Recent reviews by Ragnaman

beat ng0 with all chars and i must say, BUG RIDDEN MESS, it needs a lot of cooking, hoh1 for now still has more content, but on release hoh1 was kinda meh too.
hoh2 is missing anvil and trinket store and well many more levels, modding support, etc.
oh and then theres the horrible memory leaking.

I assume (i hope) more content is to come, as for now its like "you completed The Dark Citadel", so maybe this is just some act1.

all in all feels like half done game released in whatever state cuz out of moni, hopefully devs can now patch this mess into shape.

You MUST experience this game.

The good:
- The game is slower, boss fights are fun, path of dark souls.
- Fun start of the game, 1st and 2nd act seemed good, 3rd act started having dragged out fillers with briefly good content, temple of Kopec was just about perfect as far as level design goes.
- Melee is actually fun, with active blocking, active dodging, combo mechanics for massive chunky hits.
- You can move using WASD!
- Visually the game looks better.
- No more dumb flask spam.

The bad:
- Ascendancy requires you to do Sanctum, enjoy your melee thorns/tank build chum.
- Stash tabs same as in Poe1. No filters/affinities for item types other than stuff which already exists for dedicated stash tabs like currency, no ability to put icons in stash tab names, no sorting options, its 2024 GGG, wake up, fraking Last Epoch (LE) does a better job in stash QoL department.
- No ingame tweakable item filter, again LE delivers a better job.
- Endgame is much worse than in poe1. Not even talking about intricate mechanics, imagine playing poe1 maps but you have permanent temporal chains and the map is 4x bigger and you have to find hidden rare packs in its corners, also its a maze tunnel map, do that 10 times and you get 2 passive points, 4 passive points gets you 10% chance to get essence pack in a map...i just....what ? Probably endgame is just a temporary filler because dear gods its better to just play poe1 at this point.
- You still have to use some external website just to trade with other players in a reasonable way. And yes, again LE achieves ingame trading akin to what 'poe trade' website does but from ingame.
- No ingame way to "build" your character akin to pob tool.
- No way to pre-allocate passives in the passive tree as a way to plan ahead what you want to build, just for your own reference/memory.

It feels like a rushed filler of a game, early access my ass, they have decade(s) of experience to take from poe1, they worked on this nearly for half a decade...EA as excuse my ass.

If you have not yet bought the game, just wait until its free release, dont become a tester who pays to test their game.

I am so pissed at GGG incompetence its unreal. There are living examples of a better game design and poe2 devs just slack off, unacceptable. It hurts because theres so much potential for a great game here.

Owned by Tencent.

You remember Elona ?
Well, here it is again in a better shape.

Its been 20 years, jesus.

Kinda boring really.

Actually fun.
But short, get on a discount.

Recommending on a sale.

Positive:
Great work by artists, the arenas are beautifully crafted, the vessels and gear are pleasant to the eye.
Voice acting ranges from great to mediocre, but on average its good.
Plenty of gamey game mechanics if you are into all kinds of loot/unlocks/perks/passives/actives and whatnot.
Using all these things is actually fun, so theres that.

Negative:
This is no Freelancer, there is no wanderlust or exploration, no space odyssey, you are put on a hamster wheel by the plot, point to the shiny "!" sign with your camera, let the fast travel loading screen dispatcher carry you from arena to arena, and look at pretty comic book sketches for plot.
This is an arena battler linked together with a glorified loading screen in the form of a map you navigate for fast travel.
Default mouse aim settings are frustrating, for some reason mouse aim has breakpoints like a joystick would, leading to unstable aim when you try to aim at something that is close to the breakpoint (causing your aim to skew).
Performance of the game is weird, a freshly started game runs like butter, over time it can start stuttering, probably memory leaks. Blowing a lot of stuff up and generating a few clouds for some reason makes this game crawl. Cutting down on some of the eye candy can make the game run great most of the time, but running the game at high settings will make your rig hot, unacceptable.
Paying customers get banned for asking the wrong questions:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3276585251

It is very short, but supposedly the continuation is still in development.
(beat the game on hard in 7h without prior knowledge, without trying to rush anything, checking nooks and crannies for story/secrets).

Some levels are really well designed, but this aint no ol' Blood. Low amount of enemies, low amount of everything. Its more of a puzzle game than a boomer shooter. Seems as if dev was too worried the game might be too fun so had to cut down some of it. Feels very sterile. Gun 1 for everything, Gun 2 for long range headshots, Gun 3 for close ups, Gun 4 for big baddies, Gun 5 who-even-uses-this, etc. You cant just go in sprinting and shooting and having fun, thats the essence of a boomer shooter, here you have to run in, realise where everyone is, load the game, then tactically apply a dynamite or a barrel, otherwise you will drain your resources because the game cant decide whether it wants to be a boomer shooter or a tactical rainbow six siege.

Maybe worth on a sale, but I would wait for the complete version, not just "chapter 1".