Grim Dawn - Fangs of Asterkarn

This is an alright DLC. The music is amazing. Some of the ambient tracks are intense, although if you want to listen to them independently you may have to find a game file rip on youtube because they're not on bandcamp etc. Most of the rest of its content and features I'd throw in the "ok" bin, which is going to end up very full by the end of this ramble. Spoiler warning for later because I'm going to talk ♥♥♥♥ about the story. New Class The new Berserker class is... interesting? On release its first skill row it has Onslaught, a basic attack replacement that builds up damage on your next cooldown attack. That sounds fine, except that Berserker has no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cooldown attacks aside from Leap, which comes really late into the mastery tree. Otherwise there's the nukes baked into the werewolf/wereraven forms, but I discount them because those forms have negative synergy with Onslaught (they flat-out disable all %-chance-to-use-when-attacking skills). It's an odd choice. There was one not-so-cooldown ability, Winds of Asterkarn, that looked promising, until it turned out you stand still while channeling it on yourself. I specced into it for about 5 seconds, saw that, laughed, then went to say hi to the spirit guide for respec. If you want to play Berserker then I hope you like leap or werewolf, because otherwise you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥ late game because it's mostly a bundle of really situational passives with few options for synergy outside of its own class. Content I don't remember much about enemy variety except that some of the minibosses have specced into maxed-out leap with two charges so they randomly curb stomp you if you don't have much hp on your gear. On steam the devs boasted about how big the DLC's maps are when measured up against the base game, but they're mostly open space punctuated by rhinos, beavers or birds, so that's another one for the ok bin. The last boss was considerably easier than Korvaak, but that isn't saying much, because he was also considerably easier than some of the bugged out / overtuned hero mobs including the guy guarding the path up to him. Story Going into FoA, I assumed it would make some headway into wrapping up the big bad dichotomy they set up between the Forgotten God and C'thon. That turned out not to be the case; this DLC requires you to have the previous two installed, but seemingly only so that they can send you on a fetch quest to click on and acquire several macguffins from DLC maps 10 minutes before fighting the last boss. The narrative starts off with you being asked to go do a minor errand in the frozen death wasteland full of barbarians who hate you. The majority of that narrative's content consists of you finding some brabbins in various snowfields, helping them with their chores or whatever and then for some reason deciding that you need to go to their castle for a friendmaking mission. Along the way you can read notes or ask npcs for their enlightening stories about how they got (or are getting) their ♥♥♥♥ kicked in by Erulans (your ancestors), other brabbins, blood cultists (more brabbins), evil spirits (dead brabbins), beaver people, fire, and orcs. (I'm somewhat joking because the notes themselves are actually really interesting. Einar the Drunken Skald, what a chad.) To the NPCs you have the options of saying 'wow that's cool man' or 'wow that's cool man' before moving on to be berated by the next brabbin about how they don't trust you because your evil ancestors kicked their ♥♥♥♥ in. After doing some errands for them they finally decide to trust you with more of their own problems: the main quest, which begins with the revelation that they have their own guardian beast but they accidentally allowed him to get turned evil during the big war (brabbins set him on the Erulans and they kicked his ♥♥♥♥ in, so he was weakened and got corrupted) and so now he's kicking their ♥♥♥♥ in. To solve this they need you to get them the aforementioned DLC macguffins so their shamans can channel a ritual to fix the guardian beast while you kick his ♥♥♥♥ in. You've already made the trip and you're in the neighbourhood so you say ok and then go do all that stuff in about half an hour, then the brabbins say thanks and the story ends. All this was just to say that it's a fairly pointless and out-of-nowhere main quest. You wander into a frozen hell and help some brabbins you've never heard of before with some largely self-inflicted problems and then they say cool thanks and you leave. I think there was one throwaway line to establish that the main quest is Very Important because the veil is thin close to the highest mountain so something vaguely evil might occur, but when you get there (after zipping through the content drought that is the way up the mountain) he's just chilling on a ledge below the path doing nothing until you attract his attention. Then after you beat him up and he gets fixed so he's Good Now he just lies there on the ground uninteractable while you recount the joke about what an Erulan tells a guardian beast with two black eyes. It's just an odd experience and might leave you wondering if things were cut. Err, how long was this expansion in development again? Anyway, story goes into the ok bin, but only because the notes were so interesting. New Mechanics Honestly not sure what to make of the new Ascension mechanic (mechanics? There's like three related things all called Ascension). It seemed to cost a lot of resources and not do anything in Normal mode, and I haven't brought a new character up to FoA in Ultimate or Ascension yet. My tentative prognosis is that it's rng slop. I've read rumours that they nerfed loot drops in Shattered Realms and made a couple of other potentially suspicious changes (and I'm a very suspicious boy who doesn't like suspicious things). If Crate somehow transition this game to a live service, or start tuning the game based on live service ARPG player retention techniques, I'm going to lol and then go play something else. Anyway, ramble over. 6/10, definite dive in macro-plot quality.