Recent reviews by Big Dave

A "souls-like" take on path of exile. Not my cup of tea at all. The game is an absolute slog, which is fine if you are here to play a souls-like game. But if you want to play an ARPG, its exhausting. You can't get into the zone at all, because every single pack has the ability to mob you and kill you immediately, whilst you are tickling them with a feather. Slowing the game down to a crawl does not fit the traditional ARPG cookbook, so I cannot recommend it in its current state. Back to the OG POE for now I guess! I hope GGG takes the feedback on board and makes changed before the full release, but I am not very hopeful... Melee is also terrible as well, about the only similarity to POE1!

Update after playing a further 81 hours including endgame (pinnacle bosses/T15 maps):

I still think this game has a lot of flaws that need to be fixed before this is an enjoyable game. I took the time to play through the end game on my melee monk to see if the game gets enjoyable after the campaign. It did not... My biggest issues are:

- One portal maps is terrible. Loosing a juiced area because of oneshot mechanics does not feel good and makes you want to quit the game. It will be worse for new players. HC-like mechanics should be opt in not forced on players.
- Completing maps feels terrible as it requires all rare mobs to be killed. semi-linear maps are especially frustrating when there is a rare mob left behind at the start of the map that you need to run back to kill.
- Overall the map system is not fun. I dont want to play terrible map layouts, I want the ability to choose my favourite maps and specialise my content more consistently into the mechanics that i enjoy. This is a big differentiatior to POE 1 which i don't think has hit the mark. Its also silly making the end game pinacle bosses RNG based. You can go days to weeks without finding a citadel which feels so rough, compared to systems in POE1 that guarantee an encounter after a certain amount of maps.
- This game is not designed for melee classes. Monk having semi ranged attacks made it bearable, but there is still so many mechanics on bosses and rares that are designed to be incredibly challenging for melee characters and easy for ranged characters. This is something GGG said they would fix in POE2 but it has once again missed the mark.
- Crafting is non existent and makes gearing miserable. Picking up items and throwing exalts on them is complete RNG. I don't understand why GGG hates deterministic crafting, allowing us to craft one mod to help meet the gaps of our builds would significantly improve the leveling and campaign experience. This is a massive step back to POE1.
- Nearly all of the unique's in the game are useless outside of levelling. Especially weapons, i can't recall seeing one weapon that looked suitable for end game use. I wish GGG wasnt so afraid of giving players power through uniques, other than on a few very specific and rare items.
- I am also not a fan of the new gem socket system. Not being able to use a support gem on multiple skills sucks. Gating the level of gems behind RNG drops sucks. On league start, you will be severley limited on how many sockets you will have available as well, as they are gated behind a rng currency again that doesnt stop dropping at a decent rate until endgame (and only then for three support gems... 4 and 5 support gems basically never drop and will need to be bought at the auction house). This is another reason why the campaign feels like such a slog is because player power is significantly gated behind links on your skills.

The good of the game is that the auction house is great, trade system i find ok and pretty much the same as POE1. The actual gameplay of killing mobs in maps felt fun outside of random deaths causing me to lose loot and juiced areas. The ascendancies look unique and fun to explore, although the passive skill trees (player and atlas) both need to be improved as they are way too basic. I think it has the making of a good game, but there is just so many things that have been setup to make you grind your teeth.


Overall it seems like GGG has undone a whole bunch of improvements made to POE1 to try and enact their vision. The end result is an excruciating campaign that is way too long. And an endgame that is exhausting to play, and not rewarding in the slightest. Significant changes need to be made before i can reccommend it. Hopefully GGG takes the feedback on board before the full release of the game.

Do not buy any micro transactions for this game.

A warning for new players. The developers of this game Grinding Gear Games (GGG), has paused all further development while they are focusing on their new game POE2. If you do decide to pick up this game and give it a try, it is a whole lot of fun, but please do not waste your money on it because there is a very good chance that it will get no further updates.

For veteran players, it is a very sad day to hear that 3.26 has been delayed indefinitely. POE2 is not my game at all and i do not like a lot of the design decisions that they have made for that game. Not having any line of sight to POE1 updates has made me lose complete faith in GGG actually doing anything for this game. I do not intend to spend any more money supporting GGG until they regain the communities trust by putting out some banger updates (hint hint, a 4.0 refresh would go a long ways to showing the community that you actually care about POE1).

End of the day GGG is a business and they have found a new market with a more casual player base that enjoys POE2. For the hardcore POE1 enjoyers, GGG no longer sees the financial value in supporting your game when they can invest those resources into catering for the larger POE2 player base. Time for us to go find a new game to play.

This game will suck you in and make you leave the real world behind.

10/10 would play again.

Risk of Rain is an axcellent game which will require a decent time investment to understand the basics. The combat feels fluid with most classes, and the item unlocks work in an interesting yet meaningfull way. Definitely not meatn to be easy, yet it still tops the current list of roguelike platformers currently available.