Path of Exile 2

Would be the best ARPG, but the freezing every 5 mins endgame is ridiculous. Fix your game/server before you add more content. UPDATE: For anyone curious I believe I have found a fix for this issue, its a shader issue. For all the alpha badasses who think they are so cool, you aren't. I am also a more casual player, I am not changing the review until this game can just be downloaded and played fine without tweaking system files to fix issues. Anyone suffering from the constant freezes, this is how I fixed my issues: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w4uMJzWaMKHFXLBn8X0R0meMHwuYQvsG-F_45vB6eTY/edit?usp=sharing

I have friends who have been trying to sell me on these games for years, so I tried to give it a real solid try. There are a lot of really fun game mechanics and build varieties in POE2. However there are so many poor design tactics and weird balance choices that suck the fun out of the game. The new player experience is pretty bad and even worse once you get to the endgame content. GGG seems to focus all of their design choices focused around the long term player base, the people who have been playing POE for years. Supposedly they were trying to make POE2 a bit different than POE, so this was their best chance to attract new players and give them an enjoyable experience. Nope, if this isn't your second job or more life slaving in the mines for crafting currency, you just don't get to interact with a majority of this games content. Apparently they want the character lvl grind to take forever because that's some kinda metric related to their player retention every season. Meanwhile I want to try many different characters but that leads to a trade off of play multiple characters or engage in endgame content, which I'm told is the best part of the game. I have to hope the character/ build I'm trying is even capable of grinding endgame content as well, or do what so many people do and follow a build guide and play the game how someone else wants me to. For a casual the grind to lvl 100 isn't worth it, I want to do it so I can actually play a complete build but it's not happening. I was on the edge of sending more money on this game, trying to interact with the endgame economy is not possible putting in 20-30 hrs of gameplay every week. Maybe that changes after you've logged over 1000 hrs and finally understand how everything works but I'm done. If I have to research every single aspect of this game in order to reap the rewards that's bad game design. This game is so close to being fun and accessible and I've discussed my grievances with my friends that are long time fans and or hardcore grinders of POE/POE2, and copium is the only answer to keep playing this game. I also understand that this game is technically still alpha, but the massive changes every season make learning this game impossible for a casual gamer and especially a new player. TL/DR Basically this game will not respect your time and isn't worth spending money on unless it's your job or you have all the time in the world to grind. Creative freedom looks accessible and abundant but it isn't with regard to endgame. Depending on the season some builds aren't playable and so much of what has been described as the best parts of the game are accessible only when you are deep into the endgame grind.

My first ARPG, and I have to say it was totally worth it. I still have a lot to learn and my builds are probably a mess, but thanks to all the guides online, I've been managing just fine. It's been a really fun experience so far!

I havnt showered since i bought this game, every league I feel the need to hear the divine orb drop noise to fix my itch. Its the same feeling people get when shooting up some drugs

It's a good game, but held back by shader compilation issues (that I believe has been ongoing since launch, 2 years ago). I haven't even seen the developers mention the issue. The game runs perfectly fine on any type of settings but, like clockwork, every 5mins the game soft-locks for 50 secs to recompile all 20k+ shaders. Changing settings in-game does nothing, changing settings out of game does nothing. All types of computers experience this issue, all graphics cards, all CPUs, almost everyone who has made it to endgame has to deal with it. You just can't experience the endgame that the .5 update promised. If they optimize it and make the endgame playable, I'd gladly change my review.

Poorly optimized game that treats crashes as losing/dying in game and penalizes you for it.

The game after the most recent patch is unplayable with constant stuttering.

[h1] «PoE 2 — лучший симулятор созерцания серого экрана» [/h1] [i] Я купил ранний доступ, чтобы стать героем. А стал профессиональным экскурсоводом по кладбищам — потому что именно там я провожу 90% своего времени. Первые 20 минут я восхищался графикой. Следующие 20 минут я восхищался тем, как красиво мой персонаж разлетается на куски от обычного моба с палкой. Если в PoE 1 мы бегали и выносили всё взрывными паками, то в PoE 2 мы бегаем... от всего. От криков, от камней, от собственной тени. Особенно порадовала механика уклонения. Теперь я не просто стратег билдов, я — профессиональный акробат, который катается по арене быстрее, чем таксист в час пик. Боссы тут такие умные, что я подозреваю — у них есть дипломы психологов. Они ждут, пока я выпью последнюю фласку, и только потом наносят удар. Идеальный тайминг, ничего не скажешь. А ещё разработчики запихнули сюда столько механик, что мой мозг закипел быстрее, чем мой видеокарта. Древо пассивок теперь выглядит как карта звёздного неба, и я провёл час, просто пытаясь понять, куда воткнуть очко, чтобы не облажаться. Спойлер: я всё равно облажался. Сейчас я сижу в локации, смотрю на серый экран уже 15-й раз за вечер и думаю: «Может, ну его?» Но потом вспоминаю, что отдал за игру 3000 рублей, и понимаю — теперь это не игра, а финансовые обязательства. [/i] [spoiler] Итог: Если вы любите чувствовать себя беспомощным, но при этом красивым — это ваш выбор. PoE 2 — это Dark Souls для тех, кто думал, что Diablo 4 был сложным. Спасибо, GGG, я теперь боюсь даже кликать на рабочий стол. [/spoiler]

Don't ever uninstall the game and not play it for a long time. When i reinstalled to play guess what happend?; I'm afraid that your account has been permanently banned for breaching of our Terms of Use. After a thorough investigation of this account there is no evidence to suggest the ban was applied in error and we will not be reinstating access to the account. The ban was placed due to a breach of Section 7 of our Terms of Use, and as is mentioned in our Terms of Use under Section 16, you will be solely responsible for all activities undertaken on your account. According to Section 7 of our Terms of Use, under no circumstances, without the prior written approval of Grinding Gear Games, may you: - Adapt, reproduce, store, distribute, print, display, publish or create derivative works from any part of the Website, Materials or Services other than in accordance with the Licence. - Modify or adapt (including through third parties and third-party tools) the game client or its data, other than in the normal course of PoE gameplay as permitted in accordance with the Licence. - Utilise any automated software or ‘bots’ in relation to your access or use of the Website, Materials or Services. - Knowingly perform any actions that may cause the computers used to support the Website, Materials and Services (the “Servers”) to become overloaded or crash. - Connect to the Servers through any software other than the authorised game client software. - Use any data gathering and extraction tools or software to extract information from the Website or utilize framing techniques to enclose any of the contents of the Website. - Use any meta tags or other hidden text which incorporate Grinding Gear Games’ name or any of its intellectual property including trade marks. - Perform in-game services during your use of the Website, Materials or Services for any form of compensation outside of PoE. This includes the use of third party software such as botting and trade tools, and also Real Money Trade (exchanging in-game goods or services for external compensation). This account closure is permanent, and will not be reviewed further. Any further correspondence about the closure of this account may not be replied to by our team. You are welcome to create a new account if you wish to continue playing, provided you adhere to our Terms of Use on the new account. Kind regards, Accounts Investigations Team

Hard at first, but now – I can't stop playing. This is my first experience with the Path of Exile series. I'll start by saying that as a beginner, it was rough at first – I was playing with Google open in multiple tabs and reading a ton of guides just to understand what to do. But with the recent big 0.5 update, the game has become even more interesting and, thankfully, way friendlier to casual players. The developers have adjusted the balance so the game doesn't punish you so harshly for every single mistake. The amount of content now is massive (with the new endgame mechanics, leagues, and Atlas tree), so time just flies by when playing. If you are looking for a game to truly sink your teeth into for a long time, and you don't mind a bit of a learning curve at the start – this is an excellent choice.