Path of Exile - What I Missed
This is Path of Exile and this is What I Missed.
Path of Exile, or PoE is the spiritual successor to Diablo II, a fantasy action RPG set in the dark World of Wraeclast. It’s also developed by a small, independent team in New Zealand, called Grinding Gears Games, so that’s pretty cool.
Best of all? It’s FREE!
I originally heard about PoE around the time that Diablo III was coming out (or just came out) and I was generally confused as to why anyone wanted, or at least “needed” a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 when Diablo 3 was right here. Now that I’ve finally put some time into Path of Exile, I know why.
This game is flipping fun. Typically when I’m playing a game for any sort of review, I take notes as I play. I got just a little too immersed and never really took notes. But I do remember some things to keep in mind.
Gameplay
The combat in this game is addictive and hella fun. I’ve primarily played as the huntress - I like using bows, in case my Tomb Raider addiction or character choice in Gauntlet didn’t give that away - and the bow combat is just about everything I wanted to be.
Admittedly using point-and-click for movement instead of WASD can be very tiresome on my mouse hand - because i’m almost constantly holding the left mouse button and moving - but I know some actually prefer that movement style for these games.
Questing can be difficult until you get oriented with the game; it’s quite easy to get lost on some of the maps. However, that “explore until you get it” dungeon crawling experience is, in part, what the game is all about.
The mini-bosses aren’t always that challenging as long as you find decent enough gear to continuously heal and restore your mana, but once you start leveling up there are some bosses that can be tricky if you’re not careful.
For some unknown reason, I am always expecting to be able to pick up loot by clicking on its name as well as the item itself, but the hitbox is very finnicky and you must only click on the item itself on the ground. I find that to be an annoyance from time to time.
Inventory management, waypoints, and towns and sellers are pretty much all just like Diablo. So most players will get used to it right away.
There is a pretty hefty skill tree that players could, given the right amount of skill points, go any direction they like and cover a lot of buffs and skills.
There are also certain enchantments which go into the sockets on your weapons and armor. These give you additional weapon skills an abilities. However, as a bow user, so far I’ve had a lot of tough luck finding skills that work with my weapon. And when I do, I don’t have any sockets of the right color for it. You can get charges that change the color of sockets, but I’m close to level 9 now and I’ve only acquired one to use.
The game is based on multiplayer servers, so connection issues can cause “desync” which results in enemies, health, and attacks taking a couple seconds to adjust and process every once in a while. Typically, this is just rubber-banding, but sometimes I can just keep shooting an enemy over and over without it seeming to take damage.
Sound
The sound in this game is enjoyable. No real complaints here. Some of the voice acting is really well done, as well!
Graphics
Graphically, this game honestly looks kinda poop. It looks like an updated version of Diablo 2’s graphics, heh. It’s certainly tolerable and fits the dark fantasy theme in a consistent way, but nothing to blow you out of the water.
Top graphics aren’t necessary for this kind of game, and it doesn’t suffer much because of it.
Free-To-Play
The biggest issue these days with free-to-play games is that they’re more… free-to-pay. However, with Path of Exile, I never ran into a problem with their microtransactions. Granted, I’ve not actually made it to the end-game on a character yet, that’s typically not something I worry about. But I did poke around the game store and saw some cool aesthetic stuff, but nothing I felt I was missing out on for just playing free.
Overall, Path of Exile is a fun, addicting, FREE alternative to Diablo. I love dungeon crawlers, and can’t get enough of them, and it probably won’t be too much longer before my game time in PoE surpasses Diablo 3.
This has been What I Missed: the pseudo review show for games of the past which I’ve neglected to play. Want to see more videos like these? Subscribe to my channel. Want to support our content? Consider contributing to our Patreon campaign and giving us a +1 on Google Plus. See you next time!