Path of Exile 2 Review: I've Spent 20 Hours on POE 2

Woah, that's a big claim right? The undisputed champion of ARPG's usurped by a free-to-play effort from a lesser studio? I'm sorry Diablo IV fans, but it's true — Path of Exile 2 is bigger, badder and much more enjoyable to play, with brighter takes on similar locations, and boss fights that create genuinely memorable challenges — and there's a lot more to it than that.

Path of Exile 2 is currently closing in on the end of its Game Preview cycle, with access available today for a fee that will get you 300 or more in-game points. Once the game launches fully, it will be completely free to play, although the same in-game currency will persist for those who want to invest in cosmetic items, additional stash storage and a few other select items.

As it currently stands, Path of Exile 2 feels like a complete release at a AAA price point. I haven't spent a single pound so far, nor have I spent any of the points that came bundled with my Game Preview copy of the game. Why? Because I don't care about any of the cosmetic stuff — I'd rather my character looked like whatever gear I am collecting anyway and, as of yet, I simply don't need to invest in additional stash tabs.

Anyway, I digress, so let's get back on topic. This isn't a review for Path of Exile 2.There will be six acts in this game when it's finished, and at the moment I am well and truly bang in the thick of Act II. So I'm not in a position to conclusively review the game, and even if I had played 100 hours, I expect a lot to change once the game exits the Preview program and releases in its final state.

What I do want to share here is my experiences to date — which have mostly been fantastic. I've enjoyed almost all “serious” ARPG's over the past 20-25 years, and for me it all began with Diablo 2. I've spent hundreds of hours on the Diablo games over the years, most recently including Diablo IV which I had previously thought was about as good as this genre could get.

Path of Exile 2 has changed my perception completely. In the first act, some of the larger mobs were more than a match for my fledgling sorceress, whilst the bosses made mincemeat of me if I slacked in any way. This is a theme that has persisted on each stage that I've unlocked and worked my way through to date — mobs at a similar level can be challenging, and bosses need to be tackled with real thought about both your build (let's call that strategy) and your play style (let's call that tactics).

For an ARPG, that seems completely new to me. Yes, we all love our overpowered builds and the objective of any game like this is to carve through thousands of enemies without so much as a scratch, watching them burst into flame, chunks of ice or globules of snot depending on whichever elemental power you have stacked up to a 10,000,000x multiplier… But Path of Exile 2 has forced me to think differently. It's forced me to think about my overall build strategy several times, and it's also challenged me to vary my tactics from one encounter to the next.

Path of Exile 2 feels like almost the perfect difficulty level for me, with bosses that are tough and have taken — in some cases — ten or fifteen minutes to defeat, but which can nonetheless be beaten. Very few have been a complete pushover, and I've really learned to appreciate the subtle nuances of my character as a result. In Diablo, I'll too often simply run with a sub-optimal build that's still capable of walking over about 99% of the game's enemies, but then the 1% that can kill me do so virtually instantly, with no chance to learn the patterns or how to adapt my build.

This may be partly down to how Path of Exile 2 offers progression, which is linked to socketed ability runes, classic weapon and armour advancement and a now (in)famous passive skill tree which is so gigantic it has to be seen to be believed. I've really enjoyed building two characters across my playthrough, including a full respec of my sorceress, which surprisingly enough doesn't come with any “real world” cost (although who knows what will happen later).

Armour and weapons in Path of Exile 2 work just as they do in any other game of this sort. There are quality levels, prefixes and suffixes, and normal, magical, rare and unique items all with various randomised stats and benefits. You'll begin by choosing whatever drops and suits your class vaguely, you'll end with the smallest iterations and tweaks to your build, trading a few percent of frost resistance for a few percent more attack speed — or whatever it is that you feel you need.

Your shared stash works across all your characters, so you can keep really good items for your other builds, or you can simply break them down to earn various shards — just some of the tens of currencies available in Path of Exile 2. These currencies offer raw buying power, but they also offer the chance to improve weapon quality, add slots to unslotted weapons and so on — it's a powerful system.

Also powerful are the collectable orbs that allow you to add a new magical power to an existing item, or perhaps even to transform a mundane item into a magical one, or a magical one into a rare one. As you would imagine, shards of orbs are relatively easy to find, as are the less exciting orbs themselves, but the ones that create rares will be your best early finds because then you can create a rare item of exactly the type you need.

Runes play a crucial role in your build here too, which abilities only accessible via these customisable and level dependant collectibles. A level 1 rune will allow you to choose more or less any skill to then slot and begin using — whether it suits your existing class or not. Support runes can often be added (usually two) to each skill rune, adding modifiers. As an example, my sorceress fires a frost orb (which is a basic skill) but the support runes I've added make it move more slowly and instead of firing one, I fire an arc of three that fan outwards. My frost orb is now level six, because I've iterated it using higher and higher level runes.

The passive skill tree — whilst massive — is the simplest of Path of Exile 2's systems to use. You just move outwards from the centre, choosing one skill at a time. Most of these add percentage buffs, reduce cooldown or improve recovery, whilst quite a lot also give you a choice of boosted stats — choosing from intelligence, dexterity and strength.

It's the gameplay that really has me hooked in Path of Exile 2, though. It's that perfect difficulty level that I described earlier, but also the way the game makes me think about what I am doing during the action. To go back to that frost orb ability and make an example — why did I choose a “deceleration” support rune? Simple, because another ability allows me to detonate my orbs dealing massive frost damage, and having them move slower helps me decide when to pull the trigger.

This kind of logic makes Path of Exile 2 much more than a game where the player simply holds the attack button and launches a fixed pattern of attacks over and over again. Whilst that can be the case for more mundane mobs, elite enemies and especially bosses vary the gameplay significantly, and so far there seem to be relatively few options for “one size fits all” builds.

With no significant microtransactions to get in the way of gameplay and a feature rich experience even despite the price tag being free, Path of Exile 2 is well worth a look for any ARPG fan. At this point, I see my relationship with Path of Exile 2 getting stronger as the content launches in live form — whereas I now see no reason to return to Diablo IV, with the seasonal content leaving me feeling colder with each iteration.

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