Great news for all action RPG hack n slash fans, as Grim Dawn is currently available on Steam via its early access program. Grim Dawn is a classic action role-playing from the lead gameplay designer of Titan Quest, and features satisfying combat, strategic character development, frenzied loot collection and quests with choice and consequence.
Grim Dawn is developed by a small indie team of experienced developers, Crate Entertainment, that is led by the lead gameplay designer of Titan Quest, using an enhanced version of the Titan Quest engine and tools.
Here are the key features of the final version of Grim Dawn (do note that the early access version does not support all of them):
-Combine any of five distinct skill classes each with multiple skill trees in which to specialize. Advance your class mastery to unlock over 25 powerful skills and synergistic modifiers per class. Soldier, Demolitionist, Occultist and Nightblade are currently playable with the Arcanist on the way.
-Fast-paced tactical combat with enemy blood spatters, ragdoll physics and satisfying enemy death effects. Smash in doors and fight house to house, leaving a path of demolished furniture in your wake.
-Collect hundreds of items in common, magical, rare, epic and legendary classes of loot. Both randomized rare affix items and custom crafted unique items can provide amazing bonuses and special item-granted skills to support numerous different class builds.
-Dynamic Weather brings the world to life with region-specific climates and a variety of weather effects. A sunny day can cloud over with mild rain showers that builds into a booming thunderstorm. Variable wind gusts blow grass and affect objects like windmills.
-Gameplay systems designed to expand for 200 levels of character progression, equipment, and enemies to fight makes for ridiculous amounts of replay value.
-Connect with old friends or make new allies in glorious multiplayer. Multiplayer encounters will put your teamwork to the ultimate challenge. (multiplayer is not yet available but is expected in early 2014)
-Collect item recipes that allow you to combine salvaged components into unique crafted items and then, later, use those basic crafted items with higher-tiered recipes to complete items of unprecedented badassness. (still in development but almost ready to roll out)
-Camera rotation enhances the three-dimensionality of the world and gameplay while levels are still designed so that players are not forced to rotate the camera.
-New quest and conversation system will allow players to interact with NPCs in more interesting ways and choose different paths to complete quests. (Some quests offer choices in Act1 but much more of this is coming in Act2)
-An NPC faction system lets the player improve their relations with different NPC groups to earn rewards as their favor increases such as merchant discounts, new items, and additional quest lines. However, aiding one faction could turn a rival faction into your enemy. Choose which side you will support!
-The ability to spend money to reclaim skill points alleviates the fear and frustration of having to make early, uninformed decisions that could permanently nerf a character.
Enjoy and kudos to RockPaperShotgun for spotting it!
Thomas is a close friend to John ‘john2’ and John ‘WhatGoesAroundComesAround’. Thomas, John and John basically came with the idea of DSOGaming. Thomas has been helping John with News articles these past years, and prefers to stay in the background than the foreground.