Grim Dawn - Preview @ RPGCodex

RPG Codex has a new hands-on preview of Grim Dawn.

I encountered only a few bugs while playing, which is really quite impressive for an Alpha. With major studios like Bethesda releasing so called AAA games that don’t even work properly and have endless supplies of game breaking bugs, it’s something Crate should be proud of. Besides the performance problems I noticed only a few consistent issues. Mobs will sometimes lose agro permanently or spawn stuck in the environment, and I’ve had my loot fly off to unreachable areas of the map never to be seen again. All in all however, most bugs being reported seem quite minor and well within the capability of the programmers to solve.

As mentioned before, multiplayer was not ready for the Alpha, but it could quite possibly be what the Beta phase is reserved for. For me, all I care about is that the game will have LAN play as an option and this has been confirmed by Crate, as they have stated that they most likely will not have the funds to support dedicated servers. This will undoubtedly lead to a swarm of bots and hacked items finding their way into the game. The solution? Find a group of buddies you like playing with and stick to them. It’s always more fun that way anyway.

I think Grim Dawn has the potential to be a very worthy addition to the aRPG genre. While it definitely needs some tweaking and would benefit greatly from a bit of polish, the foundations are here for something quite special. It’s got that old school vibe to it, but it’s been mixed together with modern mechanics, some pretty impressive visuals and a great soundtrack. If you’re looking for something revolutionary, you most certainly won’t find it here, but if you’re in need of a deep action role playing experience without online requirements, pay to win/free to play models, or childish WoW style graphics this should most definitely be on your watch list. Hats off to the Crate team for what they’ve achieved already.