Path of Exile 2 thoughts.
As a new hunt dawns, some rumination 340 hours in.
I've played a fair bit of Path of Exile 2 in the past month. How much, you ask? Well...
Listen, my hours were cut at work to nothing. I have had nothing but coffee, chicken nuggets and ramen for the past month because I'm waiting on my food stamps. My body is likely on the verge of a inward collapse from the sheer malnutrition. And on top of that, with my anxiety at the dawn of my CompTIA training starting soon and the one-year anniversary of my mom's passing approaching, I've needed something to mindlessly throw myself into.
Dungeon-crawling ARPGs are a weakness of mine. I've played obsessive amounts of the PSO games. As attested in my Diablo 3 retrospect, I've put thousands of hours into this genre of game. Diablo 4 was also a massive time-sink on launch, and I intend on going back to it when they release a holy melee class. But boy howdy will it be an adjustment after so much Path of Exile 2. Despite being the same genre, both play dramatically differently, and I think that's a good thing to differentiate one's self in this genre. I'm going to be getting into the weeds about MECHANICS, but if you want the gist of things, it's this:
Path of Exile 2 is a stupendous achievement in player freedom and I frankly enjoy it more than Diablo 4. Its plethora of systems is robust and enables a level of variety that I seldom see in video games. It is an ARPG where you truly feel like you can craft your own build and somehow make anything work.
With the Dawn of the Hunt approaching tomorrow, I figured I would do a... review? A retrospect? A something where I can unpack my thoughts about this gigantic game. I played four of the six (soon to be seven) playable classes all for a couple dozen hours apiece, so I have a decent grasp on the gameplay variety of each playstyle. The only two that I haven't played are the Monk because I have no interest in melee DEX classes, and the Mercenary because people I play with are using it and party variety is the spice of life. I started off with a flame sorceress, switched to a titan warrior, played a ton of deadeye ranger, and put in some time as a blood mage, and I came away impressed with most of them for the variety of fun you can have with each class.
Titan Warrior is definitely the most straight-forward, and the class I put the most time into. It does an excellent job of feeling like a “heavy” class. You're slow, but you smash armor, stun bitches, and cause earthquakes with most of the hits you make. It does such a good job of making your attacks feel like they have a weight to them, where you just utterly obliterate enemies with the sheer onslaught of lumbering juggernaut attacks. Combine that with the Herald of Ice passive skill, and your unyielding rampages cause enemies to explode in ice. I unlocked a skill called Stampede, which makes me run and leave behind earthquakes as I charge, leading into a massive satisfying slam to obliterate groups of mobs. For my big boss skill I have Hammer of the Gods, which with enough buffs I one-shot bosses with, a hilarious result that never not feels good. My only issue with the class is how one-dimensional it feels in endgame, just stampeding through dudes and using Hammer of the Gods for the big spooky mobs.
The Sorceress on the other hand is busy as hell, dropping shitloads of fire AoE spells and igniting everything around you. I enjoy the micromanagement of a arsenal of spells, and it had interesting gimmicks like turning your mana into effectively a second health pool or dropping your HP to 1 and making you immune to dangerous damage types. Fire is currently the weakest of the three elements, but I love DoTs so I can't help myself. You can also fill the screen with lightning and electrical currents, or freeze and shatter your adversaries, which is also a blast.
The Deadeye Ranger is probably my favorite class to play, and feels like a hybrid caster/DEX character. It's a nice balance of a simplistic playstyle but with incredibly intense micro-mechanics, as you're soft and very fast and a lot of its power comes from kiting out targets and setting up elemental traps for massive damage. I'm either sending piercing forks of electric arrows through trash, or shocking big bosses to activate the ability to cast spells on shock, melting them in a barrage of spellcaster ball lightning. The highs of the job are immensely satisfying and I love how mobile you feel, it gives me Demon Hunter/Rogue vibes from Diablo.
Finally, I played the Witch, specifically the Blood Mage ascendancy class. A massive DPS threat, they specialize in crits for those big damage spikes, while burning through their own life as resource to nuke targets. Coupled with Grim Remnants to recharge your energy shield and blood remnants to refill your life that drop from enemies when you kill or crit them, it arguably creates my favorite macro-management in an ARPG class that I've ever played. The big issue I had is that curse-based damage is fun until you get your nuke, which feels utterly lame to use. But I can solve this by just running different spells.
The beauty of PoE2's character-building is the freedom. You can effectively run anything. I ran electric spells on my Deadeye. I can choose to do the primary build of necromancy with the Witch, or run a traditional sorceress with the flair of the Witch ascendancy classes. Ascendancy classes are what fundamentally change how your class plays, such as the Deadeye being a swift killer or the Pathfinder excelling in ailments and poison. The Infernalist commands undead minions and can become a demon for insane damage, or the Blood Mage for being a tanky heavy juggernaut DPS. The Sorceress can be a Stormweaver who excels at augmenting her freezing and shocking capabilities while using Arcane Surge to become a machine gun mage, or you can be a Chronomancer and manipulate cooldowns and time itself.
How do you go about customizing your class, well there's the passive skill tree. Which is uh—
LISTEN, IT'S NOT AS SCARY AS IT LOOKS. It reminds me of a more robust Paragon board in Diablo 4, but basically you level up, you get a skill point. You explore the skill tree and find what synergizes with what you want to do. It looks daunting but in practice it's pretty simple, just go for damage and survivability nodes, while there are utility nodes that can fundamentally alter how your class plays (Chaos Inoculation reducing your health to 1 for Chaos Damage immunity, or Giant's Blood allowing you to wield two-hand weapons with one at the expense of requiring significantly more strength). Honestly, take a deep breath and just go for damage or survivability if all of that sounds scary. It's simpler in practice, I promise.
The absurd freedom comes from the Skill Gem system. You get skill and support gems, and you use them to craft spells and unique affixes for them. A skill gem will give you a spell, and you can use any skill gem you want was long as you meet the pre-requisite attribute requirements. And some gems augment how others work; your Lightning Arrow can be fired through a Flame Wall to ignite your arrows and make them do bonus fire damage. You can make your own Frost Walls explode by shooting them with fireballs. You can bombard an area with gas grenades and then light them on fire for devastating effect. There are spirit gems that allow you to have powerful passive abilities at the expense of the spirit resource. And finally, the support gems. Support gems augment your spells and skills to truly make them feel unique to you. Lightning Arrow is simple, you fire a lightning arrow to deal damage. But what if you need more AoE? You can give it the Pierce support gem so it can, well, pierce enemies in a line. You can go for the Fork support gem so it splits into multiple shots on contact. What if you want it to freeze targets instead of shocking them? You can use the Cold Infusion gem to convert a portion of its damage to ice damage. There are gems that increase AoE or reduce them for more power, make them cheaper resource spenders, make ailment synergies like shocks not expiring on ignited enemies. You can use Spirit Gem skills so you can auto-cast spells, or turn your curses into passive auras, or Herald skills to bombard surviving enemies with the elements.
The cool part about PoE2 is that you can really do anything. Not all of it will be end-game viable, but you can also force most builds to be with enough work. And with the proper loot. Speaking of that, the most important part of every ARPG is the loot. And PoE2 takes an interesting and refreshing approach to it compared to Diablo.
Loot and gear can be build-defining in most games, but here it feels like an engine to facilitate your passive tree and skill gem loadout. There are unique pieces of legendary gear with powerful effects, don't get it misconstrued. But they aren't always necessary, and some even come with drawbacks. If you have a truly best-in-slot piece of gear, you might not need a Unique legendary. The fascinating part is that with normal, magic, and rare gear, all of it can be viable with work and materials. You can upgrade normal gear to magic gear, upgrade magic gear to rare gear, add or reroll or even remove affixes. As long as you have the materials and currency, some of your gear theoretically won't get outdated for a long time, and I think that's rad. If you grow attached to a particular weapon or piece of armor, it can remain good and best-in-slot for a while. The game does an excellent job of making you feel like you cobbled your gear together yourself, and even my Deadeye Ranger is still wearing Level 33 boots at 70 because they rolled all the stats I wanted so high.
Okay, so enough about MECHANICS, how does the game itself play? Path of Exile 2 isn't a fast game. At least not fast-paced like D3/D4 are. Everything feels very weighted and methodical, you spam rolls, and you blow shit up. Gee a comparison to the Souls games in my ARPG? Well I never. Coupled with that, PoE2 is hard. It eschews armor-breaking and revivals in D4, and supplements death with checkpoints and respawning enemies as punishment. This can make progression feel a bit like slamming your face against a wall, especially if the map RNG isn't favorable for checkpoint placements, something the last few zones in the story had a problem with. Bosses feel like MMO raids mixed with bullet hell mechanics, and it makes the fights exhilarating but very challenging. The game does refill your potions on phase shifts in boss fights, but no checkpoints so it remains pretty demanding. There are also roguelike challenge dungeons and trials, which are a good side-enticement for progression but again, they get quite challenging.
The three acts on display all offer a different ecosystem and engine of storytelling, but I'd still say the first act is the strongest. Act 2 feels a bit scattered but the story and history's super interesting even if the desert biome really isn't. Act 3 is fantastic but doesn't stick the landing, which isn't at all helped that it leaves the story on a massive cliffhanger. It's a couple dozen hours of entertainment, and then you get to do it all again on Cruel difficulty where things go a lot faster and seem a bit easier since your build is generally online at that point. And then you hit the endgame, which are Maps.
Oh no, another nightmare screen of information. The gist is you get map tablets that you slot into a level, and then you have to beat the level without dying, otherwise all the XP you gained is lost and you fail, wiping all the unique affixes and map quests. Again, pretty punishing. But your map tablets also roll with modifiers that change the level itself, and the map tablet also determines the level and strength of the enemies within. Additionally, you can capture towers that apply modifiers to every level in range. Then there are other unique modes like breaches, pinnacle bosses, and a lot more that even I didn't manage to get into. Of course little of this matters because with the Hunt update, they'll be reworking endgame pretty significantly so we'll see how that pans out.
Then there's the pricing of everything. Early access is 30 bucks for half the game: there's going to be six acts and 12 classes each with three ascendancy classes. Endgame still exists and you just replay through Acts 1-3 on harder difficulty currently in early access to get there. So if the game is going to be free-to-play, what do you actually spend money on? Well, cosmetics and convenience. Buying early game access gives you a paltry amount of premium currency, and I used that to buy more stash tabs and unique stash tabs. You can also buy cosmetics, but WHEW they're expensive. I still want them, but 40 dollars for some sick armor is some sick shit alright. And there's an auction house to buy and sell gear, but it's done with in-game currency and materials you get just from playing the game, and you can also just trade with other players. The online auction house is actually very cool; it's robust with its search parameters and when you find a piece of loot you want, the site will automatically whisper the seller in-game with the offer you're making to purchase off them. It's streamlined and I got a lot of valuable gear off it.
Ultimately the concern is should you spend 30 bucks for early access into a game that's half-finished and intended to be free when it launches? Considering you'd have to spend two to three times that much for a comparable experience in its competitor, I think PoE2 shows that it has the legs to make things work. The game is still incredibly robust and fun. It's in early access so the game's meta ecosystem is still volatile as Hell, with the Hunt patch heavily revamping a lot of the content (muh herald nerfs and grim feast). Leagues are coming and with what's implied to be heavy gameplay changes, so at least it'll stay fresh with new additions and rebalancing of old content.
I'm going to go back to preparing for the new patch, now. I've played too much as is, but I still don't have hours at work so what the hell else am I going to do?