Path of Exile 2 0.5 Review

In Path of Exile 2 0.4 I never made it out of the campaign after a solid 0.3. I played a bear druid and died 50+ times in the campaign. Oddly, almost entirely to trash. The bosses were very easy. Ultimately, dying to trash put me off so I bailed. In 0.5 I made it to 92-93 as a Disciple of Varashta. I died a total of 25 times and honestly just rolled most of the content. I made my 8 of 8 challenges then peaced out after 2.5 days of play time.

The Good 

Making the campaign shorter was nice. It took me around 16 hours to finish (from 21 in 0.3). Of course playing a character that can delete content helps quite a bit but they did trim it down.

The new end game additions are nice. All of the quests give you some purpose in end game. So chasing those down is pretty fun. The new way of juicing with tablets is far better than previously.

The new atlas passive tree is a big improvement over what was there before. And completing it with the maps in the stronghold (I think that is what it is called) works well. The master boosts are a nice addition as well

I love challenges and bringing them in makes me happy. I got my 8 of 8 then called it a league. 

Disciple of Varashta deleted everything and was easy to get going. Once I got the first Djinn it was a very smooth experience.

The Bad 

Campaign is still too long. I absolutely would not start another character in PoE2 with how long the campaign is and in PoE1 I play at least two characters per league because I know I can get through the campaign in about 6 hours or so as opposed to the likely 12 it would take me in 2. They need to trim more. I am concerned with acts 5 and 6 coming that it is going to take longer. I think they need to give us a skip after you level your first character each league. And I am not talking about starting the second character at 60 or something. I am talking about an alternate way of leveling like endless delve or D3 riftstones. A mode where you can just kill lots of monsters and turn your brain off mostly. This is my second biggest concern with the game.

Maps still suck. The ratio of bad to good maps is still terrible. And there are only a handful I might even possibly classify as good. There are some passable ones but most of them are kind of terrible. However, my character this league could just mow through the tiny passages blowing everything up so, for this character, it wasn't the worst experience. But it's far cry from selecting classic layouts and matching content and just blasting. 

I think a possible solution to the bad map layouts would be allowing a favorite or maybe a favorite couple of maps per biome and only those show up in those biomes. It wouldn't be as good as PoE1 but it would be much better than what is there now. I still don't love the never ending atlas. I am warming to it a bit but they really do need a way to control biomes.

The new atlas tree is a nice addition but the way it is implemented is not great. You can easily pick nodes that can wreck a less than optimal build and you can't unspec anything. The choice nodes are fine but I feel like they don't give enough control over what you are running. You can force run certain content by running 3 tablets but compared with the PoE1 tree it is not a ton of control. I prefer more control over less. They have time to improve this.

In addition, the two times I have really dented the endgame I played very strong builds. I feel like the only way to enjoy the game for me is to play such a strong build I can ignore almost everything. GGG wants this gameplay to be tactical but it has never been since it launched. It's just monsters playing PoE1 while you play PoE2. If you want Dark Souls style combat in an ARPG I suggest No Rest for the Wicked they actually have combat you have to think about. 

Another knock on effect of the long campaign and having to play a strong build is if you miss in your build choice you have 16 hours ahead of you to play something else that is hopefully better. And that's not a bridge I am willing to cross. I have never been the biggest theorycrafter but the punishing campaign and gameplay absolutely delete the idea of it for me.

Conclusion

Despite the large bad section, I did play the game for 2.5 days so I was at least enjoying it more than previously. Hopefully, they can mitigate the map layout issue somehow. PoE1 is still the superior game in most ways but at least PoE2 seems worth playing.

Path of Exile 2 .3 Update

In .2 I never made it out of the campaign due to how rough the game was to start that patch. I made it to Act 3 (normal) and just gave up and went and played other games. The good news is that in .3 I made it to level 89 on a Lightning Arrow Deadeye including completing a number of T15 maps. So the game seems much improved in many areas.

The Good 

Asynchronous trading is a masterpiece. It really just makes things so much smoother in terms of upgrading and selling. The trade etiquette in PoE is still pretty strong but in PoE2 it was basically non-existent. So many people ignore trade requests making the system fail at every turn. Now, however, you don't have to deal with that issue at all, you just search then teleport to a hideout and buy what you want. They added an in game trade browser but since Exiled Exchange 2 exists it doesn't really help. The next step for that in game browser is to have a shortcut key to search things in game. Still nice to have, especially for console.

Progression seems much smoother now. I will be saying this a lot I am not sure how much of this is due to playing the most meta of meta skills. Probably factors in. Having enough damage just makes the game feel so much better. Not having to try bosses 20 times in the campaign makes for a better time. I was able to one shot most of the bosses in the campaign and ascend mostly painlessly. Never bothered to do my 4th ascension but it didn't matter.

Sprint is nice. It makes everything smoother in general and backtracking is not nearly as painful with sprint. As an aside the extra movement speed from my first ascendancy that gives Tailwind stacks also helps. Plus the right-side of the tree access to a lot of movement speed makes the campaign and game in general feel better. Once I got the Rhoa mount sprint didn't factor in but the extra speed on the tree plus Tailwind did.

Act 4 and the Interludes were very cool. This coupled with the removal of having to repeat Acts 1-3 again is just a win all around. Act 4 and the interludes are gorgeous and engaging. The newness factors in but it is easily my favorite part of the campaign. They also need to make sure to keep whatever is going on in the interludes as part of the game, which I think they already said they were. 

Abyss mechanic is a lot of fun. Just tons of stuff to kill without having to chase anything all over the place. Monsters were a bit overtuned to begin with but the rewards are cool. The crafting related to this mechanic seems quite overpowered (didn't do much myself). Will be interesting to see how much they nerf it since you can do very high level crafts that are very deterministic.

The Bad 

Campaign is still too long. Took me probably 21 hours. I did engage with Abyss quite a bit and probably left the client running from time to time but let's say 20 hours. That is too damn long. That is with the fastest character class as well. My PoE1 campaign was around 9-10 hours interacting with a ton of Mercs this league. That is completely reasonable for a non-twinked character. The campaign is better now without repeating Acts 1-3 but time is roughly similar. Some of these zones are just far too big and waypoints are useful but not in every situation.

Towers are not good. The method for juicing maps is cumbersome and not fun. Having to chase down multiple towers to get overlaps and optimize pathing to get to those towers without doing too many maps feels bad. 

No completion. Technically you can complete your atlas tree points but it doesn't feel good compared with PoE1. Being able to strive towards finishing your atlas and atlas passive tree is basically perfect in PoE1. PoE2 needs to do something at least remotely similar. This is part of what makes the end game feel kind of pointless.

Maps suck. The layout of most maps is awful. Find someone who loves you like GGG loves a narrow passageway on a map. I can offscreen a decent amount of things but things can get bogged down at so many points. In PoE1 maybe most of the map layouts are bad as well but you don't have to run them unlike PoE2 where you just have to run whatever is put in front of you. Also, while the maps are pretty they lack the character of maps in PoE1. Like Mesa, that map rules and you can tell me what it looks like and how it plays without much though. Same for Canyon or Jungle Valley or Racecourse or any number of other maps. PoE2 is just an endless run of bad map layouts with the occasional good one.

Atlas tree I mentioned before but it is just undercooked and just a shell of what the Atlas tree in PoE1 is. This results in just a lack of choices in what you do in the end game. You have your base points then the tiny trees for each mechanic. Basically you just do whatever is on the map. It is much harder to narrow down to any one thing. Plus most of the layouts suck for like Breach or Delirium.

The wisp mechanic is bad and needs to go or be wildly revamped. Maybe just have a chance in a map to have x number of rares possessed by wisps or something. I am not sure but what it is now is not great. 

Conclusion 

Overall I had a lot of fun in .3 it was far more enjoyable than PoE2 at any other point. I think playing the fastest most meta skill and ascendancy really helped but it still counts as an improvement. The game still has a lot of work to do and I think some of the things it is doing don't work but it is just a .3 early access so a lot can change. I am looking forward to .4 and will give it another look hoping they improve it more. Until then I am waiting impatiently for PoE1 3.27.

Path of Exile 2 has a lot of work to do

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.