Huntress review - Excellent gameplay! Stick to the "vision"!

i am cruising through the campaign and will provide some feedback based on the Act (reach Act 3 with no real problem)

ACT1: parry is excellent and very nice to use with disengage, it was my bread and butter with explosive spear and lightning spear.
Extremely fun gameplay and besides 1 or 2 monsters where parry was not easy, i did not struggle at all.
very few defensive layers needed thanks to parry.
Act 1 boss was easy and i did it in 1 go.

Act 2: Keep similar set up, starting to use a bit of whirlwind with twister on the explosive spear, play a bit with shock and lightning spear(very good with fork and chain + lightning infusion) and well it went very good again, parry is extremely useful in all situation and the only deaths i had was because i did not position properly.
Act 2 boss was kind of challenging because of the elemental resist for fire and lightning, had to adjust my build with more lightning pen and then it went ok
Went with amazone and infusion. maybe you have to tune a bit the boss from sekehma to allow easier parry, i had to level up a bit before to try again.
I would say it is bit more complicated to use other infusions as endurance or power charge are less accessible at this stage, maybe something to check in order to have access (via combo) to other charges(early) if we want to build other ele style.
Act 3: going more to lightning with herald as well and primal armament, extremely satisfying to use, parry - disengage - lightning spear that shock everything and then primal armament to make extra damage consuming shock.

Overall, i had similar feeling (Very positive) than when i played monk during the campaign, we are rewarded enough (very good damage with charges, visually as well) to engage with mechanics and different abilities, there is not one other ARPG with so satisfying gameplay.
Pretty sure i will find easy way later on to get charges so i am sure there are plenty of options, yes the damage is not at its best without charges or spec for damage between melee and ranged but that's good.
Act 3 and for white packs, if i want i do not need to "combo".

Do not let the streamers or vocal minority discourage you, POE2 is the best experience i had in term of gameplay from any ARPG, period!
the amount of mechanic and gameplay layers are exceptional, these devs are top, i cannot imagine how complex such things are to code.

Keep up the good job, very soon we will have a masterpiece that we will remember/play in our old days ;)

That was actually quite an interesting read about your experience, but you had to fumble it on the final stretch...

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ReneGuenon#3515 wrote:

Do not let the streamers or vocal minority discourage you, POE2 is the best experience i had in term of gameplay from any ARPG, period!
the amount of mechanic and gameplay layers are exceptional, these devs are top, i cannot imagine how complex such things are to code.

Keep up the good job, very soon we will have a masterpiece that we will remember/play in our old days ;)

A few things:
1. There is no such thing as a "vocal minority". That's a made up term used by anyone needing an opposition to argue against. It's pointless - both sides.
2. Maybe you are not looking for an ARPG, but just an isometric action game? For some reason, "The Ascent" just popped into my head, which I think is closer to PoE2 than PoE2 is to Diablo II at this point.
3. It's decently, but not overly, complex to code. If PoE uses ECS, it's actually rather simple. The hard part is art and animation, and that they definitely nailed.

Yes there are things as "vocal minority" or cognitive bias.
Just need to check a bit in qualitative survey(or voluntary ones) if you want to educate yourself.
I am looking for an engaging gameplay experience(does not matter the genre) and POE2 satisfy my need.
You can play D4/POE1/D2 if you are looking for something else.
I may not know how to code but i am working in the field of software implementation with devs, a project of this scale is complex at all level.
Most of the comments i see online are from people that probably never worked in any project implementation involving tech of any kind, displaying their ignorance and entitlement. (shameful)

Let's "fumble" together.

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ReneGuenon#3515 wrote:

Most of the comments i see online are from people that probably never worked in any project implementation involving tech of any kind, displaying their ignorance and entitlement. (shameful)

Haha, you just cant help yourself can you? Newsflash - just because you are having a good time, it doesnt invalidate other people having a bad time, whether its because they are new to the game, or if *the build they want to play* is bad until cruel/maps/endgame, or any other reason.

I stopped playing my first huntreess char that had parry. I knew something was off the moment i saw it defaults to middle mouse button. This is extremly unpleasant and clunky game design from an ergonomic perspective. Even if you put it somewhere on the keyboard it's just an extra button that makes things more awkward and buttons to miss when in adrenaline fuled encounters.
Maybe it works on a gamepad idk. I don't play with gamepad on my PC. A game should be designed around what feels good irl, not what is a good idea on paper.

Sitting there parrying waiting for something to happen is itself bad gameplay. Disengage doesn't hit the parried target half the time. Total garbage design of this character.

There's no vision.

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b_ko#7756 wrote:

Sitting there parrying waiting for something to happen is itself bad gameplay. Disengage doesn't hit the parried target half the time. Total garbage design of this character.

Parry honestly is trash. Once I got to level 5 gems, I just took it off and went with a bleed+herald of blood+whirlwind build. Forget generating Frenzy charges, just bleed and keep tossing tornados through the whirlwind and it was clearing screens and decent for bosses.

Huntress is fun and in maps I assume we will be generating charges with combat frenzy, so parry can stay on the sidelines.

I was mostly negative on this patch till I got this build going. Still have trash gear (GGG please fix the drops, I'm not getting any good gear).

The patch has issues for sure, but I'm feeling better about the huntress and so coming around to it. The negative reviews are a problem tho, so anything GGG can do to smooth out early game would help. It's not just huntress, warrior, monk, sorc all are tough in early game, the damage is low and the movement speed is slow, it doesn't make for inspiring gameplay. Tough problem to solve for sure.

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Flowneppets#0528 wrote:

I stopped playing my first huntreess char that had parry. I knew something was off the moment i saw it defaults to middle mouse button. This is extremly unpleasant and clunky game design from an ergonomic perspective. Even if you put it somewhere on the keyboard it's just an extra button that makes things more awkward and buttons to miss when in adrenaline fuled encounters.
Maybe it works on a gamepad idk. I don't play with gamepad on my PC. A game should be designed around what feels good irl, not what is a good idea on paper.

I have it on my left button MB1 and it works quite good, not using it currently but maybe WASD would help.

People can hate the game, people can love the game. Both can be valid and fine, but I cannot take anyone seriously who bring up this vision. Its nothing more than just a virtual self pat in the back that "Yes the vision is this , and I like it so I must be right"

But whenever they change something that these people don't like it is suddenly not GGG vision anymore (cause you as some omnipotent being perfectly aware what their so called vision is) and poor GGG just caved in because of the "whiners"