Grim Dawn - Fangs of Asterkarn

I love Grim Dawn, one of the best games I have ever played! I did not like this latest expansion and I believe it has taken the game in the wrong direction. Pros: I really enjoy the new class, more inventory and a bunch of QOL fixes that were necessary. Cons: The difficulty spike was not needed. The reason this game was one of the best out there was the difficulty was just right before the expansion. You could take a home brewed build and get to 100 in hardcore and enjoy it on any class. You could kill almost all the bosses in the game as well. Now it seems like every other ARPG out there on the market, have to follow a perfect build to even complete most of the game. Everybody wants to be a "Souls-Like" with the whole dash evade crap that some people really don't care about. Grim Dawn was a chill game that you didn't have to know every mechanic to stay alive, gave you a bit of room for mistakes.... now, with this DLC, you have to memorize every move with 20 different flashing lights going on at the same time. This is Not POE 2 and it never will be. In saying all this I play Hardcore only.. and have played since Alpha as I kickstarted this game. I will not be playing this until it reverts back or majorly toned down.

I can't believe that I'm leaving a negative review for this, after waiting 3 years for this to come out and having loved every other DLC they released (aside from the removal of being able to use multiple onement's and elixirs, which this DLC fixes with potion crafting, which you can't access until level 50 or so, just another factor I'm not a fan of) as I play exclusively hardcore I find the addition of one shot mechanics galling and a huge let down. If I wanted those kinds of mechanics I'd play POE. That and the changes to veteran ( I think I have a large enough collection and hours to play veteran, which I've enjoyed the challenge of previously) has changed the game from the realm of possible to only top tier builds, which means you must use Grimtools to play, which I don't love, some of us don't use it (I'm not throwing any shade on people who use it, play how you like.) Which is the point really, they are removing the custom build option from the game and forcing players down this meta build preplanned world of game play, not allowing us to play how we like. And finally forcing us into the twitch play with the dodge (spacebar) mechanic is antithetical to the build design of this game for the past decade. Until this is actually balanced, I just can't recommend this DLC.

This review is for FoA only. If you are playing without it, I would 100% recommend it. I would just avoid any forums, discord, or reddit. I'll be brief, but know that I could write an extensive book about why I am posting this negative review. There appears to be no other way to get the opinion across of how the game is being developed for the wrong crowd. At least here it can't be removed, altered, or quoted out of context. The short of it is, if you are going to call people's opinion(s) rhetoric or naive when they site or can site information that contraries your statements, then the best thing I could recommend is some customer service classes. The personal attacks against Crate are never right. But those reviews that are negative and go after the faults of the game are 100% legit in the writer's eyes, are shared among people, and shouldn't be dismissed easily. There are a lot of contradictions I have read from the developers posts. All those things have lead me here. In its current form, as I write this, I wouldn't recommend the DLC or going to the official forums if you are ever at odds with how things are going. At bare minimum you will be ignored and at worse you, well I bet you already know how the net can be.

The DLC exacerbates the original game's main issue: once you hit level 100 and finalize your build, you are left with nothing to do. The new expansion introduces a brand-new difficulty tier that, in essence, fails to deliver: there is absolutely no progression—no new levels, no additional constellation points, and no new items (anything "new" consists merely of gear alternatives that don't actually improve existing builds). You are left simply running around killing mobs and bosses without any tangible payoff. Unless, perhaps, you manage to farm materials for gear upgrades... but that happens once in a blue moon, given the minuscule drop rates and the reliance on terrible RNG.

The expansion that took the "Grim" out of Grim Dawn. Now introducing; Three new enemy types: -A beaver (but angry) -A bird (but big) -That one trash mob from base game act 2 (briathorn), but now in: color blue! A dozen new areas, that all look the same (snow), with nothing to do! A new Celestial Superboss! (it's same boss copypasted from the base game, but different, i guess) And honestly the worst part for me: half of the lore notes you can find in Fangs of Asterkarn (that used to expand the lore and details of the rich universe that is Grim Dawn) are just some dumb drunkard poems plagued with "millenial writing". Nothing grimdark there. It is with heavy heart that i cannot recommend this expansion i waited for so long. Grim Dawn has been my favorite game and place to escape stress for years, and one of the few games i actually bothered to grind 100% achievements (prior to release of this expansion). I don't know who the developers tried to please with this release but i feel like they stripped away everything that made this game unique and stand apart from the competition. I don't want to run through this hollow expansion every time i level up a new character just to get my 2 attribute and skill points.

Fangs of Asterkarn feels like a misguided attempt to copy POE2’s combat. The game gives you tank options, but they don’t actually tank anything — you just get deleted in one hit. It makes the progression and build choices meaningless. The devs really need to rethink this direction because right now it doesn’t make sense and it kills the fun.

Grim Dawn is an amazing game. I played it as my "baby's first ARPG" some time ago and immediately got sucked in. I had always planned on coming back to this game after putting in well over a hundred hours in. When I heard a new DLC was coming, and that it would fix one of my biggest complaints, that being the lack of rerolling and mechanisms for getting the right loot, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, while there are many amazing aspects to this DLC, there are simply too many downsides to recommend to someone right now. First, I'll start with the positive stuff: - The reroll mechanic is exactly what I wanted. It strikes a very good balance between cost to use the system and the rewards it provides. I am now easily able to make gear with rare prefixes and suffixes, and while it may not always be the best ones for my build, it is already a huge step up from before. - Similarly, the ascension altar, in concept, shortens the time needed to get specific gear needed for a build. Unfortunately there is some major issues with it that I will get into later. - The new ascendant difficulty is a big step towards allowing players to move away from the shattered realm, the only end-game activity worth running before this DLC. Once again though, there are some issues with it that I have. Now the cons: - The difficulty. Oh god, the difficulty. Many have already hammered home the point so I will keep it short. Many players, myself included, were not looking to suddenly be one-shot by literally everything including the dust you kick up by walking around. I died much more on a second run through the campaign than my first despite coming in with much more knowledge about defenses. I understand that there have been many patches to fix this for early-game since I've done it, but I'm still not a fan of the overall difficulty increase outside of the new ascendant mode. I would rather have all the new defense potion mods removed if it meant going back to the previous difficulty. - The new ascension altar is so ridiculously expensive, that there is no world where it is worth using. You're asking me to farm for hours upon hours to do a few totem runs thanks to the altar bonuses resetting upon game reset. If the idea with this was to make me play in the overworld rather than just doing SR runs, then the system is a complete failure. Why spend all these valuable resources when SR is still the best way to get loot. The difficulty scaling it inflicts is already a huge cost of using the system. IMO the resources cost needs to be removed completely. It is so excessive and unnecessary. - All the new mechanics for the ascendant difficulty are shallow. When I do tempest totems I fight the same tempest bosses every time. Void-marked chests result in me fighting the same exact configuration of enemies every time. Resplendent troves are cool, I guess, but hardly exciting. Where is the variety? I think the encounters and changes in this mode need a lot of work, ESPECIALLY if it going to cost me my firstborn child to run the ascension altar with it. The good news is that almost all of the problems with this DLC can be fixed. I look forward to future patches that hopefully address these issues.

I really loved the base game and the first two expansions. However, I don't care for the third expansion, "Fangs of Asterkarn" for too much. While the graphics of the new areas are nice, It simply offers too little given the long development time; it feels too generic and seems like it was only "finished" at the very end under extreme time pressure. On top of that, the difficulty has been unnecessarily ramped up, even at lower settings, making the early game feel like a real slog at times. Unless you build overpowered characters specifically for the endgame, you won't have much fun, as every boss will one-shot you at the higher difficulties. While those one-shot-attacks are telegraphed and you have a dodge like ability, those cues easily get lost amidst the chaotic storm of skill effects. The devs turned the game into something it wasn't in the past. Now it feels more and more like a cheap Soulslike/PoE clone.