General feedback about the campaign

This is a feedback post for ggg, with my toughts about the game a I was playing the campain. Its not a discussion thread , if you don't agree its fine, everyone has his opinion :) ! This is not a full review either, I'm just taking note as I go. Not gonna mention the good things, but i'll do a summary in the end. This post is mostly intended to focus on what I think should be improved or what bothered me. I'm gonna play full ssf until endgame, not gonna watch streams or reddit, (didn't watch every interview or teaser either) so it should be mostly a blind playthrough, may miss things but shouldn't be influenced by excessive possivity or negativity. I'm gonna play the game the same way I played last epoch and d4 lately, without particular expectations or hype but I'm gonna try to give it a good shot.

Act 1 :

Annoying bug, oppening the world map need 3-4s loading time

No detailed tooltip when mouseovering on the skill bar?

Gold cost on merchant a bit too high? Entirety of act 1 could only afford me a single item, definitly not enough to help cap resistance. edit in act 3 : way better later, just a bit high in act 1

Cemetery final boss felt overtune. 2 previous boss in same zone where perfectly fine, but this one was just almost perma slowing me, + very difficult to avoid two-shotting aoe with low movespeed. Last boss of the act was also way easier with same setup. Maybe remove chill zone and on hit?

Dodge roll feel not very usefull. Not enough distance to avoid a lot of boss attacks (straffing while casting worked better for me on most of situations), and worthless against white monsters that just surround you and block your dodge. Maybe should give phasing for a short duration? (idea, optional boss could give that power, 0.5s of phasing when dodge rolling)

Act 2 :

Start to be way too reliant on flask. Have permanent life and mana flask uptime, need to use every 2s while clearing. And not enough charges on boss, despite having 2 flask with 50% increase hp/mana recovered and 30%+ max charges (10 uses of both), I finish every boss with 0 flask charges waiting ages for mana to naturally regen in the last 20-25%. Cannot even use damage curses, they require 30% of my mana for only 6s of effect on a 2 min boss (45s to get to 25%, the rest for the post flask slog). Cannot afford mana regen points for now, I barely have enough dps to clear normal packs confortably (full offensive tree and very good weapon 120% spell dmg and +2 spells, could just be a problem with the skill/element/class or whatever I use, Lightning spells, mostly arc with 3 support skills, sorceress).

I really dislike the zone reset on death. Its fine on boss, but reseting everything on trash mobs, really? Even loot is gone if you die... Having to walk back is punishing enough, reclearing everything is too much.

Second to last zone huge difficulty spike (dreadnought), overtuned? Next zone is easier. Previous zone I could one to two shot most white mobs. Suddently need 3-4 hits, + monsters jump at me from the border of the screen and almost "one shot" (by 5-6 instants hits) me. Layout doesn't help, very easy to get surrounded. Dodge roll still doesn't help. Also no checkpoints? First zone in act 3 I'm also 1-2 shoting white ennemies, 0 character changes.

Act 3 :

Can you put the waypoint of this act further from the center of the zone? I think there should be a way longer bridge. More seriously, its weird to being teleported on the middle, but being unable to leave without going to the far top right of the area. Waypoint are generally easy to access in towns!

The gorilla boss in jungle ruins is weird. Not too hard when you fight it normally, beside his stomp attack that just one shot me no matter what, but the fact that he isn't in an arena and instantly agro you when you respawn is problematic. If you die, you instantly respawn with him aggro. You can't espape him, he can one shot at any range. At some point I was just moving through the map, and his stomp attack hit me from almost offscreen before I've even seen him or took the checkpoint, had to redo the whole zone because of that, on a veeeery long layout (he was just before the portal at the end, no checkpoint since the beggining). Maybe move him slightly out of the normal pace and move the checkpoint somewhere else?

Some layouts are insane. Very few so far, this is the first one to that extreme. I've been in chimeral wetlands for 20 min right now, found one optional zone, one boss and one rare "boss". 2 checkpoints in the whole zone (at 10 meter from each other). Maps telling me there is a main scenario next zone here somewhere but can't find it. Layout : https://gyazo.com/60ea1ff87c7a207be30266c86c2ffc69 . Maybe split the zone in two if that's intended?

After reclearing chimeral wetlands a second time, it was a bug, the door to the jiquani's machinarium just didn't open when the boss died. Or I was slightly too far when I killed the boss and it didn't showed up on the map, either way it shouldn't do that.

Apparently some quest item are dropped on death and their locations are randomised every time? Currently in Jiquani's sanctum, a very large map, that's annoying.

Curse activation delay. Why? Juste make it akward that the first hit after using a curse isn't affected. Also curses really don't last long for their mana cost.

Blasphemy range is very small, that's weird for a caster character. The spirit cost and reduce curse effect is already big, maybe a few more meter radius?

Again on the layouts, some act 3 layouts are way too long. Seems like padding to waste time. Almost nothing in the areas either, just ton of dead end. Didn't notice that in the 2 first acts. Could be random generation fucking thing up, but a few area could have been cut in half or more without changing anything to the story. Like this one, nothing in the zone beside one small treasure room https://gyazo.com/35b5b877cd98bc5137c323205eec2273 . Could remove 70%. Honestly getting annoyed. Act 1 and 2 where fun, 3 and 2.5 hours. I'm at more than 4h here, still few zones left. edit : and missed an optional portal here, zone reset, now I can redo it again \o/.

So act 3 took me more time than 1 and 2 combined. Not sure you need an act 4, just split this one in two! Offcourse character power is gonna be way better with time. But that not the issue. Areas are too big, quest items are hidden in random corner, you need to explore everything because they can be anywhere. I still have massive areas (size or 2 or 3 normal one) to explore entierely because I missed 1 random quest item that is not indicated in any way. This is just tedious and boring. If it was any other companies I would guess that its intentional to later sell level boost. Honestly cant see myself doing a new character now or in a new league in this state. And I still need to redo the 3 acts in cruel difficulty now.

Act 4-6 :

The limite of 1 support gem per character is really weird to me. I don't really like multiple button build but I want to try. But I can only put damaging support on a single skill so the others don't do any damage? Its exacerbated by the small number of supports and skills available in the ea, so I guess it will get better, but I'm not convinced about that decision. Right now the only multi button setup I found to work for me is 1 skill that do damage and every temporary buff I could fine to support that skill.

Is Lightning conduit bugged? On the tooltip its supposed to do the same damage as my main skill, and 600% more with my 30% shock, so it should be a good combo skill. But no, doesn't do more damage. Not sure the more damage per 5% shock applies.

Back in act 3 (6), Nothing to say about the first 2 acts the second time, they are still really fine, beside the few small issues I had the first time.

Gold repec cost start to be too high (lvl 59). I'm a decent build maker so I have few respec to do, but I can see that being a problem if people want to try things. A small "respec" can be done with the secondary weapon thing if you set it up in the begining (I didn't know you had to enable it, shouldn't it be on by default?), but anything bigger isn't gonna happen. Also may need to only invest in specialized points when you do the correct quest, which would be awful. Currently, if I wanted to respec to a different element, it would cost me more than 100K gold. Got about 40K in the act 4-5.

"Event" spot in zones that are just a random rare or magic pack are weird. No rewards, nothing special, why is that a thing?

Why are ennemies allowed to have mobility skills if I'm not?

Done with campaign, took me a bit less than 20 hours. Second run of act 3 wasn't as bad, but just because I knew to ignore 70% of the zones. Wasn't always possible, but a bit less annoying.

Quick summary of the goods things, there is a lot more but the most important :

New gem system is great. I liked it the most in the beggining, when I was able to adapt to my drops and use more appropriate skills for the loot I had, sadly its not really possible in the later acts once you have specialised a character. Still great to be able to try any skill at the latest level when you drop a gem. The choice of skills and support is really low tho, but its EA.

Graphism are great.

The first 2 ascencion are way better. Not a sanctum or ultimatum enjoyer, but when you have a correct power level, this is way more fun than doing lab.

Combat movement is interesting. While clearing, having some form of movement while casting is great. Howether, during boss when I tried to stand in a buff zone or avoid boss attacks, slowly sliding to the last direction I clicked to was awkward. Felt like playing on ice. There is maybe a button to stop moving, but its gonna be annoying to press when bossing. The system probably work better with wasd movement or controller, didn't try it but I can see it being very good.

Story is great so far, even tho its hard to judge the quality of the story given we only have half of it.

Boss are cool, considerably more involving and interesting than those of poe 1. Not sure I would say the same after having killed them a dozen time, but so far its good.


Conclusion / review of the campaign :

Campaign is fine. I would rate the first 2 acts good 9/10. Act 3 howether is a 5/10. Areas are just too big and empty (no adding things inside isn't the solution!). Overall, if this was a 30$ single player story game, I would give the EA a 8/10, with good hope for the futures updates. Howether, this isn't that kind of game. Its a seasonal arpg. And for that, my rating would be at best 6/10. Currently we are supposed to replay that campaign every 3-4 month, and again for every additional characters. In the current state, I think things are gonna get old very fast.

During act 2, I was considering what class I was gonna play next. Now, I can't imagine replaying it, now or for a new league. I think the campaign still need more work, and not in the direction act 3 is going. It need to be more condensed, and faster to go through. You can't expect people to do a 20+ hours campaign every league/rerolls.

Again, didn't play endgame yet so I may change my mind later, but right now, I wouldn't recommend the game to a seasonal arpg fan. Tbf I'm not entierely sure for who the campaign is made for. Arpg veterans are not gonna like replaying it. Souls fan may like it once, but honestly its not a good souls-like game either. Casuals are gonna have a very hard time, either with the general complexity of the game or the difficulty of the bosses.