The huge passive Skill Tree is what really makes this game work. The amount of customization you can put into your character is insane.
The Story is okay, for me, someone who is not much into Story in games usually.
The combat is satisfying, but there is nothing better than dropping a cool new item to upgrade your character.
The way currency works in this game is interesting, as instead of the default "gold" you have these orbs which are used to upgrade items in different ways.
The maps are diverse, monster diversity is nice aswell.
Apart from your default gameplay you have League-specific occurences which spice up your experience. they are new mechanics added to the game, a new league comes out about once every 2 to 3 months.
On top of this all, this game is completely free to play, although if you keep playing for a while, it may become handy to spend some cash on more Stash tabs, so you can hoard more items.

Overall, this game gets a 9/10 from me. Graphics 9/10. Gameplay 10/10. Customization 9/10. Story 8/10.

edit: so up until recently I always played "solo self found" which means you cannot trade with other players and have to find all your items yourself, now I can actually reach the end game content. my character is much stronger, because I get to sell rare things I find to then buy better equipment.
THIS IS THE WAY you should play the game! use the site poe.trade and their currency trading function too! you can trade one kind of orb for other orbs, it's very useful.
and there is a macro tool that uses machine learning to quickly estimate values of things you find, with just a button press. manually searching for the exact properties of the item you found takes much longer. the macro tool doesn't give very accurate price predictions, but it gives you an idea if an item is rubbish or worth selling.

skin customizations are pretty damn expensive in this game. like for example a body armor skin costs around 25 euros. a helmet skin about 10 euros, different capes for like 9 to 20 euros.
I bought a pet frog that follows me around for 1.50 euros =) and a lot of stash tabs and stash upgrades, to make organizing all the stuff I find much more convenient. and premium stash tabs are a must have, to trade with other players quickly. if you don't have one, you have to use the forums to list your market entries.

make sure to start your character in the current league, not in standard. whenever a new league starts, the old one is put into standard, so standard is the sum of all old leagues.
a new league refreshes the economy by requiring you to create a new character, and the current league stash is seperated from the standard stash, so item prices on the trade market make more sense there. in standard the very good items cost insane amounts of currency, because players had so much time to farm up a lot of orbs.

edit 2:

so I found this cool site, it's called poe.ninja.
with it you can access the builds of players who have reached the highest levels. It's kind of complicated to get into and personally I played for years until I found out about it.
But DUUDE. now I can see refined gem setups, tested skill tree setups, copy the parts I like about the different versions of userrs of the same skill.
you can filter for pretty much every aspect of the build you want it to be and find data from the leaderboards' players. it's amazing.

next time I will probably write a doctorate thesis about path of building, a program that allows you to calculate the stats of a character with certain parameters and certain items in this review. stay tuned!

The huge passive Skill Tree is what really makes this game work. The amount of customization you can put into your character is insane. The Story is okay, for me, someone who is not much into Story in games usually. The combat is satisfying, but there is nothing better than dropping a cool new item to upgrade your character. The way currency works in this game is interesting, as instead of the default "gold" you have these orbs which are used to upgrade items in different ways. The maps are diverse, monster diversity is nice aswell. Apart from your default gameplay you have League-specific occurences which spice up your experience. they are new mechanics added to the game, a new league comes out about once every 2 to 3 months. On top of this all, this game is completely free to play, although if you keep playing for a while, it may become handy to spend some cash on more Stash tabs, so you can hoard more items. Overall, this game gets a 9/10 from me. Graphics 9/10. Gameplay 10/10. Customization 9/10. Story 8/10. edit: so up until recently I always played "solo self found" which means you cannot trade with other players and have to find all your items yourself, now I can actually reach the end game content. my character is much stronger, because I get to sell rare things I find to then buy better equipment. THIS IS THE WAY you should play the game! use the site poe.trade and their currency trading function too! you can trade one kind of orb for other orbs, it's very useful. and there is a macro tool that uses machine learning to quickly estimate values of things you find, with just a button press. manually searching for the exact properties of the item you found takes much longer. the macro tool doesn't give very accurate price predictions, but it gives you an idea if an item is rubbish or worth selling. skin customizations are pretty damn expensive in this game. like for example a body armor skin costs around 25 euros. a helmet skin about 10 euros, different capes for like 9 to 20 euros. I bought a pet frog that follows me around for 1.50 euros =) and a lot of stash tabs and stash upgrades, to make organizing all the stuff I find much more convenient. and premium stash tabs are a must have, to trade with other players quickly. if you don't have one, you have to use the forums to list your market entries. make sure to start your character in the current league, not in standard. whenever a new league starts, the old one is put into standard, so standard is the sum of all old leagues. a new league refreshes the economy by requiring you to create a new character, and the current league stash is seperated from the standard stash, so item prices on the trade market make more sense there. in standard the very good items cost insane amounts of currency, because players had so much time to farm up a lot of orbs. edit 2: so I found this cool site, it's called poe.ninja. with it you can access the builds of players who have reached the highest levels. It's kind of complicated to get into and personally I played for years until I found out about it. But DUUDE. now I can see refined gem setups, tested skill tree setups, copy the parts I like about the different versions of userrs of the same skill. you can filter for pretty much every aspect of the build you want it to be and find data from the leaderboards' players. it's amazing. next time I will probably write a doctorate thesis about path of building, a program that allows you to calculate the stats of a character with certain parameters and certain items in this review. stay tuned!