PoE2: Your Annual Review

As PoE2 is part of the ARPG genre, I am going to share my opinion on two aspects of the acronym, AG (Action Game) and RP (Role-Playing), as both sets are what comprises an ARPG.

Firstly, the good. As an AG PoE2 is a marvel! Visually, the game is stunning. The combat is crisp and super fun with light-show options galore. As content gets added, the options only seem to pile on, giving a superb blasting experience.

Now the not so good…although nothing catastrophic. What I am about to address requires tweaks not overhauls.

Item one of two.
Let’s talk about survivability. It’s not a big deal on lower to mid-levels, but the game, for some reason punishes the player for gaining levels in the final stages. Once we dispense with S-tier builds, which give just the right ES-life regen ratio, there is a chasm right below that. Let me illustrate using my level 96 Amazon experience. Evasion 71% (65% when shooting twisters, Deflection 58% (37 for twister shot), all resists maxed, HP 2289, ES 832. For the record, I don't juice my maps beyond 2 resurrections, never used anything that gave mobs increased crit hit bonuses.

My periodic deaths – and there were too many – all were caused by one-shots or events so quick they did not allow for a reaction! All of them! I will concede that on occasion, my ES was already stripped…but my HPs were at full at all times…then death.

For example, I have several deaths from meteor shrines, where the shrines were so far away that the fog of war on them had not yet been removed on my minimap! That has to go away in its current format.

Additional deaths, so fast that no reaction time could save me (and I don’t mean from map bosses) do not help. Speaking of map bosses, imo, the very first attack from a map boss should not be a one-tap to the “you-have-died” screen. The end result of such is that I avoid certain zones and certain events, such as summoning circles. A one-tap at level 96 costs me one to four hours of game time. What fun!

On that note, why on earth only one Omen can be used per map!? If I miss the small text on the left of my screen that my Omen of Resurgence has been used, then the Map becomes a death trap to four hours of lost play time, should I get killed. What is the purpose of that other than to annoy the living bajeezus out of me!? If I have an Omen active, let it do its job. Simple solution right here. If I have a stack of Omens set to active, let them do their jobs! Instead, as soon as I have an Omen of Resurgence trigger, I have to abandon the map entirely. Again, what fun!

Instead of feeling like a hero, when I finally hit level 97, I felt more like a survival of an abduction and repeatedly being violated – a Level 97 clinical code designation on the abuse scale, if you will.

And now you have released a video, where at the end of it, you advertise new cosmetics. And, to be fair, they look amazing (the peg leg isn’t for me, but all other items just rock). Only, there is a problem, you see. I don’t feel like buying any of them because it is the RP part of the game that has been taken away from my experience. I outright resent my character. Why would I bother spending money on outfits for a kill-me-I-am-worthless-skank entity. It’s like striving to get really cool skins for a Sonic the Hedgehog character. Why!? The gameplay is fun, but the character itself has no respect or value.

Now comes the druid. Great AG elements: bear, pooch, thing with wings...light show galore! Just one problem, I already resent sudden trips to human cemeteries. Now you are setting me up for one-tap trips to a pet cemetery? This may sound redundant by now, but…what fun!

And did I hear correctly in the Q&A, that you plan to nerf ES even further? So, let me get this straight, instead of dedicating some of the 200+ new nodes on the passive tree to boasting life, life regen, ES, ES sustainability, you instead chose to nerf? Man, that is just discouraging right out of the gate.

Speaking of discouraging, why did I bother to max out all my resists (chaos included), if the effect is a joke and I feel like the game is mocking me instead of rewarding my work?

Item two.
Crafting. If there is one thing that gives a human the dopamine kick required to repeat an action it is a success in their attempts. Crafting in PoE2 is fine through the mid-game, but then again makes sense only after the player has been able to S—tier juice the maps and, hopefully, reap the rewards. Not that I would know.

I am level 97 now and I sure still haven’t gotten there. Which leads me to the ultimate experience in PoE2 (hint: it’s not the Arbiter of Ash). Yes, I am talking about the trade market. A great concept, btw, but one that should not be a substitute for the satisfaction that a player would get from crafting their own equipment. Unfortunately, to do so, some key materials would be helpful to own. I won’t go over all of them (because, honestly, I don’t even know what it is that I have never seen), but will give one example, to illustrate my point.

The Orb of Whittling is an item which appears off and on as an option to buy on my Ritual Altar rewards screen. Just one problem here. In the past 12 months of play, I have been able to acquire exactly one – yes, one – of the said Omen of Whittling. Its cost seems to always hover around twice of the total amount of tribute which I can accumulate.

That, btw, is why you have a massive inflation that skyrockets inside a couple months. A select few who are able to produce the supply, are juxtaposed against a massive demand from all others who can not. WTF does a Mirror of Kalandra do!? I wouldn’t know. I have not seen one in a full year of playing this game. All I know is that the inflation is such that you can now find a single Spear on sale for a humble sum of three such mirrors. What fun!

End result. The RP element is totally sabotaged. I can’t make the top tier items, which I want, on account of lack of mats. I also have to go to third party websites just to find out what modifiers even are prefixes and which ones are suffixes…and that’s just a start, as the abyssal league requires third party websites just to begin understanding what is what. And since I don’t have the mats to fine tune any of the stuff, at the end of the day, I think I feel even more deflated than when an off-screen off-map shrine meteors one-slap my scrawny, useless character to kingdom come.

My final verdict. Great AG but the RP needs work for PoE2 to be an ARPG. I want a hero, not a punching bag, I want a craftsman, not an forced shopping lackey. Last December I purchased the Beacon of Salvation hideout with all the trimmings, but until the two here-discussed aspects of RP are corrected, I have no desire to spend another penny on your cosmetics. The RP elements of end-game progression in PoE2, currently have a negative reinforcement effect on me.