Easily one of the best, if not the best, ARPGs to be released since Titan Quest. This is the ARPG to play if you enjoyed Diablo 2 and disliked the direction of Diablo 3 onwards, although Grim Dawn plays very differently from Diablo in general.
Firstly, it has an enormous amount of QOL, from built-in item filtering, UI/interface options such as enemy healthbars, buff/debuff display on yourself and enemies, options to toggle various effects on your character (as there will be A LOT of particles on screen).
Second, and most important, is its class system: you start out picking one mastery at level 2, and can choose any second mastery you like at level 10. There are many combinations, some obvious, and some less so, but if you can combine classes together, you can bet that there is some kind of support for that combination, or that you can find a way to build it in such a manner that it will be viable, even for Ultimate difficulty.
ARPGs live or die based on how satisfying it is to click on an enemy until it dies, and Grim Dawn does this very, very well. There isn't ever a feeling of frustration from "missing" an enemy, and the sense of absolute power and raw devastation you can inflict upon the countless hordes you'll go up against is euphoric. Just look up (or better yet, play for yourself) Primal Strike Shaman.
The maps you'll explore are massive, multidirectional, and have an enormous amount of secrets, obvious and very well hidden, for you to uncover. Character progression is enhanced greatly through the Devotion system, which can only be progressed through by finding the Devotion Shrines dotted around the map, and it actively encourages you to go out of your way to comb the entirety of an area before moving on to the next one. Some Shrines and quests only become active on Elite or Ultimate, but don't let that discourage you- there is no penalty for double-dipping on Shrines, and if you happened to miss a few on a Normal playthrough, visiting the same Shrine on a higher difficulty will award you more points, for a maximum of 55. You will absolutely want to do what you can to find as many of these shrines as possible, however- it cannot be overstated just how important Devotion skills are to your character's damage and survivability.
Speaking of survivability- resistances. Your resistances to each damage type caps (by default) at 80%, and yes that is a lot, and yes you should do what you can to reach that cap at all times to prevent an early demise. This is mostly relevant at higher difficulties, but it's something to get into the habit of early to better your gameplay once you reach Elite or Ultimate.
It also has very pretty environmental art, although I would argue that aesthetics is where Grim Dawn struggles the most. Character creation only lets you pick male/female and toggle hardcore mode, and the male character's face is rough, to say the least- not to mention the armor art being quite ugly until midgame. Act 1 has a bit too much literal trash everywhere, but Act 2 is where it begins to pick up, and Act 3 is where the game fully embraces the Dark Fantasy aesthetic it does extremely well. It's also around Act 3 (roughly level 50 or so) where the art for armor increases in visual quality dramatically.
Compared to its contemporaries (think Last Epoch, Path of Exile/2, and lmao Diablo 4), it's much less visually impressive on a micro scale, but taken holistically, this is THE ARPG to play. Last Epoch looks great, but feels really rough to play, and has horrible visual character progression.
tl;dr
Grim Dawn starts out really ugly. Get it anyway, and push through.
