When comparing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning vs Grim Dawn, the Slant community recommends Grim Dawn for most people. In the question“What are the best Action RPG games on Steam?” Grim Dawn is ranked 1st while Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose Grim Dawn is:
Basically you choose 1 class and select skills as you level up. At level 10 you can select a second class, which already gives you 5x5=25 character type possibilities. Each character has dozens of skills, plus you have this additional passive skill tree that you unlock through cleansing shrines. Then there is item customization with crafted "modifiers", adding additional unique stats and skills that you can use, all this adds literally to thousands / millions of character possibilities. Do you want to use a double weapon shooting lightning bolts? You can do that. Do you want to summon your creatures and support them with fireballs? You can do that as well, you can push it wherever you want.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Encourages exploration thanks to a massive game world
The world itself is absolutely massive, featuring two whole continents. There are dozens upon dozens of locations including a few giant, fully explorable cities. You are free to travel anywhere at will on the first continent, with the second one unlocking around mid-game. From there, you are free to travel between them. Getting around is easy, since you can fast travel to any location on the map that you've previously discovered. This makes exploring and discovering new things a breeze.
Going off the beaten path is often encouraged, with treasure chests, crafting reagents, out-of-the-way dungeons, small villages, and side quests everywhere. Everywhere you go, you'll be finding someone who needs your help or a new dungeon to explore. The sheer amount of content in the huge open world is incredible.
Pro Excellent and downright fun arcade style combat
The arcade style, fast-paced combat is where the game truly shines. Whether you're swinging a massive battle hammer, slicing with daggers, or throwing fireballs, it's just so incredibly responsive and smooth. Hits feel powerful in your hands, and the accompanying vibrant and colorful battle animations are great to watch. Additionally, you can dodge and block actively giving it some strategic depth as you're rolling between enemies and holding up your shield to soak spells.
Despite its fast-paced nature, there's no complexity weighing it down. Executing attacks and chaining combos is made super easy in just a few button presses. Enemies are auto targeted when they're in range, so you'll never miss the mark. That means you can hit an enemy in front of you, and just by attacking again, your character will spin around and hit the one behind you. It looks incredible, feels awesome, and is just straight up fun to play. The combat is easily one of the best aspects of this game.
Pro Fantastic and intriguing story will draw you in
You play as the "Fateless One", a character who was dead but brought back to life at the beginning of the game. With your second chance at life, you are now freed from the bonds of fate in a world controlled by destiny.
During your adventures, you meet many different factions and characters, some hostile and some friendly, but most have interesting stories to tell and quests for you to complete. Oftentimes these main quests branch off into many varied and interesting side quests which will lead to even more lore. Almost everywhere you step in the game world offers a new story of a village in peril or a lost treasure waiting to be discovered.
The story and lore itself are written by best selling fantasy author R.A. Salvatore. All the locations and characters were thus given an intense attention to detail that makes the world a deep and interesting place. Everything is interconnected, rather than just a bunch of lore that was hastily thrown together. While it may seem overwhelming at first, once you have a few hours under your belt, it's easy to become intrigued with this world, it's dynamic characters, and plethora of mysteries.
Pro Engaging, cleverly designed skill trees
There is no such thing as a bad build in KoA:R. The skill trees are constructed so well that literally every build is viable. Due to the fact you can respec at any time, you are always free to experiment and try something new.
For combat abilities, there are three main skill trees with the basic archetypes of warrior, mage, and rogue, but you are not locked into any particular tree. You can mix and match any skills from any tree to customize your own fighting style. If you want to be a sneaky rogue that carries a huge longsword or a warrior who casts spells, you can do it.
In addition to battle builds, you can also choose among skills like dispelling, lockpicking, blacksmithing, persuasion, etc. These non-combat skills will dynamically effect your interactions with the world. With dispelling, for example, you'll be able to loot hidden treasure chests that are protected with magic. With persuasion, you'll be given extra dialogue options such as convincing merchants to give you discounted goods.
Thanks to the flexibility and great design of the skill/ability trees, you will always be finding engaging and exciting ways to pummel your foes in combat and interact with the world.
Pro Exciting crafting with a personalized touch
You can craft your own armor, weapons, and potions. Reagents can be found by salvaging/disenchanting unwanted equipment or finding it out in the open world via gathering skills and looting. You can use recipes, but the most fun comes from randomly mixing and matching ingredients together to customize your own craftables. Once you've forged that perfect piece of armor or weapon, you can even give it whatever you name you want. Being able to custom build and name your crafted creations adds an exciting new layer to crafting and makes it feel very personalized.
Pro Complex leveling system with thousands of possible builds
Basically you choose 1 class and select skills as you level up. At level 10 you can select a second class, which already gives you 5x5=25 character type possibilities.
Each character has dozens of skills, plus you have this additional passive skill tree that you unlock through cleansing shrines. Then there is item customization with crafted "modifiers", adding additional unique stats and skills that you can use, all this adds literally to thousands / millions of character possibilities.
Do you want to use a double weapon shooting lightning bolts? You can do that. Do you want to summon your creatures and support them with fireballs? You can do that as well, you can push it wherever you want.
Pro Great homage to old school ARPGs
This game is very dark, and grim. It harkens back to games like Diablo 2 or Titans Quest. While other ARPGs have come out since then, none have hit all the marks of what fans of the genre have been asking for. For those that wish for an updated version of Diablo 2, Grim Dawn is the game for them.
Pro Exploration
Pro Highly modifiable
Relevant in modern gaming because the community can keep products like this fresh and varied, even if the developers eventually decide to slow down their updates (which they have not!). The possibilities are great with modding, while the experiences in Diablo 3 and Path of exile are a lot more static.
Pro Drop-in co-op (online and local)
Co-op is pretty convenient as players can drop in and out of your gaming session at any time. This way there is no wasted time jumping out of ones game in order to find players to play with.
Cons
Con Some annoying aspects to navigation
There is no jumping in this game, making some areas annoying to navigate. Sometimes doing something simple like getting over a fence, small hill, or rock requires a long walk around it.
Con Not very challenging
With the exception of a few dungeon bosses on hard mode, the difficulty level is a bit on the low side. Most enemies pose no real threat, even in large numbers. One reason for this is that it's very easy to become overpowered. Even at lower character levels, the weapons and armor you can find or craft feel disproportionately strong.
Con No camera zoom
You cannot zoom the camera in or out. This can be disheartening when trying to look around, especially when trying to take in the view in some of the gorgeous areas of the game world.
Con No skill rearranging
In the most of the RPG games one can rearrange the order of skills for using while in this game there's no such thing. In whatever order the game puts them in the slots, that's what you get. Sometimes this is the cause of death of the character.
Con Only some builds are fun
There is a definite meta, with superefficient vs non-viable builds.
It's easy to mess up a build, and attribute and spec-bar points are non-respeccable (you can use a cheat editor, but devs want you to reroll a new char).
Con Difficult to move when fighting, especially when you are ranged
Con Static pre-rendered levels
This may cut down on replayability a bit as all the levels in the game are pre-rendered, meaning that each playthrough will have the exact same layout, making for something that can get tiring and too familiar. Similar games have gone with randomized levels, which can keep the game fresh. While Grim Dawn is meant to be a throwback to earlier games in the genre, some newer features found in more recent released would have been welcome.
Con Lots of trips to town
The majority of loot in the game can be useless, with odd stat restrictions or repeats of vendor items. This means the user will need to make many trips into town to sell it all off in order to have room for even more loot they will not necessarily need.