Path of Exile 2 Early Access REVIEW - Is it the BEST ARPG of ALL TIME?
Dec. 9, 2024Path of Exile 2 Early Access REVIEW – Is it the BEST ARPG of ALL TIME?
In this article, we’ll be doing aPath of Exile 2Review for its early acces. I have so many good things to say about this game, so let’s get on to our impressions. So, the best way I can describe Path of Exile 2, and I know a lot of people are going to hate me for saying this because this comparison is overused, is it feels like the Dark Souls of ARPGs, and I know you don’t want to hear that. A lot of people out there are going to immediately be like, “Oh god, why is he making this comparison?” But it genuinely feels that way.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was also playing Path of Exile Early Access, and we both thought the exact same thing. He’s like, “You know, this is going to sound weird, but this game feels a lot likeDark Soulsto me”, and you wouldn’t think of it looking at it, but that was the same thought I had when playing, and I’ll try to explain exactly what made me think that. Firstly, Path of Exile 2 begins with no difficulty option, meaning you can’t just control the difficulty of the campaign from the get-go, and you’re going to be playing on a challenging difficulty by default.
The normal version of this game is still very difficult, and it’s not an easy game by any means. It’s going to challenge a lot of people, particularly the people that, like myself, are not as familiar with Path of Exile or haven’t played hundreds and hundreds and hours of the first game. It’s going to challenge you when you play. You have to have a completely different mentality than that you play something likeDiablo, where you’re not expected to face any challenge until you get to the endgame.
You’re going to face that challenge immediately in Path of Exile 2, and one of the things about this game too is that there are lots and lots of boss fights in this game, and the boss fights are very difficult in some cases, and you’re going to die on those bosses repeatedly. I died many, many times on some of thebosses in PoE 2. I had to change up mybuilda few times, go farm somegear, and grind up a couple of levels to get through some of the bosses. It wasn’t just like, oh, if I beeline to the end of the game, I’ll get there. I had to take detours, level up, make my character stronger to get through the challenges of the game.
And when you think of ARPGs in general, that’s not something that you typically think about. You typically think, I’ll just face-roll the campaign and then get toendgame, and that’s where the challenge is, as I mentioned earlier, but that’s not the case here. And let me tell you, it feels so rewarding when you down some of these bosses after five, six tries, ten tries, something like that, where you have to go in there and play well to beat the boss. It’s not just some overpowered build, particularly when you have a brand newcharacter, and you don’t have a horde of loot in your vault that you can just go pull out and make them super OP. But it’s going to challenge you, and it’s going to feel so rewarding when you finally down those bosses.
The best thing I can say, or the best comparison I can make here, is it gave me that same Dark Souls feeling, thatElden Ringfeeling when I completed those bosses, that I just felt rewarding to do so. There is a second difficulty in this game called Cruel that you unlock after you defeat the game or complete the campaign, the first three acts of the game. It will basically unlock three new acts to play through that look like they kind of rearrange the order of the game a little bit, but it seems like similar areas with maybe souped-up enemies and things like that. But once you complete that, my understanding is that you’ll unlock the endgame for PoE, so then you’ll be able to get into that.
Secondly,enemiesrespawn on the map when you die now, and this absolutely makes the game feel more like Dark Souls. I know it’s just a simple mechanic, but sometimes when you run into a pack of enemies in a certain area, you’ll get killed, or maybe you get one-shot by a mechanic you didn’t see, and you’ll die, and it definitely makes death feel more meaningful in the game. You can’t just AFK, and if you die, big deal, you respawn and then run back to where you are. You have to pay attention to what you’re doing, and it adds a certain amount of tension as you’re making your way through the game.
At the moment, this is a bit of a double-edged sword. I think it’s for two reasons. First of all, themapsin some cases are absolutely astronomically large. We’re talking one to one and a half hours to get from one side of the map to the other if you fight your way through and explore everything. They’re quite large, and if you die a couple of times and you have to run that a few times, it can still take you 10-15 minutes or 20 minutes to get to the end again, and then if you get close and die and have to do that again, it can be somewhat frustrating.
It also feels like the maps as a whole, even though there are structures there and some events in them, are missing a lot of those random events that happen. I expect more and more of these to be added as the early access develops, but at the moment they feel a little bit empty. So when you are running all the way through and die, and running all the way through and die, and running all the way through, but you’re not seeing too many interesting things happening, it can also lead to a little bit of repetitiveness. This is something that I expect to get ironed out through the development of the game.
The next thing to mention is that a lot of the mechanics of the game are not explained well, or they’re not explained at all, and you have to figure these things out as you go. While that might seem like a negative when you hear that, it’s one of the things I like about Path of Exile 2, because even after getting all the way through, I can tell you that I just feel like I just scratched the tiniest surface of this game. Like, I feel like there’s so much more to discover about it, particularly when it comes to mechanics and builds and lore.
I didn’t spend a ton of time looking through that, but I imagine that will get more and more interesting as I play. I feel like I just barely touched what this game is after one playthrough, and if you’re someone that loves to tinker with builds and playstyles, and you can see the synergies between things and kind of theorycraft, PoE 2 feels like it’s three games wrapped into one with the number of things you can do in terms of build variety.
I think I’m not exaggerating when I say that. It feels like there are almost limitless combinations of builds in this game, and if you’re a build enthusiast like I am, I think you’re going to continue to discover combinations months and months after this game comes out, if not years. This is absolutely fascinating and probably the biggest draw for me in this game. I know it is a huge draw for a lot of longtime players as well.
One major change that I really love is they’ve made it a lot easier to respec your skill points in thepassive skill tree. There’s simply an NPC that does this for a certain amount of gold. The amount of gold seems to increase the higher level you are, so you can really mess around with your skill tree a lot more. Through my playthrough, I removed points and put points probably a good 50 to 100 times, just experimenting with different combinations.
This really allows you to kind of go wild. Like, you can’t just do it a thousand times because you have that gold limitation there, but it does allow you the freedom to experiment and try different things even in your passive skill tree. I know maybe some hardcore players out there won’t like this change, but I think it’s such a good change to bring just a tiny bit more accessibility to players who like that mentality and don’t want to feel like they have to start over or follow religiously some guide online, and that they can experiment and play around with it on their own. I think that’s a massive, massive win here.
Another thing that I really enjoy is that theskill gemsin the game are not as randomized. Now you have uncut skill gems that you can convert into the gems you want for your build, which allows you to make progress in your build more consistently. It’s still somewhat randomized, right? These are still random drops from enemies and bosses, and you don’t get them all the time, but when you do get them, it’s always great to see them because you know your build will get stronger from them. You can turn them into what you need instead of getting random skill gems that maybe have nothing to do with the build that you want.
Now you’re able to basically always use these whenever you see them, and that’s just a great, great addition in my opinion. I absolutely love the theme of the game. The dark theme of it, the art direction—absolutely outstanding in my opinion. I love the way the game looks. The details on skill effects and boss designs are frankly the best in the industry and the genre. It makes all the difference. When you’re looking at them, you’re just blown away by the amount of detail. You can see things moving on the bosses, like effects happening on the screen that just look really good. It really adds to the immersion of the game.
You can see that the style of the game was clearly inspired by games likeDiablo 2, with light emanating from the player and dark spaces around them. There’s even a light attribute. I enjoy this. It’s kind of a throwback but also a progression of that at the same time. Absolutely, hands down, the best I’ve seen for this genre so far.
I will say, though, that I don’t love the map designs completely. I kind of mentioned this a minute ago, but a lot of the maps are really large with a lot of kind of similar elements in them. As you’re exploring, you might see the same thing again and again. ParticularlyAct 2felt very samey to me. It’s probably because the biome is like a desert, but I do wish the maps were a bit smaller—maybe like two-thirds the size—and maybe there were a few more maps instead to make the variety a bit more.
As it stands now, a lot of the maps look very similar, so there isn’t quite as much variety as I would like. Mechanically though, the combat in Path of Exile 2 is the most dynamic I’ve ever played in an ARPG of this type. The amount of environmental interaction and control you have over your character is frankly unmatched. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done before in an ARPG to this degree. You have so much direct control over your character’s movements and actions that it almost feels like it’s blending the typical Dark Souls ARPG with a typical hack-and-slash ARPG. It’s somehow merged them into one genre that’s its own thing, which is incredible.
It’s interesting because at first I really struggled with Path of Exile 2’scontrols. When you move, you continue to move. If you click to move, you kind of continue in that direction, and it took some getting used to. I was playing Ranger, so part of that is probably because of the playstyle. But then I found that a lot of the boss arenas are not particularly large, so I would over-move a lot and get hit by attacks. I died a lot because of that.
For a little bit there, I didn’t feel like I had much control over my character, and it was kind of frustrating. But when I switched to controller, it was like a revelation. Everything changed for me. I felt like I was playing a completely different game. Frankly, it feels like this might be the first ARPG of this type—the hack-and-slash ARPG—that was designed specifically with a controller in mind first and the mouse and keyboard second.
And I know a lot of people might not want to hear that, and of course, I could be wrong, that might not be the case, but that’s just what it feels like to me. When you start dodge rolling, and you’re strafing, and you’re jump attacking, detonating, and it’s all very fluid on a controller, very easy to do, it’s so seamless to use your skills with your buttons and position your character correctly. They nailed this aspect, and frankly, after I got used to the controller, after I was able to map all my skills and kind of set it up how I wanted my potions on buttons, I don’t think I’ll ever play this game again on mouse and keyboard. It’s just so good on the controller that I can’t help but think that it was designed for that.
Maybe some other people are very savvy with mouse and keyboard out there that might be able to run circles around me on the controller, but again, as somebody who’s not like a hardcore player in this game, this plays really, really well on controller, and if you’re somebody who really wanted to play a game like this on controller, or you like the way like Diablo 4 plays, you’ll love the way this plays on controller, because I think it’s even more dynamic than Diablo 4 so far.
Something else that I love that I want to mention is that Path of Exile 2 has couch co-op on one system, even if you’re playing on PC, so you can play together on the couch, or in front of a computer with a friend or a loved one. They don’t have to have the game, and this is something that Diablo has been doing successfully since Diablo 3. Both Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 have this. It’s such a great feature and a great option. I miss couch co-op in games. Really glad to see that PoE 2 has this.
So those things being said, Path of Exile 2 is not a flawless game yet, and I emphasize yet, because it’s the very beginning of early access, but it’s not hard to see where this title is going. The writing is on the wall. It has the potential to dethrone Diablo 2. It’s the all-time king of the genre, and I guess that it will likely surpass it.
There are still issues with the game. Obviously, it’s early access, namely bugs, missing content, crashes, stuff like that. Controller, even though the controls are really good, sometimes the menu hangs for 10 seconds when you’re using a controller, which doesn’t happen on the mouse and keyboard. Interacting with some things in the environment is not as easy. The combat is great, but there are other little caveats there that make it a little bit more difficult. But again, I want to emphasize that this isn’t early access. These things are expected to happen. I’m not drawing attention to these to say, ooh, I’m just simply saying that it’s going to take some time to iron these out. That’s what early access is for.
But even with these things, you can see where this game is at. Grinding Gear Games and Chris Wilson are the best in the business at what they do, and I strongly believe that they’ll join the annals of greatness alongside the likes of Larian and FromSoftware after the release of this game. They have an extremely good reputation and track record in the gaming industry as a whole, but much like Larian withDivinity Original Sin, they weren’t quite as well known until they madeDivinity Original Sin 2, and I think the same thing is going to happen here with Path of Exile 2.
This game is going to explode. They’re going to get the recognition that they undoubtedly deserve, and they’re going to be up there with the best game developers in the industry as a shining example of the types of games that are possible when you have a great team and great leadership.
So that wraps up our video about Path of Exile 2. I will try and get some impressions out of the endgame as soon as I get there and get through it a bit to try and describe what it is and what I like about it, what I don’t like about it, so you can look for that in the future. I’ll also have some class guides out there to kind of give you a general idea of how to play specific classes in the near future as well.
Well, I want to hear from you guys. What do you make of Path of Exile 2 out there? Do you think my statements are overblown that this could potentially be a Diablo 2 dethroner in terms of quality and going the distance over a long period? Am I insane for thinking that, or have you guys suspected this as well? Let me know in the comments below.
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
