I give this game a positive review because I really liked it but there are a few things I wish I knew before buying it, so I hope this helps whoever reads me to chose if buy or pass or maybe even help with some things in your first time playing Grim Dawn.
First some definitions:
Session: The period of time from the moment you pick your character and "Start" playing till the moment you exit to the menu/Quit the game
Domain: Special area with random buffs per session.
POI: Point of interest
Monster Infrequents (MI): Specific items dropped by specific enemies.
Grim Dawn is an isometric game where you can move the camera, zoom in and zoom out, this kind of helps finding hidden paths or areas, wich the game has a good amount of.
There are different factions and each one has a different type of enemy, you will face enemies such as humans, beasts, zombies, ghosts/undead and demons, there are also allied factions.
Each factions divides in different types of enemies such as normal enemies (with different shapes but weak in general), heroes wich are stronger versions of specific normal enemies, with more health and even skills with different types of damage (frost, fire, etc), bosses wich you will find in dungeons or specific areas and a special type of enemy called Nemesis wich are unlocked after reaching the worst reputation with a faction.
There is another special type of enemy called Celestials (Super Bosses) wich are super difficult to beat and requiere a very good build and preparation.
The map in the game is huge, there are a lot of places to go and a good amount of hidden places or even dungeons. In the "normal" areas the enemys will be defined by the difficulty you are playing in, but there are special areas called Dominions and divide in three different difficulties, Dangerous Domain, Treacherous Domain and Forbidden Domain. Inside these Domains, the player and the enemies will receive buffs wich are random per Session, the more difficult the Domain, the more Buffs you and them get. For the last one, the Forbidden Domain, this areas are mainly called "Roguelike Dungeons", inside them you will not be able to spawn your rift (a personal portal you can set "wherever" you want) and if you die, you respawn outside the dungeond and you can no longer access it during that Session.
Each character will be able to pick two different classes, one at the beginning of the game (or at lvl 2, I do not remember) and another one at lvl 10. Each combination of classes gets a name, for example, the first class I picked was Arcanist and the second one was Necromancer, that specific combination is called Spellbinder, knowing this helps a lot with finding builds and guides for your class. This means you will have 3 different skill trees at your disposal, but wait, 3 skill trees? But you can only pick 2 classes... well, yes, Each main class you pick has its own skill tree and everyone has a third skill tree called "Devotion tree", this tree acts more like a support/passive set of skills for your skills. Each time you lvl up you will get skill points and attribute points. Skill points can be spent in any of the 2 main skill trees, Devotions points are earned by cleaning or restoring Devotion Shrines and you can have a total of 55 Devotion points even when there are more than 55 Devotion Shrines, I will not talk about Attribute points further. As for Devotion Skills, you bind them to your mains skills and they have a chance of activating. Also you can reset your skill points and Devotion points at any time.
So... the games is kind of an action RPG where the playstyle relies heavily on the classes AND skills you pick, it has main quests and side quests, the max lvl a character can reach is up to 100, the equipment is divided into 4 quality levels (as far as I know), from worst to better: yellow, green, blue and purple. You will also find crafting materials and some special items, you can craft upgrade items and buy augments from the allied factions (The best ones unlocked with better reputation with each faction). You can also find recipes for relics, upgrade items, weapons and armor but there is a catch.
At lvl 94 you will be able to equip pieces of Armor Sets wich are usually the best gear (Purple color) but for most of them you can only craft one pice, like the head armor but the drop rates for the recipe and the armor pieces are super low, and there is ANOTHER CATCH, every single armor piece and recipe can be dropped by any monster and as far as I read on forums and wiki, there is not a proven method for farming specific sets, this is something I really do not like cause this means you can't just go and farm a specific boss till it drops the gear you want but this will only affect you if you are planning on doing the hardest content in the game cause for the celestial bosses and maybe the roguelike dungeons in the max difficulty you will really need a good build. Also, any class can equip any piece of armor as long as your attribute points let you, in this game the builds are made based on the type of damage you deal, mind this, if the skill you use deals aether and Vitality damage, you need equipment that gives you X% Aether damage or/and X% of Vitality damage this lets you play with different combinations of equipment so it is good I guess. There is also another type of item that is very important to mention, the MIs, the MIs are items dropped by specific monsters, they are green items that can improve a specific class skill and they are commonly used to round up builds.
Another thing I do not like is the fact that the quests are not shown in the minimap, if an NPC has a quest for you it will have a "!" over his head (and the classic "?" if you can turn in the quest) but if you are not seeing the npc you might never know there is a quest (mostly side quests) for you, while POI's are shown in the minimap with a tiny eye icon once you are close to it. I think it would be good to be able to spot the "!" on the minimap. This is not a bad thing hoewever, it doesn't affect the gameplay at all, I just wanted to mention it.
To wrap up I just want to give some advice. Grim Dawn is a very interesting game that can offer several hours of gameplay or you can just finish it and forget about it, if you are looking for a game with a vast amount of lore and content where you will have to spent a good amount of time searching and learning about your class to improve it and a huge amount of hours farming for your BIS gear, then this game might fith you. Oh, and also, if you happen to find a lvl 94 purple piece of a set when you are low level and can't use it yet, do not sell it, it might be the exact piece you will need for your build later, save it... Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand... I think that's all I wanted to mention. Thanks for reading.
