I have 7k hours in PoE1. My take

Can we talk about the music? It's so damn good. 100% with you, the game is so rewarding and engaging.

Most bad critics are approaching the game with poe1 mindset. It is not a new league of poe1 please get over it.

I have zero hours in POE1 and i am loving this game. Quite refreshing from what i usually play

Great to see reviews/opinions from people who like the game, not just dislike. Kind of more negative opinions floating in sub lately... I guess people who like the game are busy playing :D

I really love the game but i'm concerned about the campaign. I'm having a great time (almost in act 3) and honestly I don't mind it being hard & longer than poe1, but I don't know if I will be motivated to do it 100+ times like poe1, in fact i'm pretty sure I wont be because endgame is much funnier in ARPGs. So yeah, very good experience so far but will I like to do it every season? I dont think so

Near same amount of hours, near same opinion.

One major take that I have is, I think the first act is a bit slow. It could really use some tutorial quests that force you to craft a good weapon for your character. More than one. Say at lvl 5 and again at lvl 10.

Early game weapon crafting is so important to making those levels feel good.

I am by no means an ARPG expert, but I am speechless that people's endgoal of playing ARPG is to no-brain fights and basically not play the game.

I believe everyone thinks the game is great for early access. The issue is there's practically zero loot drops. The difficulty vs reward doesn't exist because there is no reward. You bash your head against a boss for 10 minutes for a wisdom scroll and some blue gloves if you're lucky.

My only problem with the game is the size of ui and text on the ps5

Tbh if they just made the drops a bit better I think they could combat a lot of the early campaign frustrations. It’s far too famine atm

Even in EA with 20 hours in, I can comfortably say this is the best arpg I've ever played.

So, here are my two takes if anyone wants to hear more opinions. I love the difficulty. I just wish they either made a way to reroll magic items or increased the drop rate of crafting currency, because right now, the drop rate is attrocious

The gameplay and the visuals are stunning.
The trials are the worst part of the whole experience and I desperately hope they think of a cleaner, less RNG, solution.
Gem choices (especially supports) feel so limited. It felt like sometimes I'd play for hours (2 zones lol) without changing any gear or gems.
All boots should have move speed as an implicit mod. Boots without it are basically worthless, even more so in poe2. I found a Wanderlust early and the 20% MS was a game changer - I can't bring myself to replace them at level 39.

My only complaint is that I rarely feel like I'm actually progressing. The mechanics are made for a slowburn game with simple mechanics and then you have the gems and the PoE1-like tree with lots of options but you very rarely get to tinker with them because the progression is so incredibly slow. Nothing wrong with the game mechanics, I just want the progression to be like 20-30% quicker so you can actually feel the progress. In a game that's so tightly bound to the skill tree and equipment drops, simply cheering for just killing a boss doesn't really cut it. It kinda feels good to beat a boss until you see the loot and get nothing of value to make your character stronger because of bad luck. This is especially true to some classes like melee that are struggling to advance in some stages of the game. Sure, you can create weapons if you get currency. If. The game just needs a tiny bit of tweaking to make they journey a bit smoother. Now it aims to smother the player too much, especially if you have bad luck with loot. This affects the bosses too because you just get tired of them being damage sponges if you've gotten nothing for your character in the past few hours. Then you have to grind for a level or equipment to progress and that's incredibly tedious because the grind so slow with bad gear and again you are chained in place for several hours if you're unlucky. I think that the game needs to drop more currency or gear and a bit quicker EXP gain to balance things out.

I think Game is pretty good, will nedd some getting used to the low mobility, my problem is the loot, specially rings and amulets dont seem to fukin drop for me

I cannot believe that aside from tons of content and build diversity, amazing pace, difficulty, this game runs so smoothly already on 2nd day of EA, while another PoE-lite still stutters for me on a pretty decent PC.

Completely agree, I never played PoE1 but pretty much all souls-like games plus D3/4 and LE. PoE2 feels like Elden Ring and Last Epoch had a child and I'm loving it.

The final boss in act 1 was the best (and hardest) boss experience I ever had in an ARPG. Yes I died a lot and it took my sorc 3 hours to kill it but I always knew why I died, it was me who f-ed up, not some random bs the game threw at me like Lilith in D4.

However when it comes to thrashmobs there are usually one or two particular enemies giving me a hard time and I can't figure out exactly why I'm taking so much damage from them. Sometimes it's obvious like mobs blocking you in pools of blood, sometimes not so much. This is especially true in Act 2, some spiders are hitting me very hard in the mines while all other thrash melts like ice. I wished the game would communicate more clearly what is killing me.

Other than that though the game is brilliant. Time will tell if they can keep up the methodical fighting through the endgame content as well or if we will see "no button" builds too like the ones my friends play in PoE1.

Finally killing count geonor was a moment I’ll never forget. What a colossal pain in the ass but the feeling of finally beating him was worth it.

Game is good, very good. Haters gonna hate and if poe2 is too difficult then Diablo 4 is there for you.

Peace.

Honestly I feel the same. It's refreshing to play an arpg that feels challenging but is still very fair with its checkpoints and such.

I do think the difficulty should be slightly tweaked for maybe the 1st half of act 1, playing as a warrior I died repeatedly to everything because it feels like the challenge was geared towards "don't get hit" but there are so many attacks that are impossibly hard to get out of as a melee with the amount of tracking, range and speed all bosses have.

Still had a blast though, nothing as nerve racking as a dark souls either, it's generally very clear what you gotta do in fights.

Although drops are low (feeling coming off of D4) I dont really mind this because every time something drops you frel REALLY exited because it can make such a massive difference. I waa really getting the Diablo 2 vibe again from my youth. If they do tweak something, I would suggest only making minor alterations, as this will increase the longevity of the game. (Farming for ZOD-rune feeling when it finally drops.)

The game's 10/10. PoE 1 players are mad but the game wasn't even made for them anyway. Let them cry as much as they want.

I'm pretty sure most people are missing the dopamine hit from the previous POE1's gear drop rate. And we are mad about not getting that dopamine lol.

I agree with this entirely. Specially with the part that you reach a point where you feel you need to upgrade some things. Only thing is that I feel the maps get a little to big and I already dread the feeling that I have to do it again for every character.

The 1:1 challenge vs success is the thing that’s got coming back for more. It feels fairly well balanced from the start. I’m always challenged, which is always forcing me to review my approach or gear. In not just plowing through. Quite an interesting feeling, because I thought I’d prefer plowing through. I feel it’s providing more longevity. I’m taking it slower and enjoying my time. Keen to see how it feels after more play time, but at this point in time I find it’s genuinely an excellent game.

I feel a little lost when it comes to the skill and support gems. The gems seem few and far between so every time I use one I worry I’m making a suboptimal choice. It doesn’t help that there’s a whole hidden menu of options, many of which are straight up better than the “suggested”ones

I could do without the crashes every two hours or so.

God damn the boss fights are so incredibly good, from mechanics to animations, effects and most notably voice acting. PoE has this thing where bosses' voice acting is so ultra high quality for some reason. [SPOILER AHEAD] I loved viper Napu so hard because I've fought it many times in legion and always thought she was cool. She gave me a super rough time and I loved every second of it.

The count is such a fucking badass boss fight. That was the holy shit moment for me. Throughout my whole experience with poe 1, no boss has given me this feeling. It's similar to dark souls, this larger than life battle with AMAZING score blasting while you're trying to survive a dozen different attacks. PoE 2 has created the greatest ARPG.

I am having a blast, but campaign is not something that I would like to do every 3 or 4 months, it is more like one of those platformers game that I play once, go to absolute degeneracy and once ends I never touch the game again

Damn right. It's one of the best games I have ever played. I fucking love it. It looks, sounds and feels incredible. I love the pace, the skills, the combos. The way that all comes together in the boss battles is just insane. It's so intense and satisfying. Sure it's hard, I have died 127 times, mid act 3 as Monk, but I am having an awesome time.

The one thing I would like to see is more abundant currency drops so that you have a few more tools to solve the gear problems that the gameplay presents you with. Eg. Dreadnought at the end of Act 2 was incredibly hard, harder than the boss, seems I needed more armour, but I wasn't able to do much about it. Just had to try again and again, really slowly, till I made it.

What a game though, can't wait to see the rest of it.

As someone very new trying to understand this game, I'd like to just play and experiment, but I don't want to end up broken or bricked. Is PoE 2 new player friendly enough that those of us without hundreds/thousand of PoE hours don't need "guides" to survive? I have the 300 store points and have no clue what to buy even.

Finally some positive takes after reading so many negative ones.

I think people are just used to speedrunning campaign in a few hours and now frustrated that they can't do it.

I was hoping for a more engaging campaign, so I think I'll love it.

I can only start in a few days, so hopefully it's as good as I hope it is.

7k hours, open beta Poe 1 enjoyer here

I agree with everything you've said, I don't get the complaints.

GGG are onto something here. For the love of god, go back to POE if you can’t see that. POE player since beta. ARPG player since Diablo 1.

GGG keep going, this is special. This feels like playing Diablo 2 for the first time in some hard to explain way.

"And once slapping on another piece or two im on par with the difficulty again" But the thing is, gear is very rare in this game. So essentially you need to grind and area over and over again to get gold to buy from a vendor. This breaks the whole arpg feeling. Leveling should feel smooth, but it doesn't here at all.
Think of the original Pokemon game, where you just kept regrinding the same areas over and over until you greatly over leveled your pokemon to the gym,

I feel like writing down the class, and level should be mandatory for these kinds of posts.

I never played D4 but all my friends who are D4 veterans say the bosses alone win them over. Just on how diverse they are visually and mechanically.

Another quote i heard them say was that the vendor positions are right next to each other. Right out of the portal, you unviel your items and straight to the vendors or storage.

Also no armour degredation!!!! This was my favorite feature, I dont want to be further punished for dying.

Everything about the game respects your time.

My only criticism is I wish quests were a bit more descriptive on what you need to do or where to go. I got lost a few times and wasted about 2 hours looking through zones i thought i missed.

Right? I play arpgs for more than 30 years now. Poe 2 feels so good, engaging and challenging but also fair & not frustrating. Things that are not perfect yet, will easily adjusted in the coming months. I see an incredible base game to start another decade of high quality content.

Im fine with monsters and loot reset but if i explored a zone can we keep the fog away pls its annoying

Got to end-game in PoE1 and then dropped it. Just got too convoluted. Haven't gotten to end-game content in PoE2 yet. I'm hoping it is easier to engage with.

I'm enjoying the leveling up process a lot more, but the fact everyone is in a similar situation probably makes it a lot more enjoyable. Feels more like a community when everyone is just getting started, rather than entering into a game where the majority of players are veterans doing completely different content.

New player to POE a father and husband and the game is amazing, I cant remember the last time I went to bed after 12 but this game made me do it. Getting awoken at 6 by the little one wasn't fun but worth it.

Also the pause function is amazing.

I agree completely with this review. But would add that some builds seems to be to bad to be viable and others are op, balancing problems in my opinion. But in total its IMO the best arpg ever made.

Edit: I also like the fact that drops are more rare than the original but i agree maybe to rare for example have not seen a singel amulett drop during entire act 1.

I truly hope endgame wil not be warping around pressing a button to explode screens

The game really reminds me of the Elden Ring, to be patient take thing slow, if boss is too difficult, just need to level up/upgrade gear/skills and take your time & not just to nuke out each map from start, it’s really refreshing makes you appreciate the grind. A really awesome job from GGG!

This game is actually terrible, how am I supposed to focus on the game without subway surfers gameplay on the bottom

Don't think boots need more movementspeed, though idk how GGG feels about making it an inherent stat, you are always gonna use boots with ms roll, all you are doing by locking it behind a substat make it harder/RNG depended when you will get your first.

What they could also do is give boots out of combat movementspeed as implicit, doesn't ruin boss spacing and timings but allows backtracking to be less tedious.

Feels like I made this post myself lmao.

I've also got 7000 hours, and feel exactly the same as you do lmao!

About 4k hours in PoE 1. At the Start i disliked it but after the first 3 Acts i started enjoying it more than PoE 1.

Currency drops are low? Okay, so I'm lucky then to have received an ex around level 20?

Outside of alch orbs being non-existent, I thought they had buffed currency and nerfed item drops.

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