i want to say i had a good time playing grim dawn, but there's just too many frustrating things about it that prevent me from continuing to play the game. it does a lot of things right, but it does more wrong.
pros:
the leveling is fantastic. it gives you 3 points each level until 50s, 2 points until 80s, and then 1 point each level after but it feels very satisfying to be given multiple points per level. the exp was also very nice and consistent, whereas some other arpgs like to soft lock leveling by making the exp needed to be astronomical per level. the devotion system was also fun and engaging, having to turn some on and off to reach higher tiers, kind of like a puzzle.
items are also robust and do enough different things to matter. there's things like monster specific drops, double rares, your usual arpg rarity, set pieces that don't suck at all (probably the best itemization for set gear of any arpg), and a very useful crafting bench. there's tons of elemental conversions, changing skills to different elements, etc that are really cool for theory crafting.
cons:
it's old. absolutely archaic in design. combat feels wow-like, you're often face tanking regardless of what class you are for large swaths of time. you beat the game? congrats, do it again at another difficulty. oh you did it? do it one more time, harder. you beat that difficulty? well okay, here's the campaign again at the highest difficulty. it's just not fun to run the campaign again and again. usually by the second run you are already level 100, so it makes it even worse.
devotion shrines. absolutely terrible design. this is born from like, early 00's games where instead of real content they want you to look for things around the map. you have to do this 55 times to max out your character's power potential. even diablo 4 got this right and removed it from future alts. it's not fun a fun system and just feels like a chore.
qol. i get wanting to stay thematic, but towns are supposed to be hubs where the character can go and sell items, craft and theory craft, etc. and the designs of some of these towns are too inconvenient. portal nowhere near close to any usable npcs, usable npcs spread across far ends of the town, important vendors not at all towns, the respec trainer literally disappears because of an expansion, etc.
if you don't randomly drop portals, expect an insane walk back to your corpse if you ever die
rainbow mod should be default
writs and mandates are not good enough, you still have to grind faction again for the millionth time
