Recent reviews by MaxStr

As always honestly reviewing as a released game because it is for sale to public and open for review, don't care about EA excuses (1 million sales already people). However I won't be discussing any lack of missing content that is confirmed be in development.

10 pros and cons

--Pros--
1. Creative and fun boss fights (with the caveat of bullet sponge decision).

2. Modern graphics and runs surprisingly well. Performance is great on 1440p. Some areas are amazing looking.

3. Greater physics and skill interactions (ex projectiles chaining off walls or passing through flame wall).

4a. Ability to move while kiting (granted its even slower than current slow movement speed).
4b. I like that you have the choice to use WASD, controller, or original movement system.

5. While some classes feel clunky the overall combat feels better in general, less like your character is floating around the screen while your mouse drops spells. The visual impact and graphics make for a more visceral and compelling experience.

6. Great sound design, mostly phenomenal voice acting, boss music, and ambience.

7. Dodge roll, I like it, needs to have phasing. Would trade back for movement skills or utility flasks from PoE1 in heartbeat.

8. I like slower pacing and not having 100 attacks/effects a second blinding your vision (sun glasses time) and making you question what even killed you. It's IS a little too much on the extreme side. Game will hopefully discover a happier MIDDLE ground between this and the original.

9. Congrats on having such a great launch while also having one of the better Path of Exile 1 leagues running.

10. I know its been baking for a while but still a very good EA release. Have not personally had major issues with servers or gamebreaking bugs. I do hope popular concerns are taken into account and not ignored.

--Cons--
1. Loot missing in a loot based game.

2. Extremely slow progression to the point of disrespecting your time, especially when compared to the still popular original and other modern action RPGs. Mostly due to very choice and seemingly deliberate and compounding decisions. Compared to Path of Exile this is due to greatly decreased movement speed availability, lack of movement flasks/abilities, larger zones often with very long empty hallways (loading areas? Delaying player?). This is exacerbated by most player skills seemingly very underpowered in campaign and even white mobs having excessive amounts of health with bosses being literal bullet sponges for some classes. Could write an essay on this honestly.

3. Loot absent in a loot based game. Where's that dopamine hit. I am all for quality over quantity compared with Path of Exile's insane amount of garbage drops requiring a strict loot filter but this the other end of the extreme. Gold also way too sparse compared to vendor prices, what's up with that.

4. Campaign is a total slog. So many choice decisions exponentially compound in slowing players progression to an absolute grindfest in a bad way. Extremely painfully slow for any PoE vets.

5. Dodge roll doesn't phase. Lack of accesible phasing options at all. Would trade back for movement skills or utility flasks from PoE1 in heartbeat.

6. Honest concerns over balancing due to state of Path of Exile. Can't get more than a few Ascendancy classes to be more than 10% played in original game yet so many more planned for the sequel game. So many classes planned yet still lacking favorites like Shadow? Claims of not wanting a class to be THE class needed to use certain skills and weapons yet have fun pathing to make crossbows useful if you aren't playing as Mercenary/Ranger, and some ascendancies specifically buff types of skills like slams which kind of pigeon holes diversity.

7. Speaking of diversity, too much rigid gatekeeping of respecing. This is especially upsetting for an EA game to limit experimentation. Path of Exile respeccing is already iffy yet the ability to respec your ascendancy has been purposely removed in the sequel. Wild decision, considering how many more are planned. There do not seem to be any free respec points and you still have to respec point by point while other popular games of the genre offer extremely accesible full respecs. This would allow players to have fun during campaign and not have to worry about meta builds and 3rd party tools and advanced planning until they want to. I'm glad they kept the giant skill trees as I feel like that is a piece of PoE identity but make respeccing easier than leveling up an entire brand new character ffs.

8. Towns annoying af. Same as first game, limit exposure to towns at all costs. GGG makes perplexing decisions to force players to see MTX in hopes of advertising, yet makes towns laggy messes with loud goblin bands and now rapid nonstop bird squawking. I just want a moment to think, clear my inventory, and adjust my gear/skills. At least add a MTX noise volume option.

9. Artificial difficulty out the wazooo! GGG just hates new players/customers, I guess. As a technical new player to PoE2 I can't imagine someone coming into this that hasn't played the original. First act is super slog with questionable mechanics that make it a machosist favorite just like Act 1 in the original. At least you don't have Rhoas stunning your character I suppose? Enjoy 'favorites' from PoE like Proximity Shield to block all projectiles, rares way tf faster than you, degen ground effects. Introducing new fun affixes like purple ball troll plants, aura that removes all your flask charges, aura that removes all your mana. Have fun running around not being able to use your skills as enemies constantly crowd hump you into walls.

10. Did I mention the loot yet, where the loot at? Also I worry about some of the streamlining causing the game to lose some of what made it unique from it's competition.

As much as I love the first game I could never recommend it to friends and hopefully very common player feedback like mine is taken into account soon. Time will tell, for now I recommend Path of Exile 2 because it is still a good looter game if you are more possessed with the idea of loot and enjoy the journey instead of actual loot.

Rough around the edges optimization-wise and a few odd early game gameplay choices but give it a shot and it's a lot of fun. Got to try it during the free weekend and got hooked. Game really starts around Tier 2 which opens up a massive amount of content. I gave it a pass originally because I thought spacemen using bows and stone axes on another planet was a goofy af premise and its even funnier when you see how many suprisingly realistic gameplay choices there are but its a ton of fun bit of twist on usual survival games and is content rich with weather, farming, hunting, electricity, plumbing, fishing, mining, crafting, base building, ranching, herbalism, skill trees, etc.

Not for everyone, definitely some trolly mechanics that will catch you out the first time you enter some places unprepared for folks who like a little bit more of a challenge. For a lesser spoiler: I died of lack of oxygen the first day as I'm sure many unaware do and accidentally knocked a tree down on my house which surprised me with the damage done and how localized it was and the new hole was fun during the storm that knocked some more trees down XD

You've been playing for 25 years. How about a coffee?

Experience mostly Sucks with a few Dead zones. Verizon dev promises a big D expansion with increased map coverage.

I don't want to kill your cow, man!

I keep taking photos of myself in front of high RPM counts. I think I have selfie steam issues.

This game has my consent!

Update: Has some notable improvements over Total Warhammer 2 if you want to do multiplayer or desire the popular large Immortal Empires map. The 3 campaigns are very lackluster and as of August 2023 are lacking entire playable factions including top $ dlc for this game, especially if you do them co-op (with no comment from CA). They have just about finally caught up to the previous game's Mortal Empires improvements. It seems to have been created in an entirely separate branch for it to be a year+ behind at map release.

The development direction and cost of recent dlc is confusing. Not sure why they are choking the golden goose they had with Total Warhammer 2 and its profitable dlc release and bug fix cycle. They will take months to fix critical bugs that the community mods hot fix within hours (with no comment from CA). For example some factions can't recruit their favored units and a large amount of faction's hero/leader traits do not actually do anything they claim as their code is spaghetti. This is even more inexplicable when newly added premiumly priced factions like Chaos Dwarves have tons of non-working and outdated traits with no hotfixes made over a month after release.

Focus seems to be on new expensive dlc, marketing, and pretending Total War Pharoah isn't an ultra specific pre-stripped of content for future DLC... Saga title based on ancient Rome engine. As much as I crave a new historical title I still remember the disastrous direction of post-launch 3 Kingdoms and I've yet to see any of its amazing improvements across the board spread to future titles.

Update 2: December 2023. The predictable failure of Pharoah with its insane 50k sales (and surprise partial refunds wow). The money sink called Hyenas had been cancelled earlier this year. Now the powers that be are looking to finally address the concerns of the consumers that buy their product in the hopes of profit again. Bugfix updates are coming out at a faster than glacial pace (aka not only on dlc release), they are even slowly adding occasional fixes that frustrated modders added many months ago (of course many remain, from previous games no less). For content complaints and future content we mostly get more nice sounding words with no specific details and even more promised delays. Community managers and former youtuber partners are now coming out with more details about their frustrations with CA. The controversial Shadows of Change dlc is allegedly getting more content to justify it's price point. If there is an Update 3 I hope its a lot more positive than the last few. Seems like most prominent streamers have switched to more nostalgic entries like Shogun, Medieval and even Three Kingdoms. I hope one day we got a new better engine and a sequel for one of those, enough with the copy/paste saga entries.

Just started, seems kinda P2W with a more welcoming start.

Great concept, fun game, hope it continues to improve.

Needs an option to add sawdust/children to soup too, for maximum efficiency/suffering.