Why I love ARPG games.

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WintersGasp#5389 wrote:

This is going to sound weird but as someone who has also been down the aRPG path I feel like POE leans more towards hack and slash with story elements to be honest.

Yes, I very much agree with this.
POE 1 is very much a hack and slash. But it was not always like this.
In fact the pacing of POE 1, was in my opinion even slower then POE 2 currently is.
It evolved into more of a hack and slash as time went on and the games audience expanded.

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WintersGasp#5389 wrote:

It also works nicely as a "theorycrafting simulator".

POE has great depth and a big part of it is the theory crafting associated with not only creating new builds but (at least in POE 1) with crafting items.
I understand that GGG wanted to reduce the amount of initial game knowledge required to play POE 2, so that they can attract new players. (I believe they have achieved this with POE 2.)

However in doing so, it takes away a bit of the depth of the game.

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Part of it is I think the RP part of aRPGs is often not given as much care as it should be. It's kind of what makes souls games popular. Lore is everywhere. Even non-boss mobs can drop items specific to them which can give you more insight on them, the overall area, or even major characters. As an example the Black Knight shield explains why they were called "black" knights and that they were fighting chaos demons (which implies whoever they served had beef with chaos demons). Then you can even visit the place where the demons are and fight them yourself.

Thats a very valid point.
GGG themselves had stated that they had originally not put much thought into the lore of POE. However they did continue to add "hints" to the game with new bosses, flavor text on specific items and the "lore books" you could listen to. (The in-game elements you click on that would narrate as you played.)

I believe they are trying to go into a more RP direction with POE 2.
The NPCs especially seem to be much more lore heavy if you click through all of their options.