Recent reviews by Octavius

Written 30 Jan 2025, EARLY ACCESS - putting this down as a NO to recommendation because of the pitfalls

200+ hours on the game reaching endgame on 7 characters in tier 12 mapping (mid-endgame but most peoples standards) so I thought id give some insights

TLDR at the bottom:

Good stuff:

Visuals - the game looks amazing, the quality of the visual effects on the skills (especially the ones compared to POE1, like spark for example) are greatly improved. the armour sets look great to the point where im not even bothered that i dont have all my POE1 MTXs yet to swap them out.

Campaign (Act 1-3) - the campaign feels good and is interesting because its only half done, its hard to say how it will pan out with act 4-6 but at least for the moment its a good campaign. there are some odd story parts but i think overall thematically its good.

Skills - especially the new skills, are interesting and show some good potential, like the quarterstaff strike skills, they give melee a sense of fluid movement to keep the fights going, the meta/payload/payoff mechanics where "if this happens, do that" are nice.

Bad stuff:

Meta builds - sure, you can build off-meta at the moment, I have a couple of characters like that, but they feel like they need more work, certain builds just don't feel good to play, either from a damage output or just the fluidity of the play.

Melee skills - this refers to the warrior side of the tree with maces (rather than quarterstaves) - the slow, deliberate and heavy hits with a mace seem like a good compromise - you hit slow but one-shot or heavy stun most mobs. that is until you start getting into the bigger pack mobs and you get rushed and swarmed every pack, the game just doesnt respect your windup time for attacks, despite the approach of a slower more methodical game.

Passives - follow up really from the warrior side above, but applies across the entire skill tree. so many downsides applied to EVERY notable, previously it was the keystones that had a big build changing/defining upside, with a reasonable downside. now a large majority of notables also carry this. with most of them being located on the warrior side, such as "40% increased damage, but reduced attack speed" leading to an overall loss of DPS, whilst the other sides of the tree only get upside notables.

Endgame- Feels like it has potential to be good, it just isn't there yet, sure it was a rush job to get something out the door while they work on ACt 4-6, but its rough, the maps are mostly dull or undesirable, with the few good maps being few and far between. Most maps also stick to the narrow corridor approach, which means a lot of builds either get stuck on terrain 9/10 of the time while moving (Tempest Flurry for example) or get stuck in doors like Minions (this is mostly fixed but still problematic).

Timescales - they are currently treating Poe2 like its a new league, whereas it is on a technical level (its POE1 update 4.0) certain fixes to the game, bugs, skill updates, nerfs/buffs etc need a quicker response time, this isnt like a POE1 league where fixes are applied a week or so after launch and then AT MOST, a quick fix here and there over the course of 3-4 month leagues. the aforementioned needs a lot more reactive hotfixes, otherwise its going to drive people away.

Design mentality - the idea of a slower game is something that GGG clearly want to do, and sure, for the most part it is a slower game to play, but there is clearly a level of "hardcore mentality" being applied to the softcore side of the game, a challenging game is good, a game where the game design actively makes you want to stop playing due to making it difficult for difficulty's sake is not. Its hard to "feel the weight" of the gameplay if there arent the upsides WHEN you do feel said weight. the game feels like it wants to be hardcore and hardcore only. there are also some design regressions that seem like the last 10 years of Poe1 havent been thought about for Poe2/.


Downright problematic -

Trade - the age old problem of POE1 and now POE2, their manifesto of human interaction is outdated and really has no place in an ARPG of this calibre, other ARPGS have managed to create a sort of auction house / bazaar where players can simply post their idea for a cost and price tag and leave it at that. Spamming 40-50 people for items that they clearly dont want to sell, either because of price fixing or because they are busy doing endgame mapping and dont want to leave for a low value item sale, is possibly one of the worst parts of the game. its 2025, there are alternatives to manual trading that work for everyone or at least improve upon it (hell the currency exchange, brought about in the recent POE1 league and also in POE2 is how it should be done, but on a grander scale).

Crashes - THIS ISSUE APPERS TO NOW BE FIXED WITH THE UPDATE TO THE 24H2 PROBLEM

TLDR:

If you are looking for a decent game to replace POE1, or just looking for a new ARPG, I would wait a few more months of this early access, the game has teething problems that will not be fixed tomorrow, it has glaring problems with crashes that should be high priority, but hard to tell if they are.

can tell this is still very much early access, mechanically feels sluggish to run routes (AI will always have some great run every time though) and Passing is a 1% chance to actually have it get caught. think it will be a long time before it can match against the likes of Madden

Massive Fan of Fallout, this game ticks the right boxes for a Coop Style game (PVP really isnt a thing, nor is it an MMO with only 24 players per server). loads of great QOL updates over the past 6 years, building upon the fountains of fallout 4 (which besides the aforementioned, plays the same way).

agreed its not for everyone, but the community makes this game special and inviting to try something new.

the game aint beating around the bush when it comes to making a diablo style game based around getting loot

great game, underratted IMO.

similiar to L4d in the style and feel,

Teamwork is a big point of the game.