View my other reviews here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/5504022-Hirntot-Zocken/

Welcome Exile!

Path of Exile is currently the best aRPG on the market and the best thing, next to how good it is... It's completely FREE!

Path of Exile is the game that Diablo 3 wanted to be. And instead of class based skills you are building your own skills and modify them to something whatever you want to play.

You can choose from 7 Classes. 6 of them with 3 Ascendancies (subclasses) making it 18 classes. Then you got the 7th one which is the Scion that can mix 2 Ascendancies with some parts of their skills giving you even more options.

The only parts that change by choosing a class is the starting point on the massive passive tree and the 3 ascendancies. So there is no skill bound to only one class. You can even play a Witch as a full 2 handed melee character if you want to, or take a big bulky marauder as a spell caster or bow class. Whatever floats your boat!

With around 220 different skills and 110 support gems your possibilities are limitless.
You can link, in normal cases, up to 5 support gems to one active skill gem.
Want an example with a simple Fireball?

Fireball: You shoot a fireball. On impact it does damage, explodes and does more damage to surrounding enemies.
Boring, right? Every single game has that. Okay. Let us link fireball to a Greater Multiple Projectiles Support Gem.
The damage of the fireball gets reduced by ~35% but instead of one Fireball we are now shooting 5! Each does 35% less than the original but have a big mob group and you have lots of more damage from that.
Still not fancy enough? Okay! Let's add "Chain Support".
Now we have 5 Fireballs. If these now hit an enemy they do their splash damage and fly to the next enemy, splash damage and to the last enemy. Sadly they lose around 30% damage for that.
You still think it's boring? Okay, let us add a Fork Support Gem.
Now we fire 5 Fireballs that do a splash damage on hit, split up into two fireballs that chain to the next enemy. You now have a screen full of fireballs. You still have a problem because you are lazy? Okay, let us add a 5th Support Gem, a "Spell Totem". Now we don't shoot the fireballs yourself. Nope. We now spawn a totem that shoots them for us.
While this combination is dumb as we only raise the number of projectiles but lose out on damage this is just for a good laugh but should give you a VERY small idea of what the game offers on possibilities as this was just for ONE Spell.

The next thing that makes PoE a true way of individualization of your character is the passive skill tree. Each level, and from a few quests, you gain one skill point. If you should ever reach level 100, which you won't because it is brutal hard, you have 121 or 123 skill points (125 on a Scion at max) to spend. But you have to choose from 1325 passive nodes, so be sure to plan ahead!

This brings me to the next point. As you can see, just the core functions alone give you unlimited choices and gear gives you even more possibilities, so you really need to plan your character before you even start it. You can respec any time for ingame currency (Not a real money currency!) but that is work as they need to be grinded or traded.
So if you are new, take a guide or your char will probably fail.

The graphics of the game have started very simple but the whole engine is always being worked on. In the last Engine Update they added an option for pixel perfect lighting that even adds light to some skills and gear which looks REALLY awesome. Also character models are being reworked currently.

The music and sounds are also always on point.

There is something else that the game does differently: You do not have "Money" in the game. Instead of that you get "Currency Items'' that are being used as payment for everything but serve also the purpose to craft your own items. This is all big RNG but if you feel lucky you can get rich. So no grind for 58293923 Gold to that one item.

Also the game features "Leagues''! Each league lasts for 3 months and offers you something very new. Last league (As of writing this Review) it was "Delve" and you had an unlimited dungeon that you could explore. You could go deeper to get stronger mobs or you just spread out to the sides to loot whatever you could find. The player base loved it and so it is now a core game feature. So every three months you have a major update with new content, reworked skills, new items and much more. So no matter how long you play, there is always something new to pull you back into the game.

Now to the question that everyone always asks first: Is this pay 2 win or pay 2 play?
NO! Not one bit. You have the whole game at your feet, no content blocked behind any money.
You can buy MTX, Stash Tabs, Character Slots or any other convenience stuff. While the MTX are quite expensive, they are mostly what keeps the game alive. You can also buy temporary supporter packs and you get points AND already some cool MTX stuff on top!

All in All Path of Exile is THE aRPG on the market. True versatility, constant updates and new features and an awesome community on top.