Reviews from

in the past


El primer DLC de Grim Dawn, que ni si quiera supe que empecé hasta que iba por la mitad de lo bien que me lo estaba pasando. Es una extensión del juego original con unos cuantos mapas, mazmorras y bosses más. De cristos.

Playtime: 10 Hours
Score: 7/10

Pretty decent expansion! So after playing the base game and loving it, I decided to get this first expansion while the second I'll pick up later. This DLC continues after the main story ended and has you go to the city of Malmouth to finish off the Aetherials for good. You do spend the first half running through swamps which did get old, but thankfully its over quickly. The environments were okay, but only really the final boss area, did it impress me from a design perspective.

The story is still nothing to write home about, as its just there to give you a reason to fight bad guys. Some of the cool features of this addition is transmog which works exactly the same as in Diablo 3 where you can change the look of items you have equipped, without losing the stats. And you have access to this from level 1, which is nice, as creating a second character I could pimp him out with cool looking gear. They introduce some new factions which are cool, which had one cool little detail. In the base game I saved a witch from being burned by some villagers as a mini side quest. In this expansion you meet a coven of witches as one of the new factions and you get to reunite with that one witch who thanked me. Its a little detail, but one I appreciated as it made some of my small choices matter.

Otherwise they introduce two new classes with the Necromancer and Inquisitor. Inquisitor being a long range class that uses guns (even unlocking the ability to dual wield guns) while the Necromancer as always is really cool. No exploding corpse ability as far I have gotten with it, but there are plenty of cool abilities from what I have played.

Only real issue, is you can't play Co-op with a friend if they don't also own this expansion, but you can disable the DLC in your Steam Library as a work around. I only ever played single player, but its still an issue to raise. Overall this is a decent DLC, but one I feel is only really worth it on sale. At full price, its not that worth it. But I still loved it overall!

Look at this moron (me) dropping this DLC for four months thinking he had hours of game to play through, only to finally beat it in less than 2.

That aside, I think it says something that even several months after I stopped playing Grim Dawn broadly, and Ashes of Malmoth specifically, I could still recall a lot of fun moments, be it boss fights or just general ambiance of the levels. I definitely undersold the base game as having a "bland" aesthetic, because Grim Dawn has a beautiful blend of Blizzard-esque stylisation combined with post-apocalyptic fantasy, where spooky tentacle mosters, ghosts, bugs, knights and cowboys roam around giving the stink eye to the last remnants of civilization.

And in terms of gamedesign, AoM feels like a straight continuation and evolution of the base game, and also like it should've been the actual end of it. Grim Dawn ended on such a damp fart of a bossfight that not much would be required to improve it, but trudging through a factory where flesh monsters and cultists torment innocents into becoming a part of some fucked up other-wordly mega-structure of suffering DEFINITELY is a better conclusion to a story like Grim Dawn than the original final chapter ever was. Funnily enough, Ashes of Malmouth's ending suffers from some of the same problems as the original, like how defeating the final boss is rewarded by middling loot and a humble congratulatory speech from the big guy at the nearest human resistance camp. Not a cutscene, not a change in scenery, just a "We Did it Guys!" and an invitation to do all the grindy bounties and sidequests. The boss itself was awesome, but overall it's still kinda weak ngl.

But the ending is very much an outlier, with the beginning and middle being a straight upgrade on everything in the base game. AoM really focuses on just a few, tonally similar concepts for levels and enemies, thus being a bit more concistent while staying varied. There are some fun special enemy encounters, and the new totem system is a fun little activity to do while exploring or backtracking through already explored areas.

Also holy shit was it fun punching Cuthulu monsters and forest spirits in the face, I'm so glad I did AoM with a Shield Guy + Occultist combo. DON'T DO A SUMMONER BUILD THO, WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE

Great expansion