.3 Update

A lot of my complaints below have been addressed. Playing Deadeye this league felt great and much more like the experience I was hoping for at EA launch. There are some negatives still, especially around how premium both move speed and action speed are to making the game feel 'good'. Many other ascendancies struggle to feel good due to this and my fear going into .4 is that GGG will, instead of bringing other classes up to Deadeyes level of fun/QoL, will decide to orbital nuke movespeed and actionspeed/tailwind, making the game feel like you're walking through soup again. That would be a horrible decision IMO and really kill the game for me.

Crafting was vastly improved this league with new omens and currencies items. Async trade is an amazing QoL improvement and a really great addition.

End game feels bad and the infinite atlas has a lot of problems. This is supposedly being addressed in the next major patch and I'm hopeful they'll make it more engaging. Today, a t1 map feels much the same as a t15. Towers suck and having to spend 2 hours finding overlapping tower layouts to maximize at most 5-6 maps feels bad, especially when you barely drop any big currencies after all that juicing.

Overall, huge step in the right direction but a lot of questions remain. Was this patch a fluke or a measured response to player feedback from .1 and .2? GGG has a history of waffling on product direction.

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tl;dr - Ruthless 2.0. IDK, maybe just not for me

Tough review as I love GGG and PoE 1. Played every league, spent a lot of money on its MTX, and generally like slower paced games with engaging combat. I didn't go into this game expecting PoE 1.2, I knew full well it would be harder and slower. I embraced that, and you should to if you want to enjoy this. A. As it stands, I think its worth your time, but it still has a number of issues.

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**Right now, the game is difficult in a way that just isn't fun, just often tedious. EDIT: This has been improved with the 12/9 patch but the endgame is still a slog.

There are multiple encounters that will one-shot you, so you're forced to dodge roll for 10 seconds between attacks and slowly chip away at a health bar. If you die, the boss / encounter resets and you try again.

IN MAPS, IF YOU DIE, YOU LOSE THE MAP. This SUCKS. White mobs can 1 tap you even with 4k ES + CI. Some wonky stuff happening right now with scaling.

Some builds (summons, magic) feel pretty strong early game, but melee and other martial archetypes feel absolutely dog-water until you can craft a decent item. This is a huge issue right now - balance is all over the place and *most* early game skills scale heavily on weapon damage (unless, again, you're a spellcaster, in which case its really all about gem level and generic damage mods).

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Some progression areas (looking at you, trials of chaos) are INSANELY over-tuned and unfun. Spending 30 minutes per attempt only to die to a juiced rare mob or the last boss (1 tap btw) while having the best crafted gear you could make feels incredibly disappointing. Why was it shipped in this state after numerous closed/private betas?

Love the atmosphere, animations, overall encounter designs. Great stuff, you can tell they put a ton of heart and soul into this game. They absolutely need to bring the rest of the classes up to the level of spellcasters/summoners.

Overall, a fun but often frustrating experience that I'll continue to play and hope it gets better with gear/levels. Many people claim the game is 'too hard' - I think thats silly. Most bosses can be played around or stunned/frozen and dismantled, even in late game maps. Optimistic for the game but I'm worried that the 'vision' is going to make it too niche for me.

.3 Update A lot of my complaints below have been addressed. Playing Deadeye this league felt great and much more like the experience I was hoping for at EA launch. There are some negatives still, especially around how premium both move speed and action speed are to making the game feel 'good'. Many other ascendancies struggle to feel good due to this and my fear going into .4 is that GGG will, instead of bringing other classes up to Deadeyes level of fun/QoL, will decide to orbital nuke movespeed and actionspeed/tailwind, making the game feel like you're walking through soup again. That would be a horrible decision IMO and really kill the game for me. Crafting was vastly improved this league with new omens and currencies items. Async trade is an amazing QoL improvement and a really great addition. End game feels bad and the infinite atlas has a lot of problems. This is supposedly being addressed in the next major patch and I'm hopeful they'll make it more engaging. Today, a t1 map feels much the same as a t15. Towers suck and having to spend 2 hours finding overlapping tower layouts to maximize at most 5-6 maps feels bad, especially when you barely drop any big currencies after all that juicing. Overall, huge step in the right direction but a lot of questions remain. Was this patch a fluke or a measured response to player feedback from .1 and .2? GGG has a history of waffling on product direction. ---- tl;dr - Ruthless 2.0. IDK, maybe just not for me Tough review as I love GGG and PoE 1. Played every league, spent a lot of money on its MTX, and generally like slower paced games with engaging combat. I didn't go into this game expecting PoE 1.2, I knew full well it would be harder and slower. I embraced that, and you should to if you want to enjoy this. A. As it stands, I think its worth your time, but it still has a number of issues. --- **Right now, the game is difficult in a way that just isn't fun, just often tedious. EDIT: This has been improved with the 12/9 patch but the endgame is still a slog. There are multiple encounters that will one-shot you, so you're forced to dodge roll for 10 seconds between attacks and slowly chip away at a health bar. If you die, the boss / encounter resets and you try again. IN MAPS, IF YOU DIE, YOU LOSE THE MAP. This SUCKS. White mobs can 1 tap you even with 4k ES + CI. Some wonky stuff happening right now with scaling. Some builds (summons, magic) feel pretty strong early game, but melee and other martial archetypes feel absolutely dog-water until you can craft a decent item. This is a huge issue right now - balance is all over the place and *most* early game skills scale heavily on weapon damage (unless, again, you're a spellcaster, in which case its really all about gem level and generic damage mods). --- Some progression areas (looking at you, trials of chaos) are INSANELY over-tuned and unfun. Spending 30 minutes per attempt only to die to a juiced rare mob or the last boss (1 tap btw) while having the best crafted gear you could make feels incredibly disappointing. Why was it shipped in this state after numerous closed/private betas? Love the atmosphere, animations, overall encounter designs. Great stuff, you can tell they put a ton of heart and soul into this game. They absolutely need to bring the rest of the classes up to the level of spellcasters/summoners. Overall, a fun but often frustrating experience that I'll continue to play and hope it gets better with gear/levels. Many people claim the game is 'too hard' - I think thats silly. Most bosses can be played around or stunned/frozen and dismantled, even in late game maps. Optimistic for the game but I'm worried that the 'vision' is going to make it too niche for me.