Dont try Grim Dawn, you will never look back

So i've been playing some GD for the past week or two. As a huge fan of the genre that has played extensively pretty much any existing game in the past 20 or so years i must say that of course i like it. Now i haven't played that much yet ( for an ARPG that is ) but here are my first impressions of it:

Now first of all when it comes to how the game looks ( since it's pretty much the first thing that you see in a game, even if i find it to be the least important aspect ) i think that the environment looks amazing, great attention to every detail .. simply beautiful. I truly love the atmosphere.
On the other hand i find the monsters rather ... bland. Same goes for how the items look. Don't get me wrong they look ok ... but compared to the already mentioned environment they are lacking ... severely.
Now another thing that i don't really like are the character animations. They feel strange, unnatural and i can't say that i like them at all. The running animation is terrible, the weapon swings don't look good and so on and so on.

I like how the game sounds though, especially the music. Seriously, it's good.

The skills look again ... bland, uninspired and i can't really say that i liked them.

While i'm at the topic of the skills ... overall i find most of them to be rather boring, they have the same feel as TQ and that's something that i never liked about TQ ( even though i like the game overall ). I can hardly say that there is a skill that i've tried and said "Oh man that feels great! I want to build around that"

The character customization, the skill tree, the devotion system, the classes all that is ok it can be a bit more deep but it is fine as it is in my opinion. Though leveling up doesn't feel very rewarding in my opinion and for some reason i'm not excited about building up a character ( though most of it comes from the bland active skills )

Now the items are also fine, though i kind of dislike all those procs .. procs again and again and again. The drop rates are good for a single player game ( which for me is as much a plus as it is a drawback). The crafting system is well ... pretty much the TQ crafting system and that's fine by me.

What i really don't like are the boss fights. Boring, mechanically easy to execute and needlessly long ( which makes them that much more boring then they already are ). With a few exceptions the bosses don't really look good either ( the ones that i've encountered so far ). That brings me to the slow progression which is ... well ...a bit too slow ( though it's not that bad ).

Now i really like some small things like the hidden rooms for example, or blowing up rocks, repairing bridges etc.


To sum it up,so far
i like:
+ The environment
+ The Atmosphere
+ The music
+ The fact that you can play offline ( no connection issues etc. )
+ The fact that it is build around single player ( good drops, no trade needed )
+ The game run very smoothly

i dislike:
- The character animations
- The 3d visualization of most items
- Most active skills
- I simply don't feel excited about building a character at this point ( mostly because of the insanely boring and bland active skills )
- The boss fights
- Tons of procs
- Slow progression


Overall i can't say that i'm happy with the game so far. It certainly isn't in my top 5 games of the genre ... when i think of it i can't say that it even makes it to be top 10 ( maybe barely ). But again as a huge fan of the hack'n'slash arpg genre i'll play lots of it and who knows ... i might like it better in the end.