Isometric games are back with a vengeance. If you grew up in the 90s, games like Diablo and Baldur’s Gate were everywhere and isometric perspectives were pretty common in gaming. They faded out for a while, but they never really went away. Over the last few years, games like Pillars of Eternity, Path of Exile, Divinity, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and of course Diablo III have brought back the isometric perspective to the forefront of RPG gaming and along with a healthy blast of nostalgia, they’ve also brought some fantastic storytelling and gameplay.
Riding the crest of this trend is Grim Dawn Definitive Edition. This is actually a fairly old game, debuting on the PC in 2016 with a number of DLC expansions following. Five years later, developer and publisher Crate Entertainment has decided to port the game to the Xbox Series X and here we are! For late adopters, the Definitive Edition of Grim Dawn includes all of the previously released DLC along with the main game, a definite advantage!
At its core, Grim Dawn is a traditional isometric action/RPG. You control a human who was possessed by Aetherials. Once purged (in a rather unpleasant way), you are left alive with no memories and have noticeably extra-human abilities endowed by your possession. Your goal is to save the world of Cairn from the Aetherial invasion and destroy the hordes of monsters and undead they have unleashed against your fellow countrymen. There’s not a lot of initial world-building in Grim Dawn, but it’s made up for by the fairly complex and rather dark script. There’s no shortage of conversations to be had or missions to go on here, and background lore is hidden all over the place, slowly expanding your understanding of the world of Grim Dawn as you play.
For those of you that grew up playing games like Diablo, Grim Dawn follows a pretty standard formula. In fact, this is realistically the game that Diablo III should have been, minus the Blizzard properties! You’re assigned missions by the town’s leader and fulfill side missions by choice at the request of the townsfolk but the bulk of the game is spend exploring the countryside and dungeons, gathering loot, and slaughtering monsters wholesale! Now, that might sound very formulaic, and it is, but at the same time, Grim Dawn is the ultimate refinement of the isometric action/RPG!
Within the game, you’ll level up, assign points to your character, and slowly upgrade your equipment by either scavenging (recommended) or purchasing new gear in town. As you explore, you’ll purge shrines contaminated by Aetherials and defeat bosses and special enemies who drop absolute scads of loot. Haul it all back to down by way of a personal portal, sell what you don’t need, store what you do, and back out you go! The combat is initially quite challenging, but as you learn the controls of Grim Dawn, things get easier pretty fast. The most important thing to remember here is that you have hotkeys! As you play through Grim Dawn, you’ll earn skill points that allow you to boost your character’s abilities. Once you do, you can add those abilities to a hotkey list at the bottom of the screen. It’s hidden away in a submenu, but it’s definitely doable, don’t worry. Once you get a few spells under your belt, you can wade right into a huge mass of enemies and decimate their ranks handily. You can even augment weapons and armor, adding bonuses, extra spells, and proficiencies to your list of talents to increase the mayhem.
Now, you might be thinking that everything looks a little small in Grim Dawn and that’s true. But a quick flick of the right stick zooms in on your character and with two levels of magnification, you can see all the detailed textures of the enemies and combat effects in all their glory! Naturally, this limits how far you can see on the map and it’s easier to get swarmed, but it’s worth your time to zoom in and have a peek at what’s going on around you.
Those textures aren’t the only great thing about Grim Dawn though. Not only do the characters, creatures, and spells look amazing, but the entire game is lovingly detailed and incredibly dark. From the trees littered with hung corpses to the muddy bogs, darn caverns, and flaming hellscapes you’ll explore, every visual item is carefully crafted to maximize the ambience of Grim Dawn. This is a rich, lush game with bloody detail littering every square inch you explore and it’s a delight to see such complexity everywhere you turn. It’s even more exciting to step under a tree and reveal a secret stash or a cavern you might not have otherwise seen, a trapdoor hidden within a farmhouse that’s only visible if you step inside, and a wide variety of surprises. You never know what awaits you around the next corner in Grim Dawn!
The game is absolutely massive as well! You can blow through the main story if you’re doing well in around 20 hours or so, but between the side missions and the DLC, you can at least double that and if you want to find and do everything there is to do in the game, it’s a good bet that you’ll spend over 100 hours in this sinister world! That’s a heck of a lot of gameplay for the $55 that you’re spending! Is it pushing the edges of a AAA price? Sure, but honestly, this is a seriously awesome game! However, not every single thing is perfect about the port to Xbox here, so let’s talk about a few of the issues before you pull the trigger!
Grim Dawn Definitive Edition first and foremost is a port of a PC game. As such, the gameplay (as with most isometric games) was originally designed for a keyboard and mouse. Sometimes, that means that the optimization is a little weird, like on the intro and pause screens where you suddenly have a gauntlet icon with which you’re forced to select tabs that should auto-highlight in a console game. Because the XSX is basically a PC, this direct port style makes a lot of sense in terms of ease of translation, but at the same time, it’s a bit of a hassle. It can be a hassle using that gauntlet to navigate through character menus and select weapons and armor to equip or buy as it’s not nearly as responsive as a gaming mouse. Setting hotkeys is a snap on the PC, but on the Xbox, there’s a sub-menu that’s a bit hard to find on the XSX and since you don’t have a keyboard, this means you’re setting them to the D-pad and triggers. Interestingly, it turns out that setting magic attacks to the triggers is actually super-useful because they fire constantly, draining your magic but absolutely obliterating enemies, so if you pick the right magic, this turns out to be a net positive.
Then there’s the text. Grim Dawn is designed for a computer monitor. A high resolution computer monitor that you sit about 1.5 feet away from, allowing you to read small, intricate text. What it’s not designed for is a 55” 1080p TV that you sit between 8 and 12 feet away from. While the resolution of a standard TV is fine, the text fonts and sizes are so small that even on a big-screen TV, it’s very hard to read the text. And if you need glasses, it’s honestly just going to be a big blur. There’s no question that Crate simply ported the PC game to the Xbox wholesale and the lack of adjustment for console style gaming text is one of the biggest indicators of that. In fact, if you watch the screen tips during loading screens, they still specifically refer to keyboard shortcuts, demonstrating that there have been essentially no changes in Grim Dawn from the PC to the XSX.
This isn’t a game that holds your hand either. If you forget to level up, don’t set your hotkey attacks, and don’t upgrade your equipment, you’ll get slaughtered, and fast! The amount of customization for your character and their abilities is high, but there are really very few tutorials that teach you exactly what to do and skimming through the submenus of the game is a bit more of a hassle on the XSX than it is on the PC version of the game. But even with these issues, Grim Dawn is eminently accessible on the XSX and a few things are even better.
In addition to the trigger hotkey bindings, the right stick zoom, and a few other neat additions for controllers, the right stick also controls landscape orientation, allowing you to shift the angle of display for the game at a tap of the stick. In the PC version, it’s hard to even tell how to do that without checking the key bindings, and the ease of camera control is a welcome addition to the Grim Dawn experience. Zoomed in, it allows you to really enjoy the crisp and detailed visuals of the game. And don’t forget the dark and brooding soundtrack that accompanies those visuals! The music for Grim Dawn is excellent, with haunting melodies and ephemeral arrangements drifting through the gameplay, perfectly complementing the fetid landscapes of Cairn as you explore. This is a solid score that’s well worth a listen!
Grim Dawn Definitive Edition is an outstanding modernization of the classic isometric action/RPG experience. While it’s not perfectly optimized for the Xbox Series X in a couple ways, the game plays smoothly, looks amazing, and is incredibly fun. After a bit of warm-up time with the controls, they feel surprisingly natural and you’ll quickly find yourself drawn into the depths of the fight against the Aetherials for hours upon hours. This is one immersive game and the loot gathering is supremely satisfying, with a noticeable progression as well as a solid story that accompanies your never-ending combat. In short, Grim Dawn Definitive Edition is a highly polished well-crafted game that is on a level with AAA releases and absolutely worth your hard-earned cash! If you like isometric games like this, Grim Dawn Definitive Edition knocks it right out of the park and even throws in all the DLC! It’s an absolute must-buy for fans and the brooding and creepy atmosphere is incredibly cool! Do not hesitate to check this one out!
This review is based on a digital copy of Grim Dawn Definitive Edition provided by the publisher. It was played on an Xbox Series X using a 55” Sony 1080p TV. Grim Dawn is available for PC as well, but the Definitive Edition is exclusive to the Xbox Series X.