Recent reviews by Big Rick Barnes

PoE2 takes a lot of really cool ideas from PoE1 and cleans them up, simplifies them, and makes it much more digestible to a wide audience. This is polarizing, as for some PoE1 was perfect. For many others like myself, PoE1 was an overcomplicated mess where all the difficulty was in organizing spreadsheets or following a build and the gameplay was "press 1 button and win".

A lot of the gripes I hear don't make much sense to me since I didn't play PoE1. "you can make your own upgrades with the crafting system!" You mean the socket system that made it nearly impossible as a new player to upgrade my gear while leveling without bricking my entire build because I can no longer cast my main spell? Naw, I much prefer a skill system that isn't tied to my chest armor that while still allows socketing supportive effects to create fun flavorful ways of making "fireball" feel unique to you and your build. "yeah but, I could craft my upgrade, which gave me dopamine to feel like I was progressing" idk to me it was just *needlessly* stressful, not dopamine. I'm sure it was really cool and fun at the endgame, but I never made it to endgame in PoE1 because I was so bored of pressing 1 button to kill monsters.

One huge barrier to making the game complex was how strong passive skills were. Every build I looked up was "spam a bunch of passives/self buffs, press 1 button that deals damage while moving, take every vitality node so you never die, congrats you won path of exile". Now a lot of passive effects like Cast Comet on Frozen Enemies reserve "spirit" instead of costing mana so you have to sacrafice certain gear spots to upgrading your spirit *if* you want a really passive heavy build. There's also a unique armor that removes all your spirit, so it seems there is a design goal of making it so spirit isn't mandatory but a really strong choice.

PoE2 you can still gear up for endgame to teleport and clear screens, but the campaign is slowed down to a level that you can actually appreciate the monsters you're killing and the spells you cast serving different purposes. When gameplay is too fast, you are punished for trying to combine spells in fun ways because you are playing inefficiently. When it's slowed down, the fact that you can cast Ice Nova from your own location or the location of an IceBall matters a bit more. Killing 5 seconds faster doesn't matter when it takes 2 minutes to kill a boss.

I made it to maps, maps look interesting and fun. I'm still overwhelmed and only on t5 maps, and rocking a build everyone has told me is nerfed into being completely unusable yet I still find it usable and fun especially with my own modifications. Cast On Freeze got a huge nerf before I used it, but I still find it useful with a FrostWall build that focuses on blowing up my own frostwalls with frostballs that fork when hitting an enemy/icewall and instantly detonate 3 casts of icewall that cast an additional 2 times per cast. Icewall freezes like crazy and explodes for good damage when theres 9 icewalls ontop of a boss. I'm sure other builds are faster, or other classes can be better, but, if you're in an early access game trying to rush to endgame and use the perfect build I think you'll be sorely dissapointed.

Many people are also upset that you can no longer cast certain spells with certain weapons. To this I say **good**. I hate when games just make weapons 1hand or 2hand weapon, I love when swords have their own flavor that is significantly different gameplay wise from hammers.

There are many classes still missing, swords aren't in the game yet, etc. There's a lot of depth to be added and fleshed out. It does feel like theres only 1-2 ways to play frost mage at the moment, which is fine since it's early access. I hope as more casting classes are added, I can add their skills to my repitoire and make even more fun decisions and I understand why a dev may make sure the classes/concepts they had for these spells works first before overcomplicated it.

After being gifted this game by a friend I played it more than he ever did.

It's really fun and pretty tough to start out with a pretty enjoyable progression system, and chances for gamebreaking combos as you advance that make you feel overpowered.

Playing with friends is fun, but can be frustrating if some people like going for min/max and some people like going for speed.

There's some small secrets and details that are really lovely, like hidden treasure in the movement puzzles.

Content seems to be steadily added to it, and devs seem to listen to feedback.

"It's like borderlands and hades had a baby" was how my friend described it, and, honestly, pretty apt. Randomized guns, and some obvious influence from borderlands (dual wield skill char, corosion vs armor, shock vs shield, etc) and a similar talent system to hades (every so often get new talents and upgrade the talent which enables things vastly different, as well as scrolls that you can acquire to go absolutely bonkers).

If you like shooting things, not taking stuff too seriously, and making the numbers go bigger n bigger, this is a great game. If you're looking for something story rich, maybe not the game for ya.

Fun game, but has a lot of slow points and is poorly explained. For example, it tells you you can buy a second restaurant but doesn't tell you any of the details of what that entails, if money is shared, how to purchase an executive chef to run it, etc.

fun for those who like resteraunt games, roller coaster tycoon style games, and cookie clicker since you can easily earn stupid money and just afk.

Saw this forever ago in beta and I thought the PVP looked interesting but I was afraid it would be a lot of downtime and very little action. Gameplay videos do *not* do this game justice. Highlight reels seem unrealistic and straight up 'lets-plays' creates a sense of feast-or-famine of the fun of the game. Only watching the gameplay does not provide the sense of immersion and tension. A 10 minute video isn't interesting, but neither is reading a book in 10 minutes. This is for longer sessions and the allure of new opportunities can draw you in for longer and longer sessions, much like an epic Civilization campaign. Arena mode exists for shorter gameplay and helps scratch the PVP itch without any other distractions.

There is so much to do at any given point. Derailing from your original objective is half the fun as random encounters, shipwrecked loot, and various opportunities arise. Between a pvp-only arena and a free-roam adventure mode which contains guild quests, tall tale story quests, random encounters, and pvp opportunities, this is a game with enough variety to keep you busy for hours on end.

The gameplay itself feels very rewarding. Managing sail length, angle, choosing when to drop anchor or harpoon landmasses for quick turns, knowing when to show your broadside for cannon attacks, aiming your cannons to hit different targets, boarding enemy ships with a variety of goals (kill crew to prevent repairs, drop the enemy anchor to enable easier cannon shots from your crew, set it on fire to distract them and discourage usage of blazing cannons, or just steal their loot sneakily) you get a rewarding sense of variety in 'doing the same thing' but with small but important adjustments. Storms with lightning, rain filling your ship, your wheel spinning wildly like a drunken sailor, sea monsters, and skeleton AI ships raise the steaks of even the most simple of tasks.

After a good long session of gameplay. typically you can walk away with an epic story of how you snuck aboard and sunk a PVP-guild ship only to have them sneak and set ablaze your own ship, regain control, chase a different smaller ship, escape a megladon during your chase, and have random AI skeleton ships sink the both of you as a third human ship also enters the fray and attempts to capitalize on the opportunity of your distractions. Even defeating a kraken for the first time is a rewarding feeling worthy of sharing with your friends. New content was published as recently as this week, adding a ghost ship fleet encounter to the game. The micro-transactions are totally optional, and likely help fund the new content and encounters added. Nearly everything you grind for is cosmetic, making near end-game content feel approachable, rather than gated behind the necessity for 'better guns'. There is the need for ranking up to acquire certain missions, but there is enough in the game to keep you busy and happy as you learn the mechanics and glow wide-eyed and excited as you experience everything for the first time. Rushing to the end would feel like a mistake and cheapen the experience of fearing of a simple shark in open waters as you desperately swim back to your ship.

I joined a clan. Wanted to get a certain cool warframe. bought the blueprints. Cool, not high enough level to get the quest to do that with they tell me. They tell me I can power level myself if i 'only' buy a new warframe that I can't get yet due to exp (how is that PLing?) and level that up, then dump it for the upgraded version or....some ♥♥♥♥. 'oh its no problem you can get there if you spend like 4-5 hours a day...' damnit, I want to play a game, not have a part time job. Grindy as ♥♥♥♥.