Grim Dawn has been around for over a decade. It's one of the most beloved ARPGs out there, and somehow... I've never played it. I guess Path of Exile and Diablo just kept me occupied.

But with the launch of the Fangs of Asterkarn expansion, I finally bit the bullet and dove in. And after spending two weeks playing as a wizard-werewolf, getting showered in absurd amounts of loot and just kind of repeatedly murdered - I must admit, Grim Dawn has been one hell of a surprise!

Video version of this retrospective (~16 minutes)

A New Titan Quest?

The first thing that struck me, besides whatever this was, was just how much Grim Dawn reminded me of Titan Quest. Now in hindsight that makes perfect sense. It has many of the same developers, but it's only once I unlocked my second class within 30 minutes of playing that it really sunk in.

And instantly I remembered why I spent so many hours on Titan Quest as a kid. The amount of freedom and build variety you get from being able to mix and match classes is staggering. So naturally, I decided to stress-test the system by becoming a magical furry.

I chose Berserker and Occultist - two classes that, at first glance, sound like they would be complete polar opposites. One is all about ripping and tearing through enemies with your claws, while the other is about standing 30 meters away and swearing like a sailor - or casting curses as some might call it. So how in the world do you combine the two?

As it turns out, quite easily. I very quickly found a whole batch of skills that worked wonderfully together. My Werewolf side had a talent that converted all my Piercing damage into Chaos damage, while the Occultist had a bunch of ways to amplify that.

So I shifted my build into this weird melee-mage hybrid that could zip around the map at Mach 10 and chew through enemies like a proper Werewolf, while also cursing the absolute crap out of everything around me to the point where the enemies could barely move.

I wasn't a magic Werewolf, and I wasn't a melee Occultist. Instead I was a proper combination of both, and I have to say, that level of build variety - especially early in the game - genuinely impressed me.

Grim Dawn gets very deep, very quickly

Surprising Difficulty

Grim Dawn didn't take all that cursing lightly however, because the moment I stepped out of the tutorial zone, it proceeded to kick my teeth in.

Now I've been playing ARPGs since before I knew not to poo my pants, so I thought I knew what I was doing. I picked Veteran as my starter difficulty, which is one step above normal, and immediately embraced the traditional Werewolf strategy of charging headfirst at anything with a pulse... and most things without one.

And for a while that worked... until I wandered into my first elite area. It was just a bunch of cultists wearing dresses and covering themselves in blood. No match for a werewolf, right? And you would be correct, until I met their boss. Because that bastard hits soooooooo hard that one mistake, no matter how tiny, would instantly send me to the loading screen. I know that for a fact, because he killed me... a lot!

But I'm far too stubborn and stupid to admit defeat. So I went back to my lovely prison base and started poking around to see if there's anything I missed. At which point I discovered that the blacksmith could craft some insanely powerful buffs I could socket into my gear. And so suddenly I had crystals, bear pelts and all sorts of weird spikey bits stapled wherever they could fit.

Just seeing this room fills me with dread

A Problem Arises

Armed with my newly bedazzled Werewolf, I confidently marched back to the boss... and then I promptly got flattened again. Now to be fair, I survived a lot longer than usual, so I did achieve some progress. But this is also when I noticed one of my biggest pet peeves with Grim Dawn.

At first glance Grim Dawn looks like a classic ARPG that's all about making sure you have the bigger number than your opponent. But it actually borrows a bit of DNA from more modern ARPGs like Path of Exile 2. So not only do you need to worry about your resistances and armor, but also about boss attacks that you're supposed to dodge or get flattened by.

Which would be perfectly fine... if I could actually see them. Because when your entire screen is exploding with spell effects - or when the boss is just covered by a big ol' Werewolf - it's surprisingly difficult to tell whether the boss is scratching their bum... or winding up the face-smasher 5000.

Thankfully, not every boss is like this. Because outside of the occasional 'guess what killed you' minigame, Grim Dawn's difficulty feels fantastic. It's challenging enough that I constantly had to tweak my gear and build, but never so brutal that I felt like I was forced to copy someone else's ideas off the Internet. And for a game that thrives on experimentation, that's a really nice balance.

But does the occasional messy boss ruin the experience? Honestly? Not really.

Grim Dawn is surprisingly generous... even when it's turning your insides into outsides. Bosses stay damaged between attempts, and because you can drop portals almost anywhere, the whole cycle of dying, respawning and throwing yourself back into the meat grinder only takes a couple of seconds. Just don't play on Hardcore mode. I don't think losing a 30-hour character to a random one-shot would be good for your blood pressure.

Thankfully, most bosses are rather polite about their one-shots

Grim but Colorful

And speaking of blood, Grim Dawn's setting draws a lot of inspiration from Diablo 2. By which I mean, the world is a miserable nightmare. Everyone is either dead, dying, possessed or wishing they chose one of the previous options. Yet despite all this doom and gloom, it's a world with plenty of color and beauty. After all, what does a wheat field care if the scarecrows have suddenly become sentient and want to give you a big hug?

But what impressed me the most is that Grim Dawn simply refuses to be boring. Every location is unique, and you'll always find someone new and interesting to stab. One minute you'll be wandering through a desert filled with towering gryphon statues and bug-infested mummies. Then next you'll be exploring a forest that looks like it was hit by a meteor. Or maybe you'll find yourself surrounded by evil beavers - and man, I would pay good money to have been in the room when someone pitched that as a new enemy type.

You can never really tell what's coming next, and that's what kept pulling me forward. Also, every area is actually hand-crafted. The enemies and loot are random, but someone intentionally designed the entire world, which gives it this very lived-in feel instead of looking like a bunch of rooms haphazardly stitched together.

For example, you can wander into some completely random basement and find a corpse surrounded by a circle of salt. Since the entire bone-zone is outside, it's pretty obvious someone did whatever they could to protect themselves from evil spirits. But in a tragic little twist, in the end they just got mauled by panicked wildlife, which at least got to enjoy a bit of extra seasoning with their dinner.

Is any of this relevant to the story? Nope. You never even find out who this person was. It's just a cool little environmental story tucked away in some forgotten basement because a designer thought it would make the world more believable and interesting. And you know what? It absolutely does.

Grim Dawn just looks cool. There's no two ways about it.

Mountains of Loot

But let's be real here. None of us are diving into an ARPG for the environmental storytelling. We're all here for the 'phat' loot. So... is the loot 'phat'? Oh yeah! If you're like me and you love fiddling with stats, Grim Dawn has enough numbers to make you go practically feral.

The average item seems to have around ten lines of stats - and the most surprising thing is that none of them are actually filler. Sure, my chaos-infused Werewolf might not really care about Frostfire damage, but when the stars align and you find an item that is just perfect for your build... it's like winning the lottery and avoiding stepping on a lego at the last second - all rolled into one.

But even better, Grim Dawn absolutely showers you in loot. Every chest, elite and boss is practically filled to the brim with goodies. Which is fantastic... right until you have to sort through it all.

Trust me when I say, you don't know what analysis paralysis is until you've returned home with thirty pairs of pants and you now have to figure out which ones make your butt look good. And honestly, I don't think Grim Dawn could've done much more to help. There's an excellent loot filter, items you can't equip are crossed out, and yet... there's just so much of it. Mountains and mountains of pyrite... with the occasional nugget of gold.

But despite this, I don't actually want less loot, because that's just less fun. So I think every once in a while you'll just have to put on your Werewolf reading glasses, spend five minutes doing fantasy admin work, and then jump straight back into the thick of things to fill up your bags all over again.

In Grim Dawn loot showers are an omnipresent threat. Bring an umbrella!

Great Age, Great Perks

Thankfully, that sort of thing is an exception, because Grim Dawn has had over a decade to sand off its rough edges. For example, crafting materials and universal keys - also known as dynamite - can all be teleported away to your stash at the flick of a button. It sounds like a tiny thing, but when you see just how messy inventories can become, it turns into a real lifesaver.

And that kind of polish extends to just about everything else.

When you jump into a pack of enemies and start tearing them apart with your claws, it just feels right. Sure, the graphics were already looking a bit dated when Grim Dawn first launched, but that's the kind of thing I stopped noticing about fifteen minutes in. Because when you're a thousand kills deep into a Werewolf rampage, it's the details like the crunchy sound effects, the way enemies splatter across the land, and the constant shower of loot that really stick with you - and not the visual quality.

But my favorite thing about jumping into older games isn't just that they're polished, it's that they are absolutely packed with stuff to do. Grim Dawn now has three major expansions - plus whatever the hell the Crucible is - so if you're jumping in today like I did, there's weeks and weeks of content waiting for you before you even start thinking about moving onto the higher difficulties where the real endgame lies.

Grim Dawn's world is massive and full of fun places to explore

A Story Worth Telling?

And of course, when a game has this much content, sooner or later you're going to start wondering whether the story is actually worth paying attention to. And the answer is... kind of.

The main campaign is less focused around telling a grand tale, and more on being a guided tour from one cool location to another. And if that's all you really pay attention to, Grim Dawn might feel awfully generic as you're just kinda smashing evil cultists and their skeletons - though not actually their skeletons. Other people's. Eh, you get what I mean.

But where the game completely won me over is with the little lore books you find scattered across the world. They're all surprisingly well written, and they often give you a unique perspective on whatever area you're currently exploring. Some random burnt-down village might suddenly become a tragedy once you realize it was systematically sabotaged until the people were literally drowning in sewage, too sick and weak to defend themselves once the invaders finally arrived.

Or take my personal favorite, Ch'thon - one of the game's main baddies. On the surface he's a fairly generic angry blood god - kill everyone, drain their blood, yada, yada. But dig a little deeper, and it gets weeeeeird.

As it turns out, he doesn't want to end the world because he hates us. He wants to destroy the world because we're all made from his blood. And so every single time anyone on the entire planet stubs their toe, bangs their shin, or you know - gets murdered - he feels all of it. And after an eternity of essentially stepping on Legos without end, is it any real surprise that he has gone a bit... batshit insane?

And you know what the best part is? None of this is actually required. You can completely ignore the lore and just play as a Werewolf whose entire philosophy is "red health bar = bad" and you'll be perfectly fine.

But if you enjoy poking around, reading old journals and slowly piecing together clues, Grim Dawn has a surprising amount of cool stuff like this to offer. And as someone that loves exploration in all its forms, that really speaks to me.

Don't skip the lore journals. They're great!

Is Grim Dawn Worth Playing?

So then, would I recommend Grim Dawn? Do you even need an answer to that? Yeah, of course.

Grim Dawn is one of those games that isn't trying to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it just takes everything that makes an ARPG tick - build variety, satisfying combat, meaningful exploration and mountains upon mountains of loot - and just polishes them up until they shine so brightly they can blind you.

Is it a perfect game? Not at all. There's a couple of things that annoy me, like some of the boss designs, but when stacked up against over a decade of updates and expansions that sort of quibble just kinda fades away. If anything, my biggest issue is the fact that I kept avoiding the game for all these years - something that I'm really kicking myself for right now.

So yeah. If you're looking for an ARPG to disappear into for a month or two, I don't think you can go very wrong with Grim Dawn. It's the kind of game I can see myself coming back to every year or two just to see what kind of silly build I can get away with. In fact, I'm already planning on roping in a friend and getting back in there, and that should say something.