I just uninstalled Path of Exile 2 (PoE2) after 70 hours played and don't think I am going back to it anytime soon. It isn't all bad news by any stretch but some of the design decisions they have made are baffling and discouraging. I am not going to do an in depth review here but I want to go over some of the things I really don't like about this game compared with Path of Exile (PoE1). Just as a point of reference I have around 6k hours in PoE1.
First though I do want to touch on what the game does well. The graphics, animations, and music are all top tier. The campaign is generally fun (outside of how big some of the zones are) and the bosses are fun to fight (provided you aren't super low on damage and have to try them 20-30 times). That might be the entire list of what is good.
So here is at least some of what I don't like:
- The length of the campaign
- The entire premise of the end game
- One portal per map
- Crafting is terrible
- Ascendancy trials
- Want to be like Dark Souls
The campaign is too long. I have run through acts 1-3 three times now. I started as mercenary into witch hunter, had terrible damage, and had to retry multiple bosses upwards of 30 times. Game is brand new and I had no idea what I was doing so whatever. I get through to act 1 cruel and it takes me forever to kill the first boss so I decide to reroll to witch and go infernalist. With infernalist and a few cheap uniques that cost around 4ex total I was able to do basically every boss either the first try or rarely two or three tries. I was rolling through the campaign and my knowledge from the previous run with the merc was letting me move much faster. I finally get to the end of act 3 cruel after defeating the final boss and my campaign completion time is 1 day 3 hours. I know I will get quicker over time but the idea of spending remotely that much time every time I want to level a character or at league start is discouraging. The campaign isn't bad but it is going to get old after running it 20+ times.
The way the end game is laid out reminds me of Last Epoch (LE). I recently wrote about Last Epoch here and how I get bored with the end game and quit around level 80 every time I level a new character. This system isn't exactly the same but it shares a lot of the same drawbacks. Lack of control over the layouts of your maps is a big one. In PoE1 you can run the same map over and over if you like the layout. Here you just get whatever you are handed. Also, unlike LE/PoE1 you can't just rush to the objective/boss and finish the area. You have to kill all the rares and the boss on the map to complete it. I haven't written about Diablo 4 at all but one of my least favorite things about that game is having to do a bunch of make work before fighting the boss in nightmare dungeons. Yet here we are having to do make work to finish maps in PoE2.
Another issue is one portal per area. In maps probably not the end of the world but having to pay attention 110% constantly to not die to some cheap on death effect isn't fun or engaging. Also, hearing youtubers talk about how many hours it takes to get to a boss then only having one portal for it sounds awful.
In addition, trying to craft gear feels bad. It's complete RNG and they have removed all the old forms of crafting. The crafting bench in PoE1 was a nice way to let you fix resists or other issues fairly easily without feeling overpowered. Meanwhile, the crafting in LE is probably best in class as far as I am concerned. This PoE2 system is really bad by comparison. Hitting maps with resistances not capped feels wrong. Resistances don't seem to matter as much in PoE2 but having no easy way to fix them seems like an oversight.
Having to do anything ascend seems outdated just give people the ascendancy at a given level. Running the labyrinth in PoE1 was annoying but I would take that back in an instant. We now have essentially sanctum and ultimatum to ascend. I actually liked sanctum in PoE1 but I think using this as an ascension method is foolish. It's not the same as PoE1 and not as hard (to me) but trying to it as any kind of close range character seems like it would really be frustrating. Ultimatum is more just fighting monsters so it is probably an improvement but would still just rather not have to deal with it. Also, not being able to respec your ascendancy like you could in PoE1 seems like a massive oversight.
The development team for PoE2 talks about wanting the game to be like Dark Souls (DS), a game I really enjoy by the way. The issue with this is there are no guaranteed drops and if you have to farm for hours and hours for a single shot at a boss that isn't like Dark Souls either. In DS you can reattempt a boss infinite times not once. You can also do crazy things like run your way to areas you shouldn't be in early to get overpowered items to start your run. The combat in DS is far more deliberate and you can counter things, control how fast you roll by using different equipment, and lock onto a given enemy to maneuver around them. None of this is in PoE2.
I could easily complain about other things in the game but I feel like I have made my point. The game is in early access so it is not a finished product. A lot can and will change before this is a full release. I am *very* concerned that some of the things they have decided, like the layout of the endgame, can't easily be changed. In PoE1 Chris Wilson said (paraphrased), "Once a player gets to maps we have their soul." In PoE2 I don't think that is the case. What they can easily change is adding additional crafting options, adding additional portals per area, and modifying the length of zones. I think those will happen. I really want this to be a good game but it is not there yet.
