Review | Grim Dawn Definitive Edition

LifeisXbox’s Grim Dawn Definitive Edition Review | These are dark times, you have just been trapped and hung for a spirit to get out of you. After the spirit is out, you’re saved from dying, and this is where your journey begins. Grim Dawn Definitive Edition is an ARPG that plays a lot like Diablo 3, but also has a few interesting different things going for it. However, this is not a perfect console port, and it could learn a few things from Diablo 3’s console port. Grim Dawn Definitive Edition has been developed and published by Crate Entertainment.

“There are loads of different skills, classes, weapons, and armor for you to use. There are also a bunch of different enemies, so if you’re worried about fighting the same enemies with the same skills, there’s nothing to worry about.”

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox One | Review code provided by PR/publisher. This review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we liked!

• A Fun and Time | Grim Dawn Definitive Edition is a pretty fun game to play, I chose to play as a Demolitionist, which is focused on ranged combat, and killing a bunch of enemies with my character’s skills felt very good. Classes can be combined, so you don’t need to have skills of only one class, I did stick with a single class and weapon type for the entirety of the game, but it’s nice knowing that this is a possibility, because of how many options it opens to the player. I’m sure that with friends it’s even more fun than it already was for me playing by myself.

• Plenty of Content | There are loads of different skills, classes, weapons, and armor for you to use. There are also a bunch of different enemies, so if you’re worried about fighting the same enemies with the same skills, there’s nothing to worry about. There are also constellations that are purely stat upgrades, they can be acquired through altars that require either a specific offering or fighting a wave of enemies to reward you with both a constellation point and loot. Since this edition includes all DLCs released previously on PC, there are even more enemies, items, quests, and loot, which makes it loaded with content.

• Good Soundtrack | Although you won’t be paying a lot of attention to it most of the time because of how much action there is surrounding the gameplay, the soundtrack fits Grim Dawn’s atmosphere pretty well. It doesn’t sound out of place at any given time, which was nice to see here.

Somewhere between

• Overstays Its Welcome | At first, I was interested in the story of Grim Dawn Definitive Edition but eventually I lost interest in it. I only kept going for the gameplay, and even though it always felt good as with most, if not all ARPGs, it did eventually become repetitive. I’m sure that playing it alone made this happen far sooner than if I was playing with friends.

• Fitting Graphics | Even though Grim Dawn’s effects, weapons, environments, and characters look good, I can’t help but feel like it lacks something to make it look unique. Diablo III, for instance, looks a lot more unique and interesting than Grim Dawn. I think the developers should’ve chosen a different art style for it, but I guess that this could be more subjective than other things, which is why I mentioned this point in this section.

• Active Multiplayer | Although I didn’t play Grim Dawn with friends, I did manage to try the multiplayer out and I was positively surprised that there’s a server browser available. I was able to join a public match and walked to where the other player was, I dropped some loot for him but unfortunately was kicked shortly after. I also found that when searching for servers, player(s) were either very high or very low levels that I think was a strong factor when looking for suitable servers.

What we disliked

• Performance Problems | Unfortunately, Grim Dawn Definitive Edition had a few issues. Freezing for up to 3 seconds was something that happened quite a bit, and that was somewhat annoying. Also, when there were too many enemies and effects happening on-screen, the FPS dropped. This didn’t make the game unplayable but it’s still noteworthy talking about it.

• Badly Ported | There are a few questionable things in this console port, things that make sense on PC, but not too much on console such as having a mouse cursor to access all menus. You can navigate like you normally would on a console game using the D-pad, but that isn’t a great way to navigate the player’s inventory, and I don’t think the mouse cursor is too intuitive for a console gamer either. I don’t know exactly what would be the best way to navigate through the inventory, but neither of those options felt great.

How long to beat the story | Between 20-40 Hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 100+ Hours

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