POE 2 Feedback from an Old Player

Hi everyone and Thx to read me :)

My english is not my main language, so it will not be perfect, I'm sorry in advance for that

I played POE1 for the first time in season breach with friends, I made a break, played other games, and came back in Harbinger seasons, and played every seasons until expeditions if my brain is ok, that i'm not sure. I knew POE 1 where it was only 3 acts with 3 difficulties, and when Act 4 realease.

Now I will talk about POE2 :

First, access has been Paid ? ok, weird for a game who was free as long as I remember but ok.
I didn't Paid for me, I will be honest, On this website, I had a Message with 2 key for Access, But I paid for a friend :)


First, when You launch the game, it Ask you to choose if you want to play with mouse and move with left clic or if you want to moove with zqsd or wasd. For me it looks like if the game was designed to play with controller and they adapt it to play with MnK.... POE is for PC, yes it work on PS4/5 and Xbox but it's for PC, and the key for dodge roll I don't know how to say that. probably on Controller is a really good mecanic, on MnK it's feel like a shit.

I will talk about this feeling when we play :

In Poe 1 when you play, when you advance you gain level, you have to upgrade level of your gems, put some passives, you have the feeling to be stronger.

In POE 2 the ONLY thing happen when your character level up : you have to put a passive. cause your gems don't level up....
The new system to choose passives and Skill gems is ok, you can choose almost all skill gems.... but the fact they don't grow up with the character is litterally : if you don't find the good item you can't advance in the game.
And in Fact, It happened to me

In trial for Ascendy, Area is for level 22. I've tried, one time, two times, three times .....
I finish the trial when I was level 26 cause, Even if I have 2levels more than the Area, which in POE 1 make you litterally a god smashing every monster ...
In POE 2 you will cry for advance in game.

Honestly, And I read it on Steam so I'm not the Only one, I have the feeling to play Elden Ring but on Hack n Slash with a very good graphics engine.
You have to roll to dodge again and again and again against Boss who can one shot you litterally, but Dodge roll have a cooldown, so sometime, the character will say : Nope I stay here -> you get One shot -> start at the begining..

I stopped cause I broke my keyboard and My screen, and I'm not a rage guy in other game it's okay, I've played at Elden Ring and I broke nothing....
so I can't play anymore, POE2 cost me 30$ + 321for my stuff ...

To be honest, They Announced POE2 in 2022 for first time if I remember well and I've been waiting for it. looking news every seasons. Now I can play
i've uninstall the game and will not play again. I play POE 1 for fun, while watchning a movie on other screen, just try hard on Endgame bosses and it's normal. On POE2 I can't, maybe I'm too old, and it's ok , but I play game to chill after my days of Work not to Try hard something else than my work.
And I can Understand games Like souls or Elden rings are specific games....
But it's POE2 not Souls like, I don't want to have to roll to dodge boss attack 10000000 times before I can attack it, I don't want boss have 1000000 mecanics to learn in Act1 and I don't want feel my character weak af cause I don't looted the good item to have a support gem or the good skill ... in POE 1 if you don't have the good skill, you go in town, you buy it from a vendor, you xp it quickly and it's done.

So POE2 was a Horrible experience for me. Maybe for other players it's ok and they enjoy it, And I wish you to enjoy it cause Devs work on it hardly.
But it's not for me. And I think it's too far from what was POE1 to have the same name.

Thx for reading me.

.

I completely agree with the progress part. It's awful. If you find the right item at the right time the game is fun, if you don't you don't progress and drops seem to get worse when you are over leveled so grinding for something better is non-existent. Also even if drops weren't diminishing I don't wanna grind in acts, we should be well over this anno 2024 (maps is where the end game is, so maps is where we want to be)

yesterday I rolled a new char, because my old one was stuck and did not receive what I needed (a spirit gem) And boom, unique after unique and several spirit gems in the first 2 levels, this totally off puts the first 12 hours I played, and it definitely is not how it should be (first impression is everything) only my love for PoE1 is what made me give it a another try with another char, as I experienced bad drops so often in poe1 I knew a new character seed could change everything. I have no clue how you exactly do it but it is totally unbalanced and decides whether some1 has a fun game or not, op seems to had bad luck, result is him leaving PoE2..

I was trying to find words of why I find the new gem system bad, and I guess this is definitely how I would describe it. Lack of deterministic power improvement all gated behind some new randomness gem system, it's just awful.

I completely agree about the dodge roll, I cannot imagine how terrible and boring it is on any character that is not using some sort of consistent damage output (minions/dots etc) Also this of course is a lot less worse if you do shit tons of dps. My rerolled char had a lot less of the bad feelings during a short span of time, (now slowly starts to fall behind again, resulting in sluggish, boring play where there are no decent upgrades to be found, resulting in the same boring problem as my first character had, and no I am not rerolling a 3rd time)

You cannot even enjoy the bossfights/Bosses at all, al you do is trying to avoid the constant spam of effects and find the openings for attacks and the worst part is, it's not hard, it's just not enjoyable.

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