I Finally Tried Grim Dawn

[00:00] What's going on, everybody? Mortem here. This time excited to bring you a video about Grim Dawn,

[00:12] which is to be fair, a pretty old game actually, it originally released 10 years ago in 2016, and is one of the, I would say, more well-loved ARPG titles. Now as interesting as this game is,

[00:24] I'm not just bringing you a video about it, to make a video about it, but rather I'm talking about this one because there is an upcoming expansion for it, releasing towards the end of July, the fangs of Asterkarn, which they have specified after 10 years is in fact the last one.

[00:39] Now I've actually been waiting for this expansion for quite some time, a few years in fact, because it's decently well-known that I enjoy ARPGs on this channel, and Diablo in particular, and a couple of others, and naturally in those conversations, Grim Dawn is bound to come up.

[00:56] And when I went to go check that game out, I was surprised to learn that many years after its release, there was an upcoming expansion being worked on, and yet that expansion got delayed many times, only to now finally release it, honestly, probably a terrible time given how busy I am,

[01:10] but I still want to give this game its due and check it out, and so I'm going to drop this video, talking about some of the basics, I'm going to cover the expansion when it drops, and then actually doing any sort of review for it is simply going to be a much longer term project because without this new

[01:25] expansion, most people spend like 200-300 hours trying to do everything there is to do in this game, and in that case, I need at least a few weeks to dedicate to it, which I am simply not going to have

[01:37] until at best, probably the end of the year, at worst, a little more like next summer. Now I'm going to assume at least a couple people watching this have never played Grim Dawn, and are merely interested in the upcoming expansion, perhaps, or just want to hear me talk about it,

[01:52] so I will run over the basics, talk about how I felt about those, talk a little bit about the upcoming expansion, and then we will wrap it up until July 23rd or so. Grim Dawn was an interesting game pretty much from its immediate announcement, and this is because it was actually worked on by both

[02:08] some X developers from Titan Quest and Diablo 2, and as you would probably expect it also does some fun stuff with its systems that I think are probably not a great surprise to you if you have played either of those games, but the world itself is called Cairn, and you are playing after a moment

[02:25] called the Grim Dawn. My understanding is that before all of the nastiness happened, people were researching into beings called ethereals, only to have dug too deep and too greedily, only to unleash

[02:39] these ethereals who went about possessing and murdering humanity in an event called the Grim Dawn. Our character is one such human that was possessed only to be left right after it happened, and you are saved from your imminent death by a local resistance leader, and your job basically is

[02:55] to win their trust and then of course fight back that larger project, if you will, and then I would assume the story carries on from there. Now the opening portion is pretty much what you've come to expect from ARPGs, go to a bunch of small jobs, clear out the proverbial dinner of evil, come back,

[03:11] get some gear, go a little further afield, etc. But Grim Dawn sees you combining two masteries to make your class. There are several of these masteries every time you level you get three points

[03:23] to put into them and then attribute as well, and then putting points into these will typically give you a bunch of passive bonuses to your stats and the like, but each of these masteries basically represents a playstyle, and then you can freely mix and match them as you please, once you hit level 10 anyway,

[03:38] and pick up the second one, which is where I would say a lot of the fun of this comes in. Now the game does have increasing difficulty modes as you would expect, easy, normal, and hard, or easy elites and nightmare. I actually turned the veteran mode on for normal, which has been fun so far,

[03:53] but that's just a little extra modifier for normal difficulty. And on the high end, your perma-death ultimate difficulty runs are kind of where the be-all-endall of the challenge is, and it'll be curious to see how the expansion winds up affecting that as well. But I mentioned

[04:08] difficulty, because my understanding is on those really high levels, you want to play builds that focus a lot on damage mitigation, and while I'm just getting started here, I'm already kind of curious what the sort of meta there is, I'm sure there is one. But I picked the stuff that felt fun to me,

[04:23] which in this case was Soldier and Shaman, which I'm sure will be fine for normal at the very least. But truth be told, I don't want to get too deep into this character before the expansion releases, and that is purely because the expansion is meant to be adding a new mastery,

[04:38] called the berserker, which is going to allow you to do some shape shifting, which is exactly what I want to do. I love shape shifters and games like this, and so that is something I want to mess around with, and one of the reasons I've been waiting on this expansion for quite some time. But those two

[04:53] masteries are not all there is to progression, there are also devotions. You can find these shrines laying around, and if you restore them, you get devotion points, and you put these into various constellations, which give you bonuses and affinities, and those affinities are what allow you to then

[05:09] move your way into the, I would say, later constellations in order to add a little extra to your build. And then if that wasn't enough, there's also itemization, which often includes item skills that will trigger based on what you're doing with that item. And putting all of those things together,

[05:24] you have a pretty robust system that is kind of mixed in match in terms of what class you actually want to play. And so far, just from the opening few hours, this seems really, really fun, and given the love I've seen people have for this game, I would assume that only gets better as you go. And from

[05:41] what I understand, if you make mistakes, there are like respects and stuff available as well, so it's not like you can't fix a mistake or anything. However, even beyond just those interesting progression systems, this game even back in 2016 was doing some fun stuff for ARPGs in the sense that it looks to me like

[05:58] the world is pretty open, that is to say you can pretty much walk from one place to another, as opposed to being like sectioned off chapters, that kind of thing. And so the zones you are in are a little more open than you might expect. And while it's not necessary, I believe you are able to rotate

[06:13] the camera on top of some dynamic weather systems as well. Combine that with some interesting itemization, and I think I can pretty much see why people have enjoyed this as much as they have over the years.

[06:25] But speaking of those items, it's my understanding that later on, there's like crafting systems, I know the expansion is going to add like an ascended item thing. But even here in the beginning, enemies will drop these little enhancement items that can be put on your armor and weapons and stuff to

[06:40] just give them extra effects, be that like damage types or extra armor, that kind of stuff. And that's been fun to mess around with, especially with the gear that is very like throw away in the beginning. You also get a lot of those items, so you're encouraged to actually mess around with them and use

[06:53] them. And I'd be curious to see how that changes more towards the late game when you are presumably using a little more set and stone type of gear. So there's that. And that's all well and good, and I've been enjoying running through it. But now I want to talk a little bit about the upcoming DLC.

[07:07] So the DLC, as I mentioned, is going to be adding, I believe they call them ascended items. I think the just here is that you take various crafting materials and then use them to enhance items.

[07:19] And then on top of that, it looks like they're going to give you potion customization as well. So this game has set potions for your health and your spirit or the resource you use to cast your abilities. And from what I understand with the expansion, you'll be able to customize those potions and have them

[07:33] do even more stuff. And that's on top of the new mastery and everything. And of course, the new zone. The zone is going to be taking you to Asterkarn or a big frozen tundra type place where you're going

[07:46] to be interacting with three different tribes against all new foes, of course. I also believe they're using this DLC to expand a little bit of the content available in the other DLCs as well like the

[07:58] Crucible, which is a challenge thing. And the DLC itself actually requires you to have the other two expansions in order to play it, which are ashes of Malmouth and the Forgotten Gods. And given that they

[08:10] are saying the expansion here is about 80% of the original base game. It's a sizable expansion to not only the territory you'll be able to play, but the ways in which you can play it. And it looks

[08:22] like at the very least the long wait was probably worth it in that respect. So as far as establishing a bit of a baseline for myself, I thought this was a fairly informative outing and figured I would share and talk about that a little bit with people. I would say most of my questions are things that would

[08:37] be answered naturally through just playing more of the game, which is simply going to take me a while as I already mentioned, such as how itemization is in the endgame, how forgiving some of the difficulties are in terms of the ways you can mix and match masteries, how that compares to the higher difficulties,

[08:53] whether or not things there become simply unviable, or if there's ways around that. How interesting is the story, etc. But having spent finally a few hours with this, I can pretty much immediately see

[09:05] why people like it. It seems like a pretty good time. I'm excited to check the DLC out. And then as I mentioned, in terms of a proper review, I do want to do that, but it is going to be a matter of time

[09:17] as giving this enough time to do that. It's going to be at least a few weeks of dedicated moments outside of playing it here and there. And that is at best looking like December with everything we've got going on in August, September and October. And as I've mentioned in a few places, I've got some

[09:32] stuff going on this fall. It's going to keep me busier than normal. And while December and January will likely be quiet, February next year is also looking extremely busy. And so if I don't finish it in December or January, it's looking like it'll probably be a summer of 2027 type situation for me.

[09:48] But sooner or later, come Heller Highwater. I will in fact dive deeper into this, but it is going to be a long-term project. And I just figured I would share some of this initial experience with you guys.

[10:00] And by the way, before I forget, as of the time of this video, Grim Dawn and all of its DLC are on a pretty steep discount as part of the Steam Summer Sale ahead of the launch of this upcoming expansion.

[10:12] So if you are like me and had not played it previously and are simply interested in checking it out, you can get the version that has all of the previous content releases for about $16 US at 72% off. So

[10:26] with that, I think we are pretty much going to wrap it up. Certainly hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, by all means, like comment, subscribe, all the YouTube jazz. Let me know if you think of Grim Dawn. If you're excited for this upcoming expansion or honestly just any general tips you want

[10:39] me to know about the game, I would not be averse too. So feel free to hit me with those as well. But regardless of any of that, truly, just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.