Grim Dawn is the only Action RPG I've enjoyed since Diablo 2

Sometimes I waste time on other games that I don't intend to cover, but I've just been sinking so much time into Grim Dawn on and off for the past year or so that I just couldn't help but just... talk about it!

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Enter an apocalyptic fantasy world where humanity is on the brink of extinction, iron is valued above gold and trust is hard earned. This ARPG features complex character development, hundreds of unique items, crafting and quests with choice & consequence.

Key Features
- Dual Class - Combine any of six distinct classes with over 25 skills and modifiers per class. Base classes include Soldier, Demolitionist, Occultist, Nightblade, Arcanist and Shaman.
- Hundreds of Item Skills - Augment your class build with a diverse array of over 250 unique skills granted by items and equipment add-ons.
- Collect hundreds of Items - Common, magical, rare, epic and legendary classes of loot. Plus over 20,000 possible magical affix combinations and over 200 rare affixes.
- Quests with Choice and Consequence - You will face tough decisions that leave significant impacts upon the world. Strangers on the road, desperate families and even entire villages may live or perish based on your actions. Currently over 35 quests with 75+ lore notes to be collected.
- Friendly and Enemy Factions - Earn favor with human factions to unlock additional quest lines, vendor discounts and special faction-based items and augments. Some neutral factions can be turned into allies but aiding one will make the enemy of another. Hostile factions will remember your deeds and deepen their hatred of you, sending out large packs and elite heroes to hunt you down.
- Devotion, an additional layer of skill customization allows you to acquire bonuses and powerful secondary effects for your class skills. These are unlocked from a giant constellation map with points acquired by finding and restoring destroyed or corrupted shrines hidden throughout the world.
- Rebuild the World - Help human enclaves survive and flourish by securing vital necessities, rebuilding structures and rescuing survivors who can then lend their services to your cause.
- 4 Person Multiplayer - Connect with Friends or make new allies in glorious multiplayer. Multiplayer encounters will put your teamwork to the ultimate challenge.
- Fast-paced Visceral Combat - Enemy blood spatters, ragdoll physics and satisfying enemy death effects. Smash in doors and fight house to house, leaving a path of demolished furniture in your wake.
- Rotatable Camera - If you choose to survey the full beauty of the world and always fight from the most optimal angle. Levels are still designed so that players are not forced to rotate the camera; it is purely optional.
- Secrets and Perils Abound - 200+ Enemy heroes and bosses, hand-configured with their own unique arrays of deadly skills. 20+ secret areas hidden behind crumbling walls, hidden gaps and mysterious locked doors. Explode obstacles or repair structures to open new paths.
- Rogue-Like Dungeons - Descend into special locked challenge dungeons that require a rare crafted key, where enemy levels increase as you progress and player teleport is disabled. There is no way out except to complete the dungeon or die trying.
- Dynamic Weather - The world is brought to life with region-specific climates and a variety of weather effects. A sunny day can cloud over with mild rain showers that builds into a booming thunderstorm. Variable wind gusts blow grass and affect objects like windmills.
- Recipe Based Crafting - Collect over 250 crafting recipes that allow you to combine salvaged components into unique crafted items and then, later, use those basic crafted items with higher-tiered recipes to complete items of amazing power.
- Reclaim Skill Points - The ability to pay to reclaim points alleviates the fear and frustration of having to make early, uninformed skill choices that could permanently gimp a character.

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[GitraSilvermane]

As someone who has played many many ARPG games, Grim Dawn is among the top. As you said, the class system allows so many different builds. Plus grinding rep gives some awesome items making the grind really worth it. Even the lore is really good and could rival Diablo.

[laszloneumann]

Grim Dawn is the perfect middle between Diablo and PoE.
Not too simple to make you think the devs take you for an ape but not too complex and intimidating so that you think "im too dumb for this"

[iteststuff]

Hi there. I'm one of the playtesters of the game. 8k+ hours sank into grim dawn. It is truly my favorite.

I can tell you that I, the player base, the other testers, and the devs put a lot of effort into making sure all class combos can work well in end game. There are no bad constellations, there are no bad skills, there are no bad classes in grim dawn.

Obviously some combos are better than others, but I can safely say that there is itemization to support every single class combo in the end game. Perhaps only saboteurs are still a bit wonky due to the extreme lack of skill synergy.

Seriously, I've seen every single constellation in a strong end game build.

I've built around every single legendary tier item. They're all good if you know how best to take advantage of them.

One of the nice things in diablo 2 is by the end of the game you feel extremely over powered. You earned it after grinding and farming the right stuff.

Same in GD but the end game systems ensure everyone can hit a challenge wall eventually. Crucible has a different meta than shattered realm. So this is the only arpg I know with 3 end game metas. Crucible vs farming SR vs pushing SR. And the secrets in Grim Dawn are so many. Secret areas, secret quests, silly secrets, lore tied secrets. There is so much hidden within GD. There is one secret that is so difficult only 3 players have been verified to get it, including myself.

I love this game and I love you for giving it a chance.

(Can provide proof of being a playtester upon request)

[howardgreenwich]

I stumbled on GD last Fall. It's been my go to pandemic game, and I've logged 1000 hours. As a dad and full time worker, I would not have guessed I was about to put that much time into a game. It's a gem that keeps offering me different challenges and goals - end game stuff is incredibly difficult. But not impossible. And the GD community has veteran players who also have stuck with it for years and are super helpful to other players on the forum. It's not for everyone, but for some it is near perfect.

[HydraDominus]

Me and my buddies just got into this game about a week ago and we can't stop playing it. It's been a while since we all got online at the same time and played a game together in years. The exploration in this game is my absolute favorite in every arpg I've ever played

[StarkeRealm]

I really dig Grim Dawn's setting. I get it's not to everyone's taste, or really most people, but you *never* see full on fantasy settings based around other historical periods. Everything tends to wander back to that same medieval (with elements of early modern weapons and armor) setting. Grim Dawn runs with a 19th century pastiche, and I love it for that. Also, yeah, the game is really fun as well.

[beerasaurus]

Grim dawn is a real jem. I've got 400 hours logged. I love my characters. My cabalist minion master, my auto attack demo, my spin to win shammy.

[thebromiester]

Same here there's so many builds to try that after 2k hours I'm still thinking of more

[rbd]

If you want to play Grimdawn AND Diablo 2 at the same time, try looking at Reign of Terror - Grimdawn mod

[XDarkStrikerX]

Grim Dawn is amazing, really the best nowadays IMO. It has something that other modern RPGs lack and fail to understand for the most part: A balance in complexity, grind/rewards, exploration/kill speed and difficulty with an unparalled quality of life and builds that actually feel different in gameplay. Auto-Sort, auto-pickups, loot filters, respec, mod support... You can also eventually complete all content casually if you keep at it even if you didn't play for a few months as you'll keep your progress at all time and your build will stay viable. It actually respect your time.

Great review, you nailed it. Exploration is super fun. While it's challenging especially later on, there are no other ARPG that make me feel that relaxed clearing maps.

[petrinafilip]

One of my favourites part of GD is Monster Infrequents (Items that always drop from specific monsters), which allows targeted farming. And even better, item modifiers. You can take a fire based skill and put on an item that gives it an extra effect and makes it do acid damage. Boom, couple of new possibilities. And there are items that do this for almost every left/right click skill in the game. And these are also farmable by killing specific mobs. Also, there is a bit of "procedural generation" in a way. Since game randomly puts rocks on narrow paths, and every character gets a different "loadout", you often have to find different paths toward your objectives.

[whisker]

GD is like a "Home-Game" to me
I could binge play for 2 months, take a break for 6 months and when i go back, there might be some slight changes but my build is still relevant.
They really respect the players, both casual and hardcore.
Although my ass is still getting kicked on HC, RIP my level 89 char. You will be missed Le Destroyz.

[MimiMimi-yjkl]

I like the camera that can rotate and view the fights in every angle

[miroslavgruev]

This game is so so good, i feel sad for all the people who have never played it. I also feel jealous as they can experience it now and fall in love with it! Thanks for your video, im sure someone will be telling the same story about your video and how it all started here for him! <3

[Apudurangdinya]

this is how good the game, he didn't even bother to research when the game is came out because everything is still hold up to today's game quality, and yes, i still play it to this day, not everyday but time to time when i want to try new build, maxed it to 100

[viperclaw]

I'm moving towards 3500 hours in Grim Dawn and i'm still having a blast.

-The sheer amount of build-possibilities (You can make even the craziest of ideas work, if you grasp the mechanics)
-The possible "holy trinity" and synergies you can have in co-op (Tank pulling aggro, Supporter buffing, debuffing and healing and Damage Dealer glasscannons bringing the pain, or even hybrids inbetween)
-The hunt for skins for the Fashion Dawn/Transmog (implemented since the Ashes of Malmouth expac)
-All the secrets to find
-The grim dark, lovecraftian lore to explore
-The loot hunt (All items can have even more passive proc, or active skills on them. There are items converting damage types of specific skills into another damage type, to make two masteries work together, which are otherwise lacking a common damage type, to make even the craziest of builds work all of a sudden. Tons of blueprints to find etc.)
-The crafting (You find blueprints, you can even completely craft end game sets since the Forgotten Gods expansion)
-The quality of life options like a very detailed lootfilter, transmutation of set items (into another item of the same set, or into a random set item of the same value), or the easy and cheap respec (you can reset everything but your choosen masteries/classes.. Bosses can drop potions to reset attribute points or all devotion points at once)
-The tools/mods (Infinite stash via the "Grim Dawn Item Assistant", so you dont need hundrets of mules f.e.)

Definately a game i come back to time and time again.

And i agree with the title of this video.
I would even go so far, to call Grim Dawn the true, spiritual successor to Diablo 2 and an enhanced Titan Quest ontop of that.

Really wholesome and good video. I really felt your passion to the game coming through. I'm always happy to see people to enjoy this gem of a game as much as i do. :)

[RivnatZille]

Grim Dawn is my favorite ARPG, and one of my favorite games of all times. I've started playing it back when it was on Early Access, and I loved every second of it! I just love this game! No other ARPG gives me the same amount of customization and fun!

[domenicomarzovilla]

ive clocked 1500 hours in this game and it is truly wonderful, one of my all time favorites. you really don't get video games like this any more, the base game and expansions really take me back to the early aughts when you had things like LoD and Frozen Throne enhancing games. glad it is finally getting some recognition after years of improvements and iteration by the devs

[avidjp]

I've played every single relevant ARPG thats come out in the past 10 years and Grim Dawn is easily top 3 for me. Thousand of hours in PoE and Diablo 2. It has loads of depth but not way too much (PoE lol). Appreciate the video man!

[MrTirien]

Hell yeah. Me and a friend recently started, i have over 200h so far, this game is so freaking awesome.

Everything works really well, and the secret and hidden locations, the classes, items, mobs, bosses, heroes, so forth.

Give it a go