My views after 170 hours

Characters I played were as follows:
Witch Hunter Glavanic Arrow - Level 82 got to tier 10 maps
Chayula Hexblast - Level 81 got to tier 7 maps then got bored
Chayula Poison Spiral Volley - Level 88 got to tier 15 maps

I generally play a few ARPG's each year, ranging from Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, Diablo 3, Diablo 2 Resurrected, Diablo 4
I almost always get to endgame/pinnacle bosses, but I'm never really pushing a super powerful/complete character/build. So definitely would not say I'm efficient.

Haven't played PoE1 since Ritual league. In Blight league I went 38/40 and a couple other leagues I went 36/40 if that matters.

So I wouldn't say I'm casual, but I'm not a hardcore player. Probably just a bit above average.


Likes:
- WASD is game changing
- The look is amazing
- Music is great, very atmospheric
- Sounds fit well with each ability and help lend weight to your actions. It feels like you are slamming a hammer down
- I really enjoyed the campaign and am interested in the story
- I was worried about the bosses, I'm not a person that cares about things being super difficult, which is (so far) what this game is leaning towards. But the bosses were very enjoyable (for the most part)). I particularly liked Count Ogham.
- I don't mind the slower speed as long as the rest of the game is developed to match that pace (but it's not)
- Even though I have a lot of complaints below, the game is incredibly addicting (which I want in an arpg) until about Tier 14/15 then I just got frustrated

QOL Improvement Suggestions:
- In gem skill menu, let us have an option to select the weapon set we want to use the ability with, then game will auto switch back and forth based upon selection
- I wanted to mess with hand of chayula, game would switch me to my quarterstaff/fist to use it, but then not switch back to wand/focus to cast my spells
- Game makes my NVIDIA RTX 3080 run super hot, even when turning down graphics

Bugs:
- Constantly get stuck on terrain when you clip stuff
- Once during the ogham fight when he was reciting his poem, he didn't wait to dash accross the screen at the end of each stanza. He just spammed his dash repeatedly
- The gold golem boss in act 3 once bugged out and just slowly walked forward, as if he was sending the lava waves, but got stuck in that animation
- I had a bug where I bought something in the shop for 120 coins. Then my entire bank of 1,300 turned to 0. Website still says I have 1,300

Dislikes:

- Eventually it just got to a point that I wasn't finding gear, and I couldn't survive in 14/15's. I had 2,281 health 3,132 Energy shield, 63% dodge, and I was just constantly getting one-shot, near one-shot (multiple things hit you at same time). Or one hit stuns me, next hit kills me. I had stun threshold on multiple pieces of gear, +stun threshold on passive tree, and just constantly getting stunned. My gear was all 50+ EX with a bow of 1 divine. So not super great gear, but should be enough to survive... I had to untalent the +levels to bosses on atlas passives because I couldn't kill them fast enough, or they just one-shot me. I started getting these passives from the first two 15+ bosses I fought. I'm sure this is happening to a lot of players where these passives are offered when their builds are no where near ready for it.

- I didn't know how to improve my gear anymore. I certainly wasn't finding anything. But then I also had to balance energy shield, health, resists, stun threshold, attributes. In order to upgrade the gear had to be so specific it either wasn't available or it was super expensive to trade for

- So many abilities have slow windups, or essentially root you in an area that it becomes even harder to avoid some of these mechanics unless your damage is so high you just delete the boss. Against the giant gorilla boss, I did a toxic growth attack, and during the animation while I'm jumping back he charged me one-shotting me. I can't avoid it. Against lachlan it was same thing, do a toxic growth and he did his slam (who's radius is far to large) and one-shot me.

- It's the most unrewarding, loot drop wise, ARPG I have ever played. I almost never upgraded my own gear off a raw drop, only once or twice after crafting in act 1-3 normal campaign. Almost every upgrade level 30+ was from trading. And it was routinely the case I really started to struggle in a new tier (campaign/waystones) that I had to go trade or be stuck.

- Waystones were very sink or swim for me, not sure about others. If we include the +1 level from irradiated I did this many waystones in a row before I got a waystone drop higher than 12: 16 boss (died from one-shot), 16 (died to one-shot), 15, 15, 14, 14, 14, 13, 12 (died to one-shot), 12, 15, 13.

- Crafting is absolutely terrible. Slam and pray. Everything is a slam/gamble/trash. There is no deterministic crafting in this game

- The current ascendancy methods feel like they weren't thought out. Honor is a terrible mechanic. I really hate it. It is much harder for melee and completely invalidates some builds. Like essence drain, it kills things slow. So your fight is going to take longer, but you can't get hit because of honor. Awesome.

- Trial of Chaos boss damage is completely overtuned for some attacks. Level 60 trials, I'm level 75. Trial of Chaos Bahlak boss tornado damage. At +15% move speed I can't outrun it, I can't outroll it, and it kills me in two seconds. I found I need at least +25% movement to survive getting away form it.


- One death waystones is just anti-fun. The game still has way too many one-shot or "near one-shot" mechanics so it just feels punishing.


- "Greed" Shrine is never shrine. You mean my chance for actual loot gets worse? "All drops turned to gold"

- Tier 2 and 3 Jewelers orbs are far too rare

- Gems being level restricted means classes will often just level up with the same skills. A lot of build defining abilities are at level 41+
- I wanted to do hexblast chayula monk. Hexblast is level 41 so I leveled as essence drain
- Wanted to do spiral arrow, but it's 52, so I leveled until that point with lightning arrow
- Eventually you don't even pick up gems anymore because they become worthless after you have all your abilities, plus enough spares for any alts you might make.

- Essence drain and contagion feel really really bad. Some of the worst leveling experience I have had in an ARPG (and I played essence drain in Metamorph league which I had fun with)
- They do no damage to bosses (act 1 final boss on normal took me six minutes to beat) (it's much worse than PoE1)
- They don't spread across the waystone because there isn't a lot of enemy density
- They need a really solid damage increase

- Looting feels really bad. I almost never upgraded my gear through my own drops. I prefer to find most of my loot, and trade for good items. If I just trade for everything, then the game loses appeal. I don't want everything, but I want something, because right now I get nothing.
- My mercenary had to trade for a crossbow end of act 3 normal because he was still using same one from act 1 and was doing no damage because no upgrades were dropping
- My first chayula monk had to trade for a full set of gear in act 3 normal because my defences/attributes were so poor I couldnt' survive, because he was finding no upgrades
- There felt like a huge difference between running no item rarity, and running even just a little

- Lack of health and resists on passive tree further complicates gearing, contributing to many items not being upgrades because they lack health or resists or movement speed.

- Negative effects on passive notables feels really bad, and makes the game feel like it's trying to be punishing rather than fun

- Mana cost at higher gem levels should maybe be tweaked a little bit, it's a little too high. Should still be a factor you build for, but it's a little high

- I'm not as smart as many players, but the darkness part of Chayula monk ascendancy just seems like a compelte non-starter compared to the other paths (unless abusing sehkmas)

- Charms aren't that great
- +25% to resistance is after taking damage, but most players will have resistances capped at end-game anyway
- Since they proc after it happens: stun is useless because you stay stunned from first one
- Removing poison just means you get poisoned from the next one about 5 seconds later, which will probably be instant
- Bleed and freeze removal are useful
- +charm slots seem really rare

- Flasks don't seem to have any interesting modifiers because their affixes were replaced with charms

- Why do all mace skills have such long in built delays on them?