Grim Dawn

[Mawd]

Yerp. I'm liking Perandus league and ascendancy a lot. 

[Vulpes Absurda]

I'm surprised to hear that so many people are so down on this. It might be my pick for best of the genre honestly. It just feels good. I love the skill system and how cohesive it is. Everything feeds into everything else so wonderfully. It's a game of finding the best way you can to pump up your plus whatever damage to such an absurd degree that you just melt everything by looking at it and I love it. I even like how it looks. It's got a nice mix of the grimness of Diablo 2 and the colors of Torchlight 2. Some of the effects could use a bit more polish but otherwise I really dig it. It evens runs pretty dang well for me at 4K.

[Wrestlevania]

Honestly? I've rerolled my character every time a major update has come out (so about 3-4 times since the initial alpha release, I think), and yet it's just so consistently bland. After about 3hrs of continuous play, every time I feel mentally numb and that I'm having trouble recalling anything of what I'm supposed to be doing, except trudging from one marker to the next, hitting/shooting things that get in the way.

 

The combat feels so stilted to me, particularly with a ranged character. Most of the time I'm shooting stuff offscreen, because you need that distance to either dodge incoming fire in time, or ensure melee enemies walk into enough damage to kill them before they get too close.

 

I'm just failing, every time, to find much fun here. Despite how much I really want to like it.

[elmuerte]

What I really miss is the sense of exploring a world. This was really good in Titan Quest, constantly pushing forward to discover new worlds. I recently completed act 1, and now I'm walking in the different direction of the world. Hopefully it changes and becomes more rich because the act 1 part was rather bland.

[Vulpes Absurda]

If you're looking for reasons to murder things with particle effects then yeah this is totally not the game you want. I agree there.

 

But for me I've never had the problems you seem to be having with the combat. Everything dies fast enough and I always have time to dodge anything coming at me DOOM style.

 

I don't doubt that you have those issues, it's just that listing to others talk about this game I feel like I'm playing a different game. Which is fine! Just weird.

[CEJ]

Oh man, I've played 25 hours of Grim Dawn the last two weeks, it's been really good. I am playing as an pyromancer (demolitionist + occultist). Playing as a Pyromancer gives you tons of options as far as  ranged attacks, curses, bombs, poisons. I can also summon a hellhound and some kind of magic raven. It's dope.

 

I've hardly played Path of Exile or Diablo 3, only a couple of hours of each them, so there's that. I don't know that I can add very much to that discussion. So far as I have been able to tell Grim Dawn feels like the most idiosyncratic of the bunch. Like you can stumble upon bosses that are +10 levels above yourself, there have been a lot of secret or secluded areas/caves/dungeons. Even with it's creatures it mixes Titan Quest-esque skellies/huge ogres with demons that's straight out of Diablo 2 and even throws in some cowboys on top of that and some lovecraft looking creatures.

 

The progression through the world has also had some elements of non-linearity so far, where you can repair different bridges and unlock new areas. I unlocked an area that was full of level 32 - 35 dudes when I something like lvl24 . There has also been a few choices in conversations, like you choose which character to side with in some argument and this then changes which character becomes a blacksmith in town later.

[complexmath]

Does this game really not support WASD for movement? That sounds like a deal-breaker for me.

[Vulpes Absurda]

Nope no WASD. It's a classic point and click Diablo clone. It does have rudimentary controller support though.