Look, if you're expecting Diablo or PoE? Don't, this is weirdly better and worse than both for different reasons.
Summary of the gushing to come:
1. Solid graphics and music design.
2. Weirdly engrossing story, lore, and faction mechanics?
3. WTF EVEN ARE CLASSES?!
4. Devoting hundreds of hours to do it all again.
5. How I learned to stop worrying and flurben'd the eldritch.
6. It's good, buy it and the expansion.
7. Okay, a couple gripes.
So let's get this going. Sound and visual design were clearly hanging out in the same headspaces if not the same people because they fit so well together. Deeply moody with weather effects and a rather dismal initial offering things open up rather quickly into early industrial revolution ala magictech. Construction that's stone and mortar as much as quick homes that are more shelter from the elements than a dwelling for permanent residence and all of that is intentional! Weapons and enemies all have decent models and aside from some specific items nearly all of them are intensely satisfying to use, see, or kill in or with uniquely interesting effects from skills, spells, unique weapon effects or even powers from worshiping the in game gods! More on that later. Needless to say I have very little to argue about as it concerns the visuals and sound but I do wish the rotation of the camera was used a bit more in the finding of off the beaten path areas and destructible walls than it is now. Maybe in the next expansion.
Graphics that aren't going to destroy your eyes, sounds that are believable and music that fits while also ebbing and filling as needed. Now we talk about story, I'm not going to spoil ♥♥♥♥. You're a person that's been possessed and about to be hung, the possessor ♥♥♥♥♥ off and leaves you with wildly malleable connection to your past and future as well as divinity. The Grim Dawn happened. The world's ♥♥♥♥♥♥. You're not saving it. Maybe. Holding actions? Yeah. Holding actions. Everything you do in the story does matter. The world's already died. You might have an AED but you could also be exactly the poison that's killing the world all that much faster. As things unfold it's interesting to see how your character with your class choices would be viewed by the former society and how now given the apocalypse you're still acting as a force for humanity. Note I don't assign good/evil here. All of the forces at play are morally grey at best save maybe the farmers of homestead, they're just honest hard working farmers. Now lore comes in collectible pages as well as gradual reveals from conversations with people in the world or by advancing your faction reputation. Factions, or how I learned to love the grind, are far from the awful grinds in some MMORPG's and even have alt-oholics covered with faction rep buffs that can be transferred to new characters. Best part? You gain rep with them by playing the game. Not just taking on specific missions but killing enemies that that faction is arrayed against. Some factions will hate beasts and some will reward you for hunting freaking ghosts! Doesn't matter where in the world you are, if they would want it dead? You get rep. This rep also persists between difficulties as choosing Veteran or higher will start a brand new story run through. The bonus of playing through once on normal makes the second run through interesting as new stuff shows up thanks to both reputation and also new content that was difficulty locked.
We need to talk about the madness that is the class selection and skill screen. Level 2, you get access to the class list. I HIGHLY recommend taking time to look at all of them and pick one that looks cool but also has the playstyle you want. Any class can use any weapon, some like one or the other but all are potentially viable. I'd say pick your top two cause at level 10? Yeah. You pick your second class. Yeah. Don't think I wasn't daunted by it at first. It still trips me up and honestly I went braindead unga bunga melee werewolf (berseker) then threw in equally easy Nightblade for two weapon skill that wasn't tied to a default weapon attack. But the funny thing is that I could swap entirely to a wereraven caster build with ice storms and prox damage with very little cost to a late game build because the developers want everyone to have fun. It's not easy to pick a complementary pair of classes but that's where corrupting shards can augment skills that would otherwise clash and makes them work with otherwise conflicting classes. Necromancer and Oathkeeper? Sure! Might need to choose one or the other for weapon bonuses but both have solid buffs for melee builds but the Necro could also pull pets for the Oathkeeper to buff and heal to take some heat off of themselves. I'm not going to explain them all, that would take too long. Skip the guides for meta builds, skip the BS and work with what you want. There are plenty of uniques out there that will work with the most absurd combos and even takes them from viable to hilariously absurd. I left gearing out because that would be a nightmare.
Gods, plural, are trying to kill you, help you, recruit you, deny you and more and sometimes at the same time. Eldritch entities, time, and our conceptualizations thereof are so alien to them that trying to remember what when you're talking to this being in order to maintain continuity becomes tenuous at best and outright ignored at worst (I'm looking at you Dreeg). These cosmic entities are offering you their assistance for the low low price of 3-8 shrines worth of devotion. These powers WILL be crucially important in finalizing your build but for now I would argue aim for what you're weakest in, be that your defenses, resistances, damage types, or healing methods/regen rate and when you hit the next big milestone, check in with this system, you'll likely have three or four shrines worth to spend. They're also easily refunded so don't fret about not being able to build out the way you want. Compromise might not be easy but it makes for fun builds.
The Old Gods want you! Yes! The same gods that have been hunting you, while also giving you powers to face off against them, and at the same time don't know you but... Eldritch time and comprehension's beyond the scope here, so anyway decent DLC, slim story but expands on the pantheon of potential haters. Meet Bysmiel, Solael, and Dreeg. Pseudo angelic, pseudo angelic, Dreeg. Someone was human once or will be, or is human now, and don't worry about it. They're offering you gear and stuff to craft and more lore. I will argue very staunchly that faction armor is basically only for the visual modification system that I avoided talking in the graphics/sound section, it's passable. I wish there was more but also less iykwim. We found a patron and now we're working for a corporation. Follow your higher ups lead and stab them in the back the first moment... that's not the lesson? Okay, moving on. They're factions introduced with the forgotten gods DLC and it also comes with a procedurally generated dungeon that can make leveling that new character all the easier.
Seriously, look at the gushing, Fangs of Asterkarn dropped and I've been having a blast. The game is arguably in the best place that it's been since launch, and a hundred plus hours in the last two weeks should say something about how I feel about it moving forward. If you're still skeptical get it on sale, but do give it a chance.
What issues I currently have are due to a combination of outdated hardware and os mixed with newer games that I'm usually having to graphically downgrade to enjoy at anything north of 30 fps and this is no exception. I'll still take the bugs in this and Last Epoch over PoE and Diablo because I don't like either of those corporations. I get Not Responding errors and I feel like that might be due to memory leaks linked to keeping legacy code that hooks to 10? Not sure.
