It looks like I already spent a few hours playing Path of Exile and should add my two cents. After applying for the Closed Beta some years ago, I almost forgot about this game. Then it showed up on Steam for release and I dared to give it a try. As you may already have guessed, I didn't regret it yet. And it's not only the gloomy atmosphere that reminds many people of the old Diablo games I like about it, but also the innovative skill sandbox, that provides nearly countless ways to combine skills with each other as well as special equipment, founded on the most sympathetic financing model of the free-to-play era to date.


You have to admit: PoE and the old Diablo games look very alike! The player characters, monsters, surroundings and even the user interface remind you a lot of Diablo. That's one reason I prefer PoE to the more »juvenile« cartoon-style graphics of Torchlight for example.
But there's also a big and welcome difference to the Diablo series and other games of the genre: the skill system. You can freely combine active skills with so-called support skills, that have a great influence on the skills' basic properties. The game also contains the most interesting (passive) skill tree and unique items I have seen yet: Your choices in equipment and skills can have deep impacts in various ways on the game mechanics. The skill system thus is a great sandbox and provides a fresh as well as interesting approach to building your character. I already spent dozens of hours designing new builds with the PoE skill tree planner (which is a separate little tool I can strongly recommend to use in addition to the game).


The financing model Grinding Gear Games chose for the game is actually quite simple. There are basically three kinds of items you can buy through micro transactions: stash tabs, character slots and cosmetic/decorative items. While the latter don't offer an ingame advantage of any sort and every player starts with a generous amount of 25 character slots, let's take a closer look on the stash tab offers and discuss them: You start with four tabs, which is enough until you play more extensive and/or decide to collect a larger amount of items (unique or rare equipment for example). Well, let's be honest: When you reach that level of dedication to the game, it's totally appropriate to spend some money for it, especially since stash tab bundles aren't expensive at all for a quality product like PoE and even get regular price reductions.
Funny enough: There are still people complaining about a free-to-play model even if it's this fair. As long as we live in a capitalist world, you will just have to get along with the fact, that nothing is really free. PoE offers the fairest financing model of all the free-to-play games I have seen to date (and as a hardcore gamer I've seen or read about a lot of 'em).