Recent reviews by Rory

I like the game a lot after playing for some time. I was going to say it is a bit of a cash grab anyway but after I found out there are quests for each class and even some more cut scenes and lore I would no longer call it like that.

It's an intense af roguelike/lite - you have no moment of chill except of brake after Day 2. Other than that you have to keep on running, fighting or choosing targets while also choosing good weapons for passives etc. A lot happens and I didn't even investigate earth shifting mechanic enough or checked all classes.

You can "finish" game rather fast playing one character and not doing remembrences (character quests) but you will miss a lot of content. The game might seem repeatable but actually you learn a lot each run and still discover new things after 25 hours or so.

Mechanically it is superior to Elden Ring imo. Everything is more dynamic, characters have more skills, hidden techs and bosses even re-used often are adjusted to Elden ring level. You can sometimes get too strong to feel it if you are godlike souls runner but for average Joe it is still kinda hard game.

The only pain I feel is being melee at some bosses that roam the huge map like Elden Beast pre-patch where you could use Torrent in his arena. Duh, it is even annoying for ranges since bosses get even out of Ironeye range.
Ah, and queues - sometimes they work really weird and we couldn't find 1 person to our duo.

If you want the game to be significantly harder but still manageable after some learning you can play solo but I hardly recommend playing in teams first (even random ones).

Either way - I recommend this game if you like both soulslikes and roguelikes.
It's a great combination.

It is a good game especially when it comes to narrative and art style parts.
Sadly, I wouldn't call it a roguelike and that's the main part why I played it.
It is just RNG based game where I barely feel any progress in between runs. Every new run still highly depends on rng and pure skill.
Items, curses and punishments are not well balanced. The fact that you have to farm the same ♥♥♥♥ over and over again just to reach final boss is annoying. Curses are limited to few choices that are strong and at the same time strong ones are crucial in endgame - if you don't get them you can just FF. All that while I was playing ultra easy mode so I can't even imagine what higher difficulty levels look like. Kinda insane for me after I finished a lot of rogue likes. Closest I can compare it to when it comes to full RNG dependency is Binding of Isaac but with waaaay less variety. I know this comparison might encourage a lot of people but I haven't played Isaac for too long, it is rather big game afaik so maybe later gameplay allows you to limit rng there. Here however, there is just like slight advantage after you get to max level of "roguelike" part and I am sure about it - game is not big at all.

I don't really like turn based RPGs but this gem improved this kind of gameplay in a way that keeps me playing and want to fight. Game overall is not that hard (especially if you find some broken builds...) but there are some really hard bosses and one so hard that I had to get that broken build (that completely skips gameplay imo). I like that it's more on casual side and that difficulty level, even if mostly in early game, changes anything due to the parry/dodge mechanics. Haven't tried easy mode tbh but I feel like later on expert and normal are pretty much the same at some mobs/bosses. Some bosses or even mobs were a pure cinema and I liked to struggle.

Exploration of the game is also on the highest level - it reminds me a bit of Dark Souls I level design - everything is relatively small, closed and open at some time because some fragments of maps are so connected. Exploration possibilities progress is also well done (imo).

I didn't expect story to be that interesting and addictive but I think there should be more in at least one of game's epilogues. It lacked some more emotional damage compared to the other one.

Character design, maturity, dubbing deserves an award - not only the serious main characters but even the funny parts with our race of dummies.

Last but not least - music - PERFECT. I don't think I disliked any record. I even sat in camp listening to it or at the start looped the first song for a long time on youtube.

There are some boring parts or aspects here and there after a long game time but these are minor disadvantages.

Overall - highly recommend the game. It's a solid 9.5/10.

Lots of just annoying bosses and grindy mechanics but that's what makes it Monster Hunter I guess.
Overall it is a fun game.

A bit wacky but it was fun to play. It has a lot of upgrades to farm/grind for but I finished game twice with a small percentage of unlocks only. I regret a bit that different characters require different saves. I would grind max upgrades but with other characters instead of the same one. If I have to start from scratch with other characters it's kinda 'meh'.

Out of all characters the big gun (heat) sister seems op - I played her as last one but in 1st attempt I reached Duke almost without any effort. Her gameplay feels really smooth on mobs but bosses are harder than axe wielding sister. 3rd character seems a bit disgusting to play - her weapon has so small hitboxes and dmg it just feels awful. Maybe you are supposed to use secondary weapon more with her but idk how to rotate the skills to keep the gameplay smooth like with "heat" sister - she was nowhere near the other two characters.

Really good game overall, quite easy on normal levels but seems to be hard/annoying with some potatoes on higher levels since if you don't hit almost perfect items you will be f... sooner or later. Still it's a good game to have a short session in and enjoy.

You remember that one campaign map that you hated due to design? Where you had to backtrack 10000x times to fully uncover it and not miss anything?

PoE 2 campaign map "design" or rng is like they took this one map and decided to make the experience 1000x more miserable on each map :)
So far the trash map design peaked at Aggorat and map before it where you can't even directly recall to town with salesman. You have to recall and teleport somewhere and map loads are not so fast...
This is also considering you gather some 4-5 items at this map that occupy all places in bag =)

Outside of maps being miserable and as bad as depressing as they can be, gameplay as Necro at least is slow af.

Dodge is pretty much worthless. Most times it's easier and faster to just outrun the spells. Dodge feels like heavy dodge in Dark Souls games...

I wouldn't pay a dime for this game but I've got it for free fortunately.
Will play it slowly, maybe reach some "endgame" and update the review some time.

It of course have some advantages over predecessor but overall for me it's a huge gameplay downgrade.


Update after reaching level 91 and doing 2/7 end game bosses:
1. Maps (waypoints in poe2) are literal trash. They are even worse in mapping stage - same ♥♥♥♥ copied from campaign into Endgame but more cluttered and repeatable af since you do hundreds of maps. Somehow the maps are even more cluttered, minions get stuck even more, I get stuck while mapping faster even more than before.
I really don't know why they made maps such a piece of ♥♥♥♥ if that's 99% of the PoE gameplay =) And it is already after patch that supposed to fix something. If that something was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ waypoints/teleports put in some random places you won't even use that's a huge disappointment. The fact than unlike PoE1 you have to kill all elites and on most of the maps there is no boss even is another huge disappointment which makes the terrible map design even worse.
2. Endgame map itself - water blocks the paths and you have to find a 100 map way around to reach the goal on the other side of the river like 1-2 maps of range ahead. Some maps are even in the middle of islands on this river not connected to anything (XD).
3. Citadels - goal said in point 2. That's why you want to reach the opposite side of river mostly. Looking for them for ages is also disgusting. When you finally reach them it turns out they are just a disappointing copy paste of campaign bosses xD
4. Bosses - once you create a build and have some flexibility to adjust it etc. you don't really experience a lot from them. Boss of 1st act was like "wow, it's hard" - it was just because I had no build or still had no idea about the game. There are still some bosses which, like Maven from PoE, have one problem - visibility on them is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible (when it could be better) and somehow the worst one is again connected to "one shot" mechanic. Color design was and is terrible.
5. Overall endgame mechanisms - all of the endgame bosses require a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ huge amount of time to get them going. Like reaaaaaly huge amount of time. They are so slow that I can't even imagine how average player will manage to do more than 1 of them in limited league time (especially since campaign is so long and boring).
6. Overall gearing mechanism - it's just way worse than PoE. I like that you can use a lot of exalts now to get some items going unlike PoE1 but the rest is just a downgrade. There is not an Orb of Scouring even to roll on magic items... Maybe I'm still missing something but crafting just looks poor compared to PoE1
7. "The dodge" - that's just an ex de point. I don't know if that's true but I remember PoE2 being advertised as this more soulslike game with a dodge. In the end, the moment you start to do a build you just switch it to standard dash or any other spell from PoE1 xD No, it's not an additional dodge, you literally replace it with new traversing spell (maybe it's different for other classes - I played witch).
8. Sanctum as mandatory mechanic - you have to do it for ascendancy. In PoE at first I thought "wow, a roguelike inside game, nice" - but then I played it and hated it since some build are destined to just fail it.
9. Pluses
a) minion management. That's the main reason I wanted to try PoE2 tbf. In general I think it is better but on some bosses my minions died so fast that I'd prefer Desecrating and Raising them manually again...
b) Yup, graphic is better but my PC with RTX3070 is burning while playing on medium and I often have less than 40 FPS so I don't know if it is worth it.
c) You can also finish campaign with your own build without bricking it :) It will still be slower and worse than random build from web probably but it gives satisfaction.
d) Overall it's still addicting once you start "dropping", minmaxing build etc etc. - all that PoE always was. It's easier to point "what's wrong" or "what annoyed me" because I keep it in my memory. The good parts are not so memorable sadly.


To sum up - I still would not recommend the game in its current state. It needs at least a year and few leagues to reach half of what PoE is now. The sad part is that it looks like they gonna copy mechanics from PoE one after another and in the end it will be just graphical upgrade maybe with few new bosses.
The game itself is fun but to fully enjoy it you would have to never before play PoE or hard reset your memory. I really tried to do all end game bosses before updating the review but I think I don't have that much time. Probably 200-300 hours more are required with my speed of playing.


Edit after dropping the game and doing end game bosses
The game is still good enough to play but nowhere near PoE1 and just like in PoE1 it seems that if you choose wrong build you can't do some of the end game content just because you picked the wrong class/build type.
- Arbiter - max done - T2 - in my case I farmed fragment to get 5 attempts for ~100hours :) in these 5 attempts I managed to do T2 but with T3 I died to 2 mechanics that are kind ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ even with dodge roll swap to Blink. First one are cross fire series - they could be more visible to see where you have to stand to not get hit by a 1mm. Color scheme etc should be corrected (just like on a fkn Maven). You already have not a long time to react to it to hestitate. 2nd ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanic was a single meteor drop combined with mega-laser. I don't know if it was only for me but 2/2 times I saw it, both mechanics overlapped and I died from one or another. That's all the tests I could reach with THAT many hours.
- Xesht - max done T3 - lowkey best boss design of PoE2. Sadly, I couldn't reach T4 boss because I had not enough DPS with my CI/SRS/Arsonist build and the next upgrade I could do costed 1 mirror =) Idk, if it would be enough. That's weird because I had no issue at all at T3 to get thru monsters. I feel like on T4 there were not enough mobs stacked for my minions, minions were not respawning fast enough if I blinked from one group to another etc. I tested T3 after few T4 attempts on purpose and T3 density was way better. I didn't even have to blink and rush.
- King in the mist - max reached T0 - and the max reached tier is only connected to how disgusting the Audience (entry item) drop rate is. I bet I did ~100 rituals while farming for Arbiter fragments and leveling, yet haven't seen Audience even once. In the end I've spent my last divs to just buy it and try it and T1 was just a DPS burst. I loved this boss in PoE1, he is pretty much the same here but I already had too much DPS to feel the risk.
- Orloth (expedition) - max reached T1 - again, finding him is a lot of RNG. Luckily I had him twice in my first 2 expedition maps and haven't seen him in next 20 at all.
- Simu - I haven't reached boss xD max wave 11, my build was not made for it I guess.
The rest was just ok.

I'm amused how big the world is in that game - I did not expect it. But... it is full of repeatable quests, nothing was really unique except for World eater boss fights. All other bosses were kinda boring and same. The final boss was missing something, like personality or differences between stages which world eaters had.

I know I've spent my time in this game but I would say it's worth max 5$. World and grapgic quality is fine but animations are often bizzare and I don't think that's what was intended. Mobs design is funny I have to admit it.
It is something else but in the end the story does not make a lot of sense and I don't know if any choices make a difference. Ending is also weird, I don't understand why tf would my character do that.

And the dialogues and narrator. It was funny and something new for first maybe 5 hours. After that I had enough and I mostly skipped it, especially with non crucial npcs... It was more annoying and I don't know who is the target for childish but depressive texts tbh

Well thought game, Vault is a bit poorly designed I would say but I played 60 min run before latest patch so maybe it changed something. Some agony modes are straight up just suffering but I guess they should be like that even if I preferred just those that made it harder not those which made me suffer playing the game.

Overall, one of the best games of this type/genre.

40 min solo heist just to fall down at the crane jump which I had no idea about xD It won't probably happen again but it would not happen even in 2-man lobby. Just disgusting how solo compared to team play in PD3 is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Mid heist I had no idea where to go or what to do in loud running around like a headless chicken, looking for a pendrive for 10-15 minutes probably. As later runs showed me - it wasn't just "first try" issue. In following runs I had similar experience on different stages of heist. Did it 3 times and never going to play it again.

Masks are hideous, all of them... How tf can you make game "look better" and have literally no good looking mask while having ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of them in PD2.
Fortunately there are some good looking skins but they are still worse than most PD2 ones :(

Minigun is fun but this alone can't make up for the overall review of DLC.

Still no good stealth heist anywhere near PD2 levels (at least after "speed run" strat for one heist ruined even that for me).