POE 2 Early Access Review / Feedback

First of all, thank you GGG for delivering POE 2 in a playable state for such a wide audience. This review and feedback will contain spoilers, in case anyone still wants to experience the game first hand, be aware.

TLDR: Thank you! The game is fun, but: crafting/exalting is a nice gamble mechanic, but doesn’t feel right. The first two ascendancies are initially challenging and feel rewarding. The final two feel a bit to time consuming. Controller support is awesome and WASD playstyle works wonders. Towers in mapping are an unfun experience, and map sustain is not sufficient. Co-op play makes you loose visibility on your screen.

The heritage
This game for me is very reminiscent of Diablo 3. Yes, the vanilla version right after release was very tough. Initially basically no loot was dropping and Act 2 in the last difficulty was hard to get through. Therefore, POE 2 felt quite familiar in that respect. GGG reacted quickly with a significant buff to loot drops, leading to a more rewarding feeling after the patch. Overall, the campaign was challenging, but playing as a necromancer, with a buffer of minions, good to progress through. Bosses were dying in a good pace and especially the final boss in act 3, with all its mechanics, gave me an awe moment. Since playing far away from the boss and my minions doing most of the job, I could focus on the boss’s abilities, benefiting from this save playstyle.

New ways to play an ARPG
Controller playstyle is awesome. It is very relaxing to play in such a fashion. While playing with more targetable spell however, I prefer WASD. With the requirement to take a step back in order to avoid monsters, using the mouse only is not in my book anymore.

Skill gems and links
What I disliked during my playthrough was the initial lack of skill and support gems, and no way to buy them ingame, in order to try out more abilities. Especially support gems where rare for me. The cost for respecking were also quite high, meaning an inflexibility there as well. This was changed later on, leading to more convenient respecking with gold. Leveling a twink was in that sense confusing, on the one hand, I had no early skill gems available to get many abilities early, but level 3 support gems could be used instantly, leading to a nice power boost from that perspective.
Following up on the skills with sockets. Getting the first and second addition in terms of sockets is achievable. However, finding the perfect jeweler’s orb for the final socket feels a bit to rare to occur and via trade quite a way out of reach. It would be better in my eyes, if you can 3-1 the orbs into the perfect one. This would lead to more build flexibility and ability to try out more stuff, while right now it feels like a huge commitment to one skill, in case you get one final socket. Or you should be able to salvage a skill and get the medium and perfect orbs returned.

The "fun" in ascendancies
Power from ascendancies is a topic in itself. Having not played sanctum at all in POE 1, the first ascendency was fun, since there was only one stage to complete. Loving Ultimatum meant the second ascendency was overall a nice run, a bit punishing, depending on the debuffs. However, getting the 3rd ascendency took me a very long time to complete. Maybee my build was not up to spec, I was too unfamiliar with sanctum playstyle, but eventually with some respecs and honour resistance relics in the stash it could be done. The 4th one I haven’t touched yet. Well, I tried, but my life vanished, I guess, due to some fire aoe on the ground ticking away my energy shield and HP due to the 5% strip away debuff I had. Therefore, the first and second ascendency are in my eyes a worthwhile experience, but the following one are just to punishing and time consuming.

The core of any ARPG, the loot!
Let’s talk about loot. Especially after the first rounds of patches, the drops were getting worthwhile and leading to some currency to spare. However, the crafting with self-found gear baffles me. It is good that this is not just the same as POE 1, which with all its (confusing) crafting systems is still overwhelming. But, having just random exalted orbs to fill up pre and suffix slots hoping for a good outcome or leading to another item for the disenchantment is nothing I really found enjoyment in. Either luck is on your side, and 3 out of your 10 exalts gave a good outcome, or the thought came through, to just buy better items for 1 exalt on trade. In that respect, POE 1 with its crafting bench gave a lot more flexibility. Now, when you fill up your missing resistance with runes, and you find an upgrade, you might have to replace all of your items, since you are locked in the with rune you chose. Now, grinding through maps and having a few dozens of exalts to spare, it is getting more fun to try and gamble for an upgrade with the drops that come around.

Hello endgame
Getting into maps is fun initially. You get your first watchtower and can scout which way to go next. After the 5th watchtower the excitement has decreased, especially when you character is not the fastest, movement wise. Once I approached higher tier maps it became clear that you can only buy 1 tier 5 map, which got randomly refreshed. Map drops in itself, of the tier you need to progress, got inconsistent for me around tier 9-10. Map sustain was difficult. It sucked to use the last tier 12 map, without finding another one, and run tier 9 again upwards. Yes, targeting bosses for more map drops is something I learned later on, but like with Kirac in POE 1, there should be a way to do missions to get more maps, and or completion. Here the towers could be a really useful mechanic. The task could be something like, find and complete a mechanic around the tower in order to receive a couple of maps as a reward.

Blinded by the light...
Playing coop in this game feels overall better than in POE 1, while progressing through the campaign. However, one anybody has a couple of minions, or the AOE effects become more frequent and larger, than it is quickly turning into a nightmare. You can’t see ground or after death effects anymore. Again, Diablo 3 solved this way better, back in the day, that e.g. the minions of other players are transparent, so they don’t block 2/3 of you screen.

A few thoughts:
First, I think the game is great but struggles with allowing players to 'discover' powerful identity based choosing a few skill / spirit combinations and really investing in that identity. You've obviously taken a lot of inspiration from Elden Ring, but missed one crucial component: despite being a punishing game, Elden Ring allows you to make almost any imagined build 'viable,' if not great.

For instance, the Huntress has some fire skills that seemingly should synthesize with bleed (rake - parry - explode spear). But it seems impossible to get the power fantasy from this sort of bloodflame build. There aren't interactions on the passive skill tree between ignite, and there's one unique spear that wouldn't even allow you to use exploding spear with such a build. Seems like a completely missed opportunity that forces the player to go back to one or two builds for the class. In other words, where Elden Ring rewards players for exploring individual fantasies, POE 2 sort of funnels you into these archetypes or "builds" that are all you see online. That's a huge difference in discovery from a fun perspective.

One way, other than providing more notables and uniques, you might explore enabling player imagination would be to have a 'specialization' questing system where the player creates their own 'notable' passive (or adds an interaction to an existing one), such that if I want to make a bloodflame build, I can complete a series of feats and have the interaction /effects of bleed and ignite (phys/fire damage) have a meaningful interaction, or at least both scale off similar investments.

I just noticed that the support gem for Ritual Sacrifice, the gem named Profanity, seems to be breaking the skill. It doesn't seem to matter how littered with bodies the area around the rare monster is for some reason this gem is almost prioritizing absorbing the body of the rare itself: this results in no modifiers being granted and a waste of the attempt. I've tried and failed to gain modifiers from 4 rares in a row this way, first attempt after removing the support gem and it worked again.