This game just works. It came at a great time when people there thirsty for a good ARPG. Diablo 3 just came out and flopped hard, Path of Exile was nowhere to be seen. This game came and had filled a giant gap in the market for a competent and modern ARPG. This game does hold up and to this day due to its timeless graphics and good music. However, there is no depth or complexity in this game which means that outside of looking for some very specific qualities within a game, it is not worth recommending for new people now.
This game has quite nice representation in terms of graphics and sound. It is quite easy and good game to just play for hours upon end when you want just to relax and have something mindless and sometimes slightly challenging to experience. Classes are unique, talent trees are varied, sound and graphics are amazing. Game is suitably polished. It is a good game to enjoy for a single player experience.
However, while it might be deserving some praise, it has countless things wrong.
For starters, this game copies a lot of more successful games quite badly. It introduces various mechanics like enchanters and item re-rolls, sockets and gems, but they are never worked out to be meaningful. It is pointless micromanagement for few extra percentages of min/maxing. Better games like Grim Dawn has a lot more meaningful systems where 50 extra fire damage enchant from master enchanter in this game would be very valuable and meaningful as you could get +500% bonus damage for fire damage, making it scale a lot. Here however a lot of classes do not have meaningful scaling and if they do have some talents, they scale very little from that.
Talents are very basic. You can jump unrestricted through various trees. There isn’t any class/talent identity as going full tank will leave you with non-functioning build with too many charge using abilities while going for constructs would leave you with no charge using abilities. Game is very simplistic in terms of its character customisation options and at the same time does not allow much of experimentation or a chance to build your own that little special hybrid character which you dream about. In fact, character customization is so meaningless that when I had played this game with 2 other friends in co-op, it did not made any difference if I used any of my stat points or not. I still was more tanky than a friend of a different class who put those points in. Build and stat points are so completely irrelevant in this game that this game does not even have a function to reset your choices! It is game meant for casual play in the extreme.
Game networking is solid, however in game balance is atrocious. Due to scaling, some levels and bosses are impossible to complete. Like first one where in game scaling would make even a basic mob a threat to us while boss itself often would one shot as and be impossible to tank even for a few hits. We had to exploit living hell out of this boss in order to kill him. Later on, scaling was broken too. Mobs would prove to us more dangerous at some period in this game than mini bosses or bosses. Scaling was inconsistent throughout the levels and to our capabilities. Game co-op certainly has some issues.
Story is non existent. It has some cutscenes, but in game story telling is so bad that sometimes game even forgets that it needs to tell a story. Like after Alchemist, you kill him and then just proceed to the next stage to clear some demons and kill a boss which was not established or barely mentioned if at all.
Game design like previously mentioned is broken. In game stats are either meaningless or impossible to customise during levelling up process. This means that even if you want to be tanky and not die from 1 hit, there is literally nothing you can do. There are no talents, no gear. Nothing until the very last stages of your character’s life. Gem system for example is utterly broken and they could not bother to copy it properly from Diablo 3. Instead of sacrificing 3 gems to make one same type gem of a higher quality, you sacrifice 3 gems instead to make another random gem of the lowest quality of given gems… So, utterly broken and pointless system and almost any more advanced aspect of this game is like this here. It is copied poorly and just does not work.
This game has quite nice representation in terms of graphics and sound. It is quite easy and good game to just play for hours upon end when you want just to relax and have something mindless and sometimes slightly challenging to experience. Classes are unique, talent trees are varied, sound and graphics are amazing. Game is suitably polished. It is a good game to enjoy for a single player experience.
However, while it might be deserving some praise, it has countless things wrong.
For starters, this game copies a lot of more successful games quite badly. It introduces various mechanics like enchanters and item re-rolls, sockets and gems, but they are never worked out to be meaningful. It is pointless micromanagement for few extra percentages of min/maxing. Better games like Grim Dawn has a lot more meaningful systems where 50 extra fire damage enchant from master enchanter in this game would be very valuable and meaningful as you could get +500% bonus damage for fire damage, making it scale a lot. Here however a lot of classes do not have meaningful scaling and if they do have some talents, they scale very little from that.
Talents are very basic. You can jump unrestricted through various trees. There isn’t any class/talent identity as going full tank will leave you with non-functioning build with too many charge using abilities while going for constructs would leave you with no charge using abilities. Game is very simplistic in terms of its character customisation options and at the same time does not allow much of experimentation or a chance to build your own that little special hybrid character which you dream about. In fact, character customization is so meaningless that when I had played this game with 2 other friends in co-op, it did not made any difference if I used any of my stat points or not. I still was more tanky than a friend of a different class who put those points in. Build and stat points are so completely irrelevant in this game that this game does not even have a function to reset your choices! It is game meant for casual play in the extreme.
Game networking is solid, however in game balance is atrocious. Due to scaling, some levels and bosses are impossible to complete. Like first one where in game scaling would make even a basic mob a threat to us while boss itself often would one shot as and be impossible to tank even for a few hits. We had to exploit living hell out of this boss in order to kill him. Later on, scaling was broken too. Mobs would prove to us more dangerous at some period in this game than mini bosses or bosses. Scaling was inconsistent throughout the levels and to our capabilities. Game co-op certainly has some issues.
Story is non existent. It has some cutscenes, but in game story telling is so bad that sometimes game even forgets that it needs to tell a story. Like after Alchemist, you kill him and then just proceed to the next stage to clear some demons and kill a boss which was not established or barely mentioned if at all.
Game design like previously mentioned is broken. In game stats are either meaningless or impossible to customise during levelling up process. This means that even if you want to be tanky and not die from 1 hit, there is literally nothing you can do. There are no talents, no gear. Nothing until the very last stages of your character’s life. Gem system for example is utterly broken and they could not bother to copy it properly from Diablo 3. Instead of sacrificing 3 gems to make one same type gem of a higher quality, you sacrifice 3 gems instead to make another random gem of the lowest quality of given gems… So, utterly broken and pointless system and almost any more advanced aspect of this game is like this here. It is copied poorly and just does not work.