own bucket, all gloves in their own bucket, all swords in their own bucket, etc. It’s just a much better system. Plus you can flag anything you pick up as trash so when you get to the vendor, you just press the sell trash button, and bam, it’s all gone. In Grim Dawn, at least their auto-sort button is magically excellent, so that makes up for a lot.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, but I am not having this issue. Have created 2 new characters since the DLC launch, and both were available right away.
I definitely get that issue. Till now I’ve always assumed that the character didn’t ‘take’ the first time, so then I recreate it. Sometimes I get an error message that that character already exists. Sometimes I wonder if there is a character limit and if I’m bouncing up against it.
I stumble through.
I stumble through.
It’s funny because, as someone who played D3 quite a bit at release, beat it on a couple difficulty levels, rolled a few characters, etc., I find it absolutely opaque now. I log in and I have no idea where my dudes are, what’s going on, what they’re supposed to be doing. How, or if at all, any of it relates to the original campaign. The D3 afterlife remains a total mystery to me. I don’t even know what a ‘season’ is.
Grim Dawn is easy for me to slide into, but that’s largely because I haven’t stopped playing it since I got it. At this point I know all the pre-expansion maps pretty much like the back of my hand.
I think they have a handshake thing going on with their servers first, for some reason. Maybe? It shouldn’t since this isn’t an online game, I don’t think.
Anyway, it was an issue for me upthread when I got the game, and it was an issue again now. Somewhere in the middle, when I was creating characters, it wasn’t an issue.
Heheh, this was the post after that one last time:
History repeats itself! :)
I think this may possibly be related to the cloud setting in the main option menu. I think the default is ‘on’. I have that turned off and character creation is instant for me because the files are being stored on my local machine, not the web. It may be that the back and forth to the cloud server is slow for you. Maybe try turning that off and see if it improves.
It is another take on the genre. Different games suit different people. Why do I like Titan Quest?
Titan Quest was introduced to me as the “thinking man’s” Diablo 2. Both Titan Quest and Grim Dawn are difficult enough games that require a player to think a little bit about their builds and working on ways to refine their builds to progress. The number of skill options opens a range of possibilities. Add in the devotions on top and suddenly characters feel unique. Compare that to Diablo 3 where I had uninspired character builds suiting the meta of the current patch, or Diablo 2 where it was completely possible to develop an unviable character that dies the moment she entered nightmare difficulty. Yes, I’m speaking to you my long lost Javelin throwing Amazon… Titan Quest says skills are important, and let’s ensure there are meaningful choices to be made, but those choices offer value adding game play and monster demolition success. The other annoying thing about Diablo 3 is that I would wade into a monster pack, smash them fast and move on. Grim Dawn doesn’t want me blowing my skills all at once, there is a time and place to use them. When my demolition character uses his canister bomb, I want the enemies packed together to make full use of the fragment explosions and the underlying aether fire that procs thanks to my Imp devotion courtesy of the stun effect from the concussive bomb skill I upgraded. Bit of a long sentence there, but shows the thinking behind part of my build.
Ok, admittedly TQ did need a fanpatch to ensure pets did scale across difficulties, but that has since been resolved in Grim Dawn I believe.
The other thing about Grim Dawn is that it feels different. The setting is perfect. It isn’t some high fantasy world, there’s a dirty Victorian theme going on and I love it. The weather cycles, the landscape ranges from dark and gritty to oft-times chaotic pastoral land. I am hopeful as I move through the game some inspiration from Act V of Titan Quest comes back. And the music with boss battles also does a lot to fire me up.
I finished act 4 on Normal with my Necromancer yesterday and am about to start the expansion content (I’m level 51 currently). I’m really, really enjoying playing my Necro but a dark pall is hanging over me as I play because of all the buzz out there that Crate will soon nerf skellies into oblivion. That means my build will probably no longer be viable and at that point I’ll have to either try to find another Necro build that will work on the higher difficulties or abandon the class entirely and start an Inquisitor instead.
Crate does this a lot so it’s not really unexpected. I’m just hoping I can get to as high a level as I can before they pull the rug out. It’s too bad because I really do enjoy playing the Necromancer with a skelly specialization.
I reached level 13 last night with my Spellbinder (necro + Arcanist). I hope they don’t nurf the skeletons before January or February. I think if I play a little every night, I should be able to finish the game on Veteran Normal by that time.
I’m playing a Cabalist (necro+occult) as a pure pet class. Skeletons, giant putrid thing I forget the name of now, raven, hellhound. Gameplay is basically going around waiting for them to slaughter everything and occasionally summoning them again where needed. Very zen. I like it. ;)
How well does that work on bosses?
So far, as a Necro, I have to take care of the bosses myself, while the skeletons and putrid thing is good at taking care of the little stuff.
Too early to tell. Just killed Warden, and all the bosses up to that point (Warden included) were not a problem at all. I had to quaff a couple potions at the Warden fight, though.
My skellies are much more fragile than,say, D3 summons. Also, having to summon twice (or maybe more?) to get the full complement of summons is annoying, with the cool down. Makes more sense to me to let you cast it once and have all five or whatever show up at once. But, they are kinda cool, with crossbows and stuff.
Thats to stop you from spamming them in combat.
Skellies are what keeps my Apostate alive. Sure hope they don’t nerf them. Inquisitor sigil is pretty awesome too. It’s not really a synergistic combo but I doubt I will ever get deep into ultimate level. This combo definitely seems to handle the damage spikes better than my old mad sorcerer though.
Finished the main game on normal veteran. At 50 I did Steps of Torment with some skeleton keys I had the materials accumulated for. Guess I will start the expansion.