PoE2 vs. Souls Games: A Comparison That Hurts More Than It Helps

First off, when people casually throw around terms like "Souls-like combat" or "engaging, tactical gameplay," they’re often indulging in pure synthetic copium. So let’s break this down—coming from someone who has completed every Souls game, both from FromSoft and other studios attempting to ride that wave.

The problem with these comparisons is the same one that plagued mainstream gaming journalism when they first tried to describe Souls games. They missed the mark. Souls games aren’t hard—they’re fair. There’s a mutual understanding between player and enemy, a kind of combat contract:

Enemies can one-combo you—but you can do the same to them.

Your movement is deliberate—but so is theirs.

Your attacks have commitment frames—but enemies are bound by the same rules.

You can be staggered or interrupted—but you can stagger them too.

There’s a brutal elegance to it. Everything is governed by clarity, consistency, and consequence. And that’s exactly what Path of Exile 2 is missing right now.

Let’s talk about PoE2: you can’t have it both ways, GGG.

You can't make the player feel like a fat-rolling,broken straight sword-swinging meatbag stuck against wall collision, while the enemies move like they're the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst on Red Bull. For those who know—that’s not a fair fight. That’s a mismatch in design philosophy.

In PoE2, the player is:

Slow

Fragile

Lacking meaningful damage in early builds

Constantly displaced or interrupted

Easily one-shot by nearly everything

Meanwhile, the enemies:

Are faster than you

Leap, teleport, and swarm

Leave ground effects, death explosions, and degens

Come in overwhelming numbers with near-perfect AI pathing

And don’t even bring up the dodge roll. In Souls games, dodging gives true i-frames. You know when you’re safe. In PoE2, dodge feels inconsistent at best, unreliable at worst—more like a panic button than a tactical tool.

And here's the kicker that really separates these two design paradigms: in Souls games, your build has direction. You find items that matter. You’re working toward specific weapons, spells, and gear that support your vision—and the game gives you a clear path to them(one could argue the same about ARPGs). There’s intent.

In ARPGs like PoE2? Loot is random. Completely RNG-driven. 90% of what drops isn’t even usable for your build, much less an upgrade. You’re wading through a sea of irrelevance, trying to spot one usable item through sheer luck. That works in a loot explosion power fantasy. But in a slow, punishing, high-risk combat system? That’s just exhausting and it becomes frustrating instead of engaging.

But here’s the biggest casualty of this design confusion: the campaign experience.

In theory, PoE2’s campaign should be a story-driven, atmospheric intro to the game—a chance to immerse players while also teaching them the systems, pacing, and mechanics. It should be a learning platform. But in its current state? It’s a deterrent. For new players, it’s overwhelming. For veterans, it’s exhausting. Regardless of early access status, the campaign is hitting players with full-brutality encounters before they’ve even had a chance to build momentum or understand their options.

PoE2 vs. Souls Games: A Comparison That Hurts More Than It Helps


There needs to be a better sense of progression and purpose across the full scope of the game. Something like this would feel much more natural:

Campaign – Fun and engaging the first time each league, focused on learning, build exploration, and story. After one completion, allow future characters to progress faster—maybe nerf mob density or offer a “story skip lite” mode so you’re not dragging through it every time.

Midgame – More focused, a blend of challenge and payoff. Builds should start to come online, and the content should encourage creativity and progression.

Endgame – Complex, tough, but still fun. Enemies test your build, but don’t outright punish you for not being meta.

Pinnacle Content – Full tryhard mode. Here’s where you push your build, your reflexes, and your knowledge to the limit.

Right now, PoE2 feels like it’s frontloading the pain and gatekeeping the fun—and that’s not how you build an enduring game, or a healthy playerbase.

GGG had a bold vision with PoE2: a tactical, slower-paced ARPG with depth and atmosphere. But you can’t just take Souls combat aesthetics, bolt them onto old PoE1 systems, and expect it to work. That’s not innovation—that’s incoherence.

Pick a direction. Stick to it. Respect the player’s time and effort.
Because right now, PoE2 is trying to be both a Souls-like and an ARPG… and ends up doing justice to neither.

The meme was about needing a certain amount of knowledge to succeed in PoE, not about fighting bosses and mobs by rolling around and staggering them. I don't know how it came to this, but here we are

A few, in my opinion, important things you overlooked:
- Dark Souls titles are focused on 1v1 or 1vFew combat; you are not swarmed by scores of enemies, you are ambushed by a couple at best;
- your defenses, unless you forget to invest in your HP pool (deliberate and easy to do thing) or go full glass cannon, are basically always enough to survive at least one hit from either mobs or bosses;
- their campaign IS the game, while PoE focuses heavily on post-campaign content.

The first point makes achieving "engaging combat" a very different task for the two franchises; the easiest way to check how PoE2 is not achieving the appropriate results would be checking ranged mobs behaviour, their attack speed is higher than it should given their numbers and damage (which is basically a constant through the game, with melee ones also having movement speed in the equation).

The second point makes failing to understand an enemy feel somewhat rewarding, "oh it can do this, I should avoid it" without having to backtrack/lose your loot; it's harder to do when there are more things to balance around (your gear can change your stats wildly in ARPGs).

The third point makes a lot of players who are used to ARPGs feel not at home, they want to do the "meaningful" activites but are stuck in maps that take considerable time and effort to get through.


And this wraps around to most of the actual feedback you read on here: adjusting enemy stats (both number and damage), and making the campaign faster would please most players.


(Edit: I also feel like if you really had to do so, you should compare the game to other titles instead (like Dragon's Dogma), I feel the whole dark souls thing is just not on point for too many things)

Absolute facts.

Slowness should be mutual if balance is to be achieved.

Great post.

For me dodge roll is the stupidest idea that might be in this game. It works in boss fights indeed. But it doesn't work in 90% of gameplay time which is clearing packs of mobs and tanking such packs.

Same comes with another "idea" that came out of this stupidity - honor system in that Barya dungeons. It just shouldn't be in there because this is not even close to souls like gameplay, this is much different.

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doubledu#4375 wrote:

Absolute facts.

Slowness should be mutual if balance is to be achieved.

Great post.

This game is poorly made, a disaster from the start. They've added things without rhyme or reason, insanely, pointlessly, and they think adding a lot of stuff makes the game better, when it just doesn't work at its core.

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Johny_Snow#4778 wrote:

The meme was about needing a certain amount of knowledge to succeed in PoE, not about fighting bosses and mobs by rolling around and staggering them. I don't know how it came to this, but here we are

Rolling and staggering are not that bad when you ballance the game around them, if that is "the vision".
The issue is that you have something like the player character feeling that it would belong in a different game, because the mobs are designed for zoom zoom zoom screen wipe, while the player is designed more for 1v1 slow combat.

The biggest reason it's a bad comparison for me is what happens on death. In Souls games (and all Souls-likes I have played except Sekiro, if you count that as Souls-Like) when you die:

1. You can get your lost XP/Currency back. (Except Sekiro)
2. You face the same exact challenge but with greater knowledge on how to beat it.

POE2 does neither of those things:

1. You lose XP, it's gone.
2. Monsters all respawn but not the same ones. You can't go back and get revenge because a different Rare spawned or maybe no Rare at all.

I hate the XP loss and think it's by far their worst decision about this game which I otherwise am very optimistic about, but that's been done to death elsewhere.

More relevant to this topic is point 2. They should not respawn different enemies when you die. It robs the player of being able to try again against the same enemy.

I am guessing they went with this because it avoids the possible issue of running into something you just cannot kill because it has some horrible combination of mods. But the player can fix that by starting a new instance if they run into this wall.

I do agree with the OP though, it's not a good comparison. For many reasons.

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mekantkl#3384 wrote:

The issue is that you have something like the player character feeling that it would belong in a different game, because the mobs are designed for zoom zoom zoom screen wipe, while the player is designed more for 1v1 slow combat.

Well you do have, as a player, AoE skills and general wide hitting implemented in each weapon type, so I'd argue that you still are designed for 1vMany, just a different bunch than the ones we have right now.

At least in Souls, a ranged attack was a ranged attack, since the monsters usually were at range or couldbe brought to range. In POE2, nearly everything just insta swarms you into forced mele brawl.