Complete Review Of The 0.4 Patch

I don't usually post on forums like this, but I've fallen in love with Path of Exile 2 and I thought I would give my full review of the current game state. I am no endgame grinder or anything; my highest tier map is like 7. I play quite casually, so a lot of the feedback might be invalid for ultra-endgame or pinnacle content.

With that said, I'll divide my review into multiple parts.

1. The Campaign
2. Character Progression & Trials
3. Crafting and Itemization
4. League Mechanics
5. Endgame

1. Campaign (9/10)
I basically love everything about the campaign except the story. The story is interesting, but I would like to know what GGG could cook up with a story that is more character-driven. I basically feel no attachment to any of the characters, not because they're bad but simply because they are forgettable. We spend so little time with each of them and their role is basically null in the narrative (except stealing the act boss kills, apparently?), so I feel like the story needs more depth.

Each act is fun to me. Some people complain about the map sizes, but I couldn't disagree more. I think the checkpoints basically solve the problem of backtracking and, to be honest, I feel like people are complaining about... too much content? The real solution here is not to reduce map size, but rather to add more things to big maps.

One of my favorite aspects is how leagues are organically introduced during the campaign, with Fate of the Vaal, Abyss, and Ritual having the best integrations. I wish we had something for Breach and even Strongboxes. My guess is that Breach is probably going to be in Oriath, so this is just a matter of time. Expedition and Delirium kind of have a moment to shine in Act 4, but I think their introduction falls short of Abyss and especially Ritual & Fate of the Vaal. There is no real buildup and only a singular location. I think they should be soft-introduced in Act 3, where there are no league mechanic introductions (to my memory, except unlocking the full FotV), and then be fully fleshed out in Act 4.

2. Character Progression & Trials (8/10)
GGG are masters at this. It’s absolutely incredible the amount of depth there is to character building and progression. I love the weapon mastery points system and the tree. Jewels are an amazing way to make every tree kind of unique, and each class having different starting points is very cool. I think the tree allows for a lot of creative builds, although I think it’s a bit weak.

My biggest issue is the last 5–10 levels of progression. Levels above 90 feel like they are not worth much. Passive points have a diminishing return, and this is especially true in PoE2 since the power you get is very much loot-driven. I think these last levels should not only be about prestige but also give incredible power: 2 more ascendancy points at level 100, 3 passive points on a ding after level 95, etc. There are multiple ways to do this.

Touching on this, I think the game is too loot-driven. I only play SSF and this is the main grind. I understand that getting to tier 16s and reaching these high 90s levels shouldn't be trivial (and I love this). However, I think it should be locked behind hard mechanics/bosses, very deep and involved character building, or very good league mechanics knowledge. Right now, it feels locked behind the item slot machine (it should be in part, but it feels like it’s a high majority of the power).

The Trials are a mixed bag. One thing I love is that GGG is trying to make them impossible to out-build (some people probably have, of course; I'm speaking casually). I think this is cool. They should feel hard and like an obstacle to overcome. I only have a developed opinion about the Sek, so I'll focus on that one. The Honor system is fine. I think the main problem is that relics don't drop much outside of the trial. The only way to overcome the trial (outside of game knowledge) is to die inside of it and farm relics. Normally this would be fine, but the coins are rare. So, it feels bad when you die in that 3rd trial and know you probably have another 15–20h of grinding to try again. Dropping these relics in maps and the campaign more often would fix this, or simply make the coins less rare.

3. Crafting and Itemization (6/10)
This is my least favorite part of the game; however, this is also the part of the game with the most potential. I'll also preface this by saying that I have no experience with PoE1's crafting, but I do use almost every crafting item I find in PoE2.

My first critique is the opaqueness of the system. I love how complex and deep it is, but not knowing if a modifier can roll on an item, or which is a suffix and which is a prefix, feels bad. This is a very hard UI/UX problem, even more so because part of the fun of crafting is discovering pathways to the results you want. I don't really have suggestions here, but I know pressing ALT while hovering over items is not enough.

One of the things I also don't like are mandatory or useless modifiers. Both extremes are bad. For example: Item Rarity, Movement Speed, and Light Radius should be completely removed from the pool. These modifiers simply create garbage items, whether by being there or by not being on the item. Light Radius is completely useless; the game should be designed in a way where I can see what is going on (nobody likes a mechanic that prevents you from seeing what's going on). Movement Speed and Item Rarity are too strong and thus mandatory. Any mandatory stat should be obtainable without going through the modifier slot machine. The main solution here would be implicit modifiers and the passive tree. This would allow more build diversity and raise the floor for players without bringing the ceiling down.

My last complaint is about Exalts. I've heard that they become trivial in the endgame, but I have yet to reach that threshold. Exalts feel as rare as Regals, but you need three times as many of them. I don't think this is a good design. It might be acceptable during the campaign to have 2–3 rare items with 3–5 modifiers, but during the endgame, you need to have all 6 on every item. I have used Omens to double, prioritized rarity, Abyss crafting, etc. It doesn't feel good to have 10 items in a stash just waiting there because you just don't have any exalting currencies. It's even worse when you finally get Exalts and it rolls Light Radius or 6 life gained on kill at level 80. So, this problem compounds with my points about modifiers. The same bad feeling arises when you have 5 good modifiers on boots and your last Exalt doesn't roll Movement Speed.

To reiterate, I love the system, but it feels like it's working against the smoothness of the rest of the game.

4. League Mechanics (8.5/10)
Love the leagues. I know there's been a lot of negative feedback about FotV, but I personally love it. They all feel interesting to me, although the rewards/difficulty ratio is quite inconsistent.

My main complaint about Leagues is that it feels like they still scale like PoE1, but you have to deal with them using 1/20th of the tools. I don't believe we can have slow, gritty, and involved combat AND rares that have 6 modifiers or monster effectiveness going into the 200%. By definition, these are incompatible game designs. I'm not against a challenge, but there are interesting challenges and then there are "number challenges."

I've loved Fate of the Vaal, especially since the latest update. My only real gripe is the rooms closing. I don't see how this makes the league any better? It just makes kiting builds nonviable and makes pack size almost impossible to solve without a shit ton of stun threshold. Why can't this be a normal inner map you run? I'd also maybe change the number of circles to complete from 6 to 4; the mechanic is super fun, but it feels like GGG doesn't want you to interact with it often or in your own way.

5. Endgame (7/10)
Not being much of a PoE1 player, I do prefer the map over the PoE1 Atlas of Worlds. There are, however, multiple issues here that the developers have acknowledged. I'll try to give my insight on it.

My big concern is how punishing death is. I'll say, however, that the experience loss is not my issue. I actually quite like how the higher levels have prestige to them. Concretely, dying in the endgame means losing a portal (or the map later on when you only have one portal), experience loss, Vaal limbs loss, tablet use wasted, the map can't be rerun with a tablet, all mechanics are basically lost, any items not looted are lost with the map, any good modifiers on the map are wasted, etc. Any one of these is okay in a vacuum, but the compounding of all of them makes it crushing. This is worse when you start the endgame because a lot more maps modifiers are dangerous to you if you've been unlucky with resistances or never interacted with one of the endgame leagues yet.

Saying this as a casual player to PoE, when you try the endgame for the first time, use one of the rare exalts you have on a map and die to a combination of modifiers that completely (and randomly) destroys your build and suddenly you've lost valuable resources, there's a sunken cost because you didn't use these resources on your gear so you feel like you are now behind, etc. Its not fun in my opinion.

Conclusion
Thanks GGG for this amazing game. WASD changed the landscape and you have forced the market to move in a direction that I personally love. To me, PoE2 is by far the best game of its genre and I think it has the potential to be an incredible game for years to come.

Two things I haven't touched in this post are Runes and Trade. Both of them are problematic in my opinion.

1. Runes
Low level runes drop in the campaign but usually your character don't have much rarity at that point. This usually means that you end up with a bank full of greater runes and never have a chance to experiment with and/or accumulate the lower level runes. They are an amazing solution to resistances but they feel too rare to be reliable.

They would also be a great solution to multiple problems in the main post. Runes with movement speed and item rarity would help. There is also a bunch of stats that are missing from them which would make them much more useful, chaos resistance is the oddest to me. Why are all resistances there but not chaos? This is also exacerbated by all the chaos damage in act 1. This feels like the game refusing the give me the tools I need to meet its challenge.

2. Trade
I hate trade in these games and PoE2 is not an exception. I always feel like trade is problematic because its problems seep into the core game loop and drop tables, even when playing on SSF. I'm not sure how to solve this but I feel like items such as the Mirror of Kalandra should be obtainable by most dedicated players. Like a mirror for 300h of playtime seems reasonable, no mirror after 2000h is just stupid. I think nobody wants this, and if some do, I'm sure the game shouldn't be balanced around it.

This is not possible of course because of "the economy" which all SSF players do not care about. My solution would be to remove migrating out of SSF and have two different loot tables. This way players can meaningfully interact with these items. There is an inherent problem with having a game mode presented to the player and part of the game is defacto unreachable.

Fully agree with your endgame assessment. The single portal aspect of the endgame is so frustrating.