Grim Dawn - Fangs of Asterkarn

Grim Dawn has long been my favorite loot-based ARPG, which is why I didn’t hesitate to purchase the DLC to support the developers. Nevertheless, I have to say the DLC delivers a very poor experience. Fundamentally, the development team seems to have forgotten the unique advantages that kept Grim Dawn among the top tier of loot farming games, and instead attempted to create an ARPG with extremely unsatisfying gameplay. Here is my analysis. Grim Dawn’s most distinctive feature lies in its gameplay loop where build strategy offsets reliance on reflexes. You must play cautiously when your defenses are insufficient, and you can stand and dish out damage once your defenses are robust. You continuously balance your investment between offense and defense for a character, and eventually craft a perfect build capable of handling most scenarios. Since strategy can make up for mechanical skill flaws, many typical weaknesses found in other ARPGs can be easily ignored in this game. However, in the new DLC, even with a fully optimized defensive build — capped resistances, immunity to critical hits, 40% damage absorption and a huge health pool — you can still be instantly killed on Ultimate difficulty. Not to mention the massive number of abrupt hard crowd control skills with no wind-up, plus non-stop ground effects introduced in the new DLC. If the development team is determined to transform this top-tier loot and build-focused game into a competent ARPG, you will at least need to implement the following adjustments: 1.Better visual presentation. A great many skills suffer from severe visual clutter. Markers for ground abilities are ambiguous; warnings for dangerous and crowd control skills are unclear. Many skills with obvious threat indicators deal little damage, while some unmarked attacks are capable of instantly killing players. It is hard to tell apart player and enemy skills. When players are forced to actively evade mechanics, clear skill indicators become vital. 2.Extended ability timeline cycles for bosses. In most loot-based ARPGs, even two forced phase shifts in one fight are already frustrating for players. But against nearly half of the bosses in the new DLC, players have to reposition roughly every five seconds. This renders all stationary damage playstyles extremely unenjoyable. 3.Desynchronize ability timelines within monster packs. This is standard design practice for ARPGs with mob groups. You should never let monsters from the same spawn wave align their skill timelines; synchronized attacks from all of them can easily result in instant deaths. Only after implementing these changes can Grim Dawn offer a minimally acceptable experience as an ARPG. THERE IS ANOTHER OPTION HOWEVER: keep investing in the diversity of character builds and set item choices, and continue adding endgame content that allows for even stronger player builds, and forget to force players deal with these frustrating skills.

I didn't play the game for months but was pretty hyped for the dlc. Unfortunately it seems they have introduced one hit mechanics which i despise more than anything else. If i wanted to play a twitch game or soulslike i wouldn't play arpgs. Shame on the devs for ruining this otherwise fine game.

In-progress review but my feelings so far, put simply as I can: The base game, Ashes, and Forgotten were all like a hearty stew full of rich, nourishing stuff. The sort of thing that leaves you with a warm glow inside afterwards. This is like thin, lukewarm, runny soup. You rarely come across anything to even nibble on. WTF happened?

I have spent 1700+ hours in Grim Dawn and its 2 DLCs, been there since before early access. Pains me to say this but FoA is a lazy, rushed, unfished garbage of a cash grab. Grim Dawn + 2DLC was a finished, complete package that felt good - it had its limitations but being a 10 year old game its normal. However, this DLC threw the complete package thing out the window, messed up balance and created issues devs are not even going to fix (disparity of texture quality across the game to name one). This DLC offers least amount of content compared to others, bringing so many new issues and on top of that costing more! I bought a ''d2 like'' game in 2016 and now after 2DLCs they swapped product I paid for into ''poe2 like'' and it sucks ass. The good: + chieftan of kurn - Viagra, model copy pasted from female barbarian from d3 + design of last boss The neutral: ¬ you have health globes now (who cares?) The bad: - this is a lazy cash grab - FoA feels like it was made by some new hires with no experience - piss overlay on the health globe - game randomly stutters in some locations - when time passes in game the shadows move so quick its jarring and then they stop - dread mechanic - over tuned, annoying stuff you cant turn off, devs didn't even play test their own game as this ended up being one of the key issues brought up by players on day 1 - developer made fun off people on the forums that complained about difficulty - next day hotfix addressed, you guessed it, difficulty across the game - recent behaviour of devs on the forum is quite shocking, not what I came to expect from crate - devs boasted transformative mastery - its just a funky gimmick, it changes nothing in terms of gameplay, werewolf is just the same boring melee gameplay with a different model/texture for your character model, same for wereraven - new mastery is uninspiring and doesn't have many synergies - new items are only available to preview if you check external software outside of game to look it up and then plan a build - very much increased difficulty across the game, this reduces the ability for an inexperienced player to have a good time because building around defences is super important and even then experienced HC players are loosing characters to BS random chance 1 shot mechanics - devs introduced dodge mechanics - this is not POE and not soulslike, we didn't ask for it - WASD was introduced but in a very limited, awkward way, its pretty much unusuable - new DLC introduced spongy enemies, 1 shot mechanics, balance is all over the place - DLC does not resolve the issue of your build coming alive at lvl 94 when you can put on the set and weapons (specific/end game for your build), before that its a struggle, at 94 bam, game goes from challenge to Ez mode - no foot steps on snow - FoA has new nicer textures but it makes the rest of the game look s***, I asked zantai if they can update textures so the rest of the game is not sticking like a sore thumb, he said its too much work (even though modders do this on their own for many games and its somehow not a problem), he said to me that its devs best use of time to work on GD2 right? If that is the case why did crate waste time doing a DLC in the first place and not gone to do GD2 instead not to waste dev time? Devs contradict themselves, make it make sense - devs brag this DLC has 6.11 square miles - like who gives AF?! its quality of content that matters, not how much empty open space you have in it... - playing on normal bosses/mini bosses/elite packs have a lot of BS 1 shot or regen attacks, its ridiculous how over tuned game is overall, devs just catering to the tryhard sweats - they changed something with how you progress Vanguard of Thee quest - devs have enabled and allowed toxic fanbase (as long as you agree with devs you won't be banned) - once you install FOA you can't go back so back up your saves! - enemy variety in FOA: reskinned boar, reskinned bird, reskinned mountain giant, beaver -.- wtf, - first new location already shows bad map design, large open areas that have nothing, they boasted 6 square miles or sth like that but clearly don't understand that empty garbage is nothing to brag about - snow looks unnatural, like its plastic - snowy areas look bland - okey so we now have a snow storm mechanics that strains your eyes ffs - if I am walking towards kurn portal there is a snow storm, I cross the tree stump across ravine storm turns off, I go back storm turns on, I go to kurn portal storm turns off what a joke, not even a smooth transition - you can literally pin point the pixel where the trigger for storm sits, at times can't see where I am going - some mobs in FoA have insane regen, insane - you very quickly realize whole FoA is built around fetch quests - music in FoA is bad, really dull, uninspired - I offered a frozen aster to some shrine, game didn't tell me what it does - kurnhold looks meh - ascension altar alters your game but uses very rare hard to farm resources and does not persist from one game session to another - so basically is garbage and waste of time, it also increases enemy life and damage and with the prevailing and random 1 shot mechanic would make the game even more insufferable than it already is, hell no - the DLC quests are poorly marked, communicated, had to look up majority of the BS fetch quests - pacing of dlc is off - journey to the Roof of the World is full of boring and samey locations - DLC drags on its that DULL, I never had the problem with base game or other DLCs Overall this is a disaster, all the high regard I held crate in is gone, from behaviours on the forums to release of this trash content DLC I won't be buying their products day one anymore...wish I could refund this DLC - I have wasted my money. What's is more DLC review score keeps going down and its dragging base game's review score with it!

Ultimately disappointing DLC with one of the most annoying quests I can remember. Basically I wanted to try the new class and play the new DLC area. So I rushed there as soon as I could. Then main story quest near the end forces you to go back to older DLC's to complete it. This quest wasted hours of my time. What were they thinking? Areas also feel overly large with not much in them.

The weakest DLC for Grim Dawn by far, feels empty and pointless. The quality of life changes to the game itself are really the only reason to buy this DLC, but wait for a sale.

Vast and boring. Low effort in terms of story design and map design. Also there's a team member of the Grim Dawn dev team that is belligerent in the Steam discussions. (I don't want to name them, because it seems that other people have been banned from the Steam discussions when they did, which is crazy) What a sad downfall.

OKAY. this DLC has some issues. I play solo pve offline, and I have managed to solo the entire game, this DLC required me to bump it down to easy because the you get gated by these chaos bosses that just heal 100% and hard lock you if you don't have a build that can nuke them. It's a real shame, i have usually been able to manage even hard bosses by good dodging and maneuvering, but the fact that the bosses just fully heal (not like fast regen or small boosts, but litterally gain all their health back no matter what) really destroyed the immersive magic.

Выглядит как какой то обман - как и многие не увидел массы контента и разнообразия - а самое обидное это бесконечные вылеты . Ждать 70% скидок - хватит это терпеть ! Неочевидные моменты с квестами тоже минус . Во время игры не покидала мысль за чем я это терплю ведь есть Diablo 2 где я точно получу удовольствие - для меня как старичка Grim всё-таки перегружен цифрами и параметрами - это не хорошо и не плохо просто такие ощущения . А вишенка на торте это рассинхрон ваших облачных сохранений - ваш прогресс и герой очки навыков всё это слетает ( постоянно делаем бэкап папки сэйв ) На форуме разработчик банит недовольных - ну вы поняли ...