As you can see, this means it takes an appalling screenshot. Visually and it terms of written character it seems rather more lacklustre. None of this is new for an action RPG, but the attention to detail is here, and it makes me feel enough like I'm in a place rather than on a numbers hunt. Indeed, Grim Dawn's sound is a big part of its snarling charm - sombre music and escalating sword-swipe beats, the muted thunder of kicking open a barrel, the dank sounds of the underground. This is a matter of light and sound creating something that feels very different to the shiny tooniness of Diablo III, even though the essential actions are the same.

Perhaps not quite as right as Titan Quest did, but that may be because it's gone for a grubbier, nastier feel, more of a sense of ruin and desperation in the art and which somehow affects the combat too.

Blizzard North defined that feel in the first Diablo decades ago, and any ARPG since cannot help but emulate it. A more technical mind than mine could, I'm sure, could find plenty to say about the feedback, the UI, the balance me, I'm stuck with that nebulous concept of 'feel.'ĭoes Grim Dawn, whose first 'chapter' has been out on Early Access for a little while now, 'feel' right? Does clicking upon a monster and having it recoil, strike back or die 'feel' satisfying and tactile? That is what an action RPG lives or dies on, the pinata concept of hitting something until it splits open and potentially showers candy about the place. They don't elicit tales of high adventure or great introspection, because their primary purpose is, even within a medium already broadly dedicated to that purpose, a boredom-killer, a way to make time disappear without feeling overwhelmingly guilty about it. I've got to be honest, I find writing about action RPGs hard work. No fancy business models (other than Steam Early Access), no unorthodox DRM (other than Steam), no drowning in lore and cinematics, no slickness at the expense of all else: just getting on with the zombie-twatting. Still, that is what we've signed up for: Grim Dawn, an action RPG created by much of the team (and the tech) behind Titan Quest, is here to be our alt-universe Diablo III. Might lift the spirits after all that zombie-twatting in the gloom.

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