Recent reviews by Daddies Favourite Goon Sock

Good roguelike/Bullet hell game. If you like the genre you'll like this.

Edit as of patch 0.2. Everything said below applies but on steroids. I lasted an hour before I quit and uninstalled the game to install d4. A 3-4 button combo so my damage skill doesn't have a what feels like 2-3 second delay on it, which then only does 25-50% damage to a white monster aint it. Absolutely hot ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage.

Honestly it's just a massive slog. Not even that hard, but there is no meaningful mobility, and the maps are MASSIVE, overwhelmingly of a maze style and lots of meaningless and unrewarding dead ends, leading to a massive amount of backtracking.

This is compounded by the absolute paucity of loot which leads to a massively unrewarding experience. You never feel like you're getting anywhere, both in terms of getting through the maps, but also in terms of progressing your character.

There's minor complaints I'd expect to get fixed in EA, but those are the two big ones, which are seemingly core design philosophies I don't expect to change. I had hoped they'd abandoned the "PoE 1 Ruthless Mode" model, but apparantly they've doubled down on it and put it on steroids. Or testosterone blockers, whichever is more appropriate.

Otherwise it's great, visuals are amazing, audio is amazing, lore is engaging, the boss fights are a reasonable challenge (most you can do 1st or second time if you focus, but a few require a 5-6 attempts to get the mechanics down) etc, but you never get to appreciate it because it feels like ♥♥♥♥ and ball torture. It's like having a Ferrari in your driveway with no wheels or engine.

I was ready to quit for the above mentioned reasons after about 15 hours (towards the end of act 2) but decided to stick out the campaign and try maps to see if it got better - It doesn't.

For PoE1 officianado's contemplating this game, imagine Archnemesis tanky monsters for standard trash mobs, and Lake of Kalandra/Ruthless level loot and maps which take up to an hour to do (if you don't die, because dying resets all mobs) and zero mobility.. If that sounds fun to you, this is for you.For anyone who said "the nerfs in poe1 are testing for poe2" you was absolutely correct and they're on steroids here.

I really thought during the announcement when there was no sight of Chris, just Mark+Jonathan (who made the most recent PoE league the best ever) that they had gotten over Ruthless mode. Alas not.

From what I've played this game is a more expensive, more difficult version of the previous installment with less features. Very disappointed as I was, and still am, a huge fan of the series, not only did this game fail to add anything in, it actually took stuff out.