I'm kinda done with poe2 EA as I beat all bosses available, multiple times. So here's my review :

The Good :

• Stunning environement and SFX. Everything truly looks good.

• 90% of bosses are really fun to fight.

• Killing mobs feels really good with most skills. Comet shattering packs, shock sfx on bodies afterward, etc.

• Amazing soundtrack as usual.

• Meeting character like Doryani & Balbala is awesome after hearing so much about them in poe1.

• The campaign map is pretty good, seeing boss kills permanent bonuses is helpful.

• The atlas map looks cute.

• Vaaling is more fun, as the risk is inherently lower than in poe1.

• The weapon swap system is a brilliant idea, aside from the slight delay when swapping weapons.

• Pausing

• WASD movement is incredible.

The Bad

• On-death effects are exhausting. I say that as a spark spellweaver, with a massive ehp pool + CI , so I can facetank all on-death without issue. I can't imagine what people playing life-based char are feeling right now.

• Mobs' speed is frustrating. I feel like deleting whole screens at once is the best way to survive because you WILL meet a pack of hasted rare that WILL bodyblock and stunlock you to oblivion.

• Combat was advertised as methodical. It isn't after like act 3. Mobs are no different from poe1 while most builds are stuck at poe2 powerlevel.

• Ascending isn't very fun. I'm glad I crushed all trials with CoC comet before it got destroyed. "Sanctum" is blatantly unfair to some builds, while Ultimatum is absurdly overtuned. The biggest issue is that both of those are so full of RNG from afflictions / mods. I can't believe this is worse than lab.

• The gem system is strangely restrictive. Most spells and support aren't available until very late in Cruel. 6L are very expensive for casual players, and discourage experimentation since they're linked to a single gem.

The Ugly

• Mapping

  • Horrible map layouts being forced on players. I feel that not being able to set-up a 50 maps farming session, with a good tileset is 60%+ of the reason why poe2 mapping is so exhausting.
  • Augury and Myre. Maps need to be shortened by at least 50%, and add a boss to every map.
  • Backtracking for a single rare. Having to kill every rare.
  • Towers feel like a complete waste of time. They should either be "open" whenever an adjacent map is completed, or be a single boss fight room. Imagine being forced to run a Pillars of Arun in poe1 everytime you want to use a sextant.
  • Having to scrolls for 40s in the new atlas. No search bar, no way to zoom out to see everything in graph form.
  • Atlas skill points being locked behind their respective boss fight. Why ? It feels awful. You're forced to gamble on an expensive invitation 4 times to not lose currency. With 1 portal. You should simply have to complete league encounters in higher and higher tiers maps...

• MF returning is 100% a mistake, especially in its current form, affecting currency as well as item drops. Poe1 finally (partially) excised that tumor in 3.25 by removing quant. Please do the same. I won't launch into a 50k word manifesto on MF and its numerous shitty side effects, other people have already done it on this sub.

• 1 portal for pinnacle bosses is absurd. I don't care about bosses being fully healed after 1 death, but ONE try, for an unknow boss with requires hours to farm? Come on.

• The Arbiter fight needs fixing. Sometimes you can't avoid death without a weaponswap blink. As usual , the best way deal with this is just to delete him before he does anything.

• Crafting

  • Slamming orbs while closing your eyes is gambling, not crafting. 99% of players are priced out of targeting omens so the crafting system is just a wisdom scroll with extra steps. Fractured items should be reintroduced asap.
  • Greater Essences are far too rare.
  • Targeting omens are far too rare.

• Build balancing. I'm sad that GGG is back to their old way of deleting builds rather than taking the time to balance them (CoC, CoF..). I think it's very telling that the most popular builds are those that play the most like poe1 (spark, gaz arrow deadeye, LA deadeye). 1 button, screen clear builds. I'm convince that if GGG makes builds like those unplayable, the game will be hemorrhaging players in the endgame.

• Trade. I don't really need to say more.

Frankly, my main problem with all those issues is that most of them have already been dealt with in poe1. That's what make is so infuriating.

Atm I would give poe2 a 9/10 for visuals, sound effects, etc. But a 4/10 for system design. It feels actively hostile, like the devs don't want players to have fun. Poe1 and 2 teams need to speak with each other.

Most of all, GGG needs to understand that you can't be on your toes for 5h in a row. The game requires some chill farms and builds. Poe2 is just stressful in a way very few games are.

edit : correcting grammar mistakes + added wasd & pausing to Good

I just obtained my 3rd Ascendancy passives by completing 3 floors in the Trial of the Sekhema's and it almost made me quit early access entirely. To preface this rant, I want to say that sanctum is my favorite league mechanic in all of PoE. I have done 1000+ sanctums, leveled multiple characters to 100, and dropped an original scripture. I love sanctum, so when GGG announced they were replacing lab with sanctum, I was super excited. But after playing the current implementation, I can confidently say its in a terrible state.

It took me somewhere between 5-10 attempts to successfully clear 3 floors and obtain my 3rd set of Ascendancy passives. Many of these attempts ended at the 3rd floor, and one even ended at the final boss. Each failure set me back 30+ minutes and consumed a Djinn Barya, which can difficult to obtain if you get unlucky.

Eventually, I decided to go back to farming T1 maps to drop a low level Djinn Barya that would be easy to complete. I focused on running breach maps, and it took me 10+ hours to drop one (In this time, I dropped 10 Inscribed Ultimatums, which unfortunately do not grant the 3rd Ascendancy passives). This disastrous RNG was the cherry on top of an already incredibly frustrating experience.

Here are a couple of the main issues that I have with the Trial of the Sekhema and the Ascendancy process in general:

1. Monsters and traps deal way too much honour damage. Not once did I come close to dying, but the cumulative damage to my honour kept ending my runs. The traps especially seem to do too much honour damage. For example, I was losing 1/4th of my honour when I stepped on the explosive traps that detonate.
2. Monster design is not good. One of the aspects of Sanctum that I really like is that monsters have well-telegraph attacks, and you only fight 1-2 monsters at a time. The Trial of the Sekhema's has way more monsters, and these monsters are often quite fast. Rare monsters especially can be extremely dangerous depending on their mods. And the fact that character movement in PoE 2 is much slower makes dodging these monsters even harder.
3. Ascending being gated behind a random drop is really frustrating if you get unlucky like I did.
4. The fact that higher level areas drop higher level Djinn Baryas means it becomes harder to ascend if you progress into higher tier maps. I had to stop progressing and go back down to lower level areas in order to get a Djinn Barya that was easy to complete.

Overall, I'm having a really fun time playing early access. The campaign, bosses, and mapping system have been super fun so far. There are some slight issues here and there, but in my experience the only aspect of the game that is egregiously bad is the ascendancy process, and I hope it gets some improvements soon.

Im currently at tier 15 maps and its basically poe 1 with better graphics but downgraded overall gameplay.

Monsters still running at light speed, %50 of monsters have some on-death effect, still getting lazered off-screen, puddles everywhere, homing missiles everywhere. If you dont one-shot things then you will get one-shot concept of poe1 is still the main drive of endgame mapping. Dodge roll literally useless beyond acts.
I genuinely dont understand how they expect players to stand still and do some 3 button animation combo while getting lazered by off-screen projectiles and a mana leeching- perma stun locking rare blinks on top of you.

Jonathan talked about this before early access and it seemed to be some kind of positive thing in his eyes but we're seeing the reality of it and it just feels bad and disrespectful of your players time.

The game pacing is terrible. You have to spend 30 minutes plus in zones, slowly killing monsters, back tracking, getting lost. There's no reward for exploration since most chests drop very little loot and loads of zones are filled with dead ends.

People have been comparing this game to dark souls but it's nothing remotely like dark souls.

Take DS3 for example, you might play that for a similar amount of time and spend even longer in each area but you'll find secrets, weapons, spells, side quests. The areas are filled with hidden things and puzzles that keep you engaged while exploring.

No rest for the wicked is much closer to a dark souls style arpg and does the combat much better that PoE2.

PoE 2 is very heavily inspired by Diablo 2. Is has the same act structure (forest encampment, desert city, jungle ruins). Many of the same or similar monsters in those acts. They also have some similar areas (the blood raven zone with two mausoleums reminds me of the Ogham quests).

It's as though it's been built as a homage to Diablo 2, almost like a direct sequel but it loses a lot of the charm D2 has by doubling down on some of its worst aspects.

Even the largest areas in D2 aren't as big as most of the zones in PoE2 and despite having a stamina mechanic in D2 it takes less time to navigate them. You also see a lot more rewards from side quests and bosses. D2 also gives players movement speed in various ways. I'm not saying D2 is a perfect example of arpg balance (enigma) but it feels weird that they borrowed so heavily from it but mainly on the more tedious aspects of its design and even amplifed them.

So, like most people probably, I really like the fundamentals of POE2. Sure, some decisions are questionable (gem links, power balance, map size, itemisation vs passive tree, ascendancies) and some of them make people unhappy. But I feel that what will drive most people away will be the frustration of 1 portal per map. It is ridiculous. I saw 2-3 topcis already about the progress you loose when mapping, and when you die in boss map. Sure. It sucks, but for me it was still bearable. What ultimately drive me off POE2 was the longer perspective.

I have a rather smooth running build. Bigest obstacle was probably ACT2 or 3 normal, after that build came online and I was playing it in a very similar way to POE1. Blasting everything, not really caring too much about enemies. 3rd ascendancy on first try (maybe I was lucky, but all bosses just melted, avoided all mechanics), was doing all league mechanics no problem. Died here and there to random 1-shot, but it was ok. Really enjoyed my time, discovering game by myself, mechanics of endgame. But then started to realize, what is next. League mechanic bosses, Uber boss and its 3 helpers along the way. And I realized that I can still go with the plan I had (learn game by myself, try new things) but that will mean I will wipe on many of the bosses. And each is double digit of horus farming. With visual clutter on screen, I might not even learn anything if I die, not know what killed me. I would be super frustrated. I can also go through guides, watch other people kill bosses, learn mechanics that way. But it is a new game. I absolutely hate the feeling of learning new game (and it being almost mandatory) through guides and walkthroughs. So I just quit. To avoid the certain frustration that I would feel.

That 1 portal per map is stopping people from learning the game, from taking risks, it ultimately drives people off (and the rate of this will increase, as more people will get into T15 maps). Please change it.

This is about Path of Exile 2.

Having reached maps and done about 30 (T1 to T3) by now, the endgame seems really bad. At least they decided to not pull through with the decision of failed maps blocking certain paths - you can just retry them.

The things that are super unfun and need to be addressed ASAP.

1. Crafting: There is no crafting in the game currently. At least no deterministic crafting. I'd be fine with that if the crafting currency would drop at 5x the rate is currently does, but it doesn't. In endgame mapping I get enough currency to try and craft A SINGLE item in about 2-3 hours of raw farming. And it could turn out to be utter shit because it's FULLY RNG.
2. Losing maps on death: Bad decision. Mobs are too hard and you die way too fast. Losing them sucks and is not fun. Portals are already in the game. Let us use them.
3. Loot in general: Way too little. Not only currency orbs, but also raw items. Most maps don't even give a single rare item. What the hell?
4. Balancing: Some of the league mechanics seem extremely unbalanced, totally wrecking you. I've tried everything but Breach by now and especially Delirium was horrible, but it seemed like the mobs of every league mechanic did way more damage than regular mobs. (A single expedition white mob takes off 80% off my 1.7k life). Also certain mob types are extremely dangerous as well.
5. Gearing: Getting decent gear is brutally hard. Getting your resistances up is even harder, as there's no crafting bench and no deterministic crafting. The best thing you can do is check out vendors for items with sockets and buy them to salvage these for Artificer's Orbs, so you can put some extra res on your gear.

It's really not fun in a state like this. There may be people who enjoy this Ruthless nature of the game, but I assume it's a small percentage. If GGG wants to keep the current playerbase, they need to do drastic changes to all of the mentioned points soon or I'll bet the majority will quit once they reach maps (if they even do, because campaign can be a pain at times, too.)

I want to obtain most of my player power without trading. Trading is lame. I want to trade for niche things or penultimate things when I find something omega rare.

The gameplay loop we've seen repeatedly in PoE 1 of - Farm for currency > Buy Item for almost every upgrade - isn't fun. That's the current state of the PoE 2 after the campaign.

The combination of scarcity, difficulty and a very RNG crafting system basically makes trading a must and it's not only unfun, its' boring.

I think it would improve the crafting process and many unique items usable to just have % move speed be an implicit or hidden modifier on boots.

Movement speed is not a luxury in poe2, it is a necessity. The game feels bad without it and some bosses are obviously designed around 30% move speed on boots

So with recent changes most of "Cast on X" builds are completely dead. I am not fine with it, but I understand it is EA and stuff like that will happen.

BUT

We need to have a free respec because right now my character is completely brick and I have no way to spec into something else. I believe every time GGG make change that COMPLETELY rebalances some builds, we should have some free respec.

So far i've enjoyed path of exile 2 and very aware that it's EA so things are subject to change, but the biggest turn off for me is the new crafting system. The lack thereof of meaningful ways to target craft gear has been such a massive let down. In its current iteration, it's not even fair to call it an easier to learn crafting system.. it's simply no different in randomness than picking up an item and ID'ing it. Not only that but the lack of orbs of scouring being in the game makes it a 1 pull slot machine so even if i find a good base it's basically bricked if i dont hit atleast 2 or 3 decent affix which makes playing SSF brutal. Anyone else miss being able to craft with intention? Do you think they'll address this at all or it's by design.

Edit: Just wanted to add i dont believe PoE 1 crafting was the pinnacle of perfection, it was insanely bloated to the point you needed the craft of exile site to theoretically craft something before even attempting a meta craft. i was just hoping they'd have learned from this and developed something a bit more intuitive than what we have now. We'll see how things develop over time, i'm hopeful!

Edit 2: For every "But PoE 1 was like this, they'll add league craft mechanics etc" comment, you understand that is the problem right? After so many years we were left with an insane amount of bloat because crafting wasn't focused and item drops for the most part didn't matter besides influence bases etc. They have the opportunity to make crafting intentional, adding league mechanics that make it less a slot machine over the years will eventually lead to the same issue. My feedback isnt that i want PoE 1 crafting, my feedback is that they hopefully design a better system than poe 1 that feels rewarding and deterministic especially for those who enjoy SSF. I 100% understand its early access so this is my early access feedback and there is no roadmap to show what they plan to do with crafting. My only hope is after 10+ years of data from this and other games, they'll know how to land it in a place that feels good.

Having to individually "6 Link" every single individual skill gem is a bit crazy especially when you consider that people will be vaaling skill gems etc. Making a change to have jeweller's apply directly to the book in which you socket your gems would align more with the design philosophy of moving the socketing system off of the gear and onto the character itself which also encourages experimentation and freedom. Non-gem based skills already grow in sockets so they wouldn't be affected by the change either. Being able to upgrade your base slots just makes more sense imo.

Also, gem levels should go back to being exp based similar to PoE 1, and just delete all the incremental dropped gems between unluck thresholds. So like we don't need lvl 2 gems to drop, just drop uncuts for Tier'd gems similar to the way support gems drop already. I would also suggest pulling the drop locations of some of them down a bit. Not getting the T3 supports until halfway through cruel (so Act 5) feels quite off, same for some of the active gems. Dropping them all down a few levels would make things feel a bit less sluggish to start.

PoE 1 enjoyer here with just over 3k hours. Wanna say the art, music, even the core gameplay, everything is there for this to be amazing. The game just feels like a complete slog. I know it's supposed to be different from PoE 1 and I went into it expecting that, but I was also expecting to enjoy myself for many many hours instead of the 20 or so I put into it.

Every zone takes 20-40 minutes to clear. If you're like me and you check the map to realize "Oh I missed that thing, I'll come back after I finish this next zone", it's an absolute nightmare to go back and try to find the one entrance or small sliver of map you missed.

My character never felt strong. Playing a witch, trying out minions, and Skeletons were terrible. Got SRS, okay this is fun. Proceed to more than halfway past act 3 to get my first level 2 support, cool now I have infernal legion. Do some infernal legion instability stuff, feels okay for a few zones, then just... nothing. Mobs scale higher and I just don't. I also never dropped a jewellers orb, so everything is still on a 2 link. Maybe letting us use multiple supports per character instead of one would fix it, I don't know. I just know I never hit a point where the game felt smooth.

New ascendancy options are cool, but I want lab back. I may be in the minority for this, but I really liked the lab and it was always a fun thing to do for currency, especially after transfigured gems were introduced. I'm not a big Sanctum enjoyer, and I absolutely HATE Ultimatum. Now forcing me into those mechanics just feels terrible.

A big gripe I have with gaming in general, and I'm sad to see it's infected PoE, is not everything needs to be Dark Souls (big fan of Dark Souls, just not in other games). I really like the way skills feel now, how there's real weight behind swings and ranged has been a blast. I took a monk to about level 5 before I gave up on it. I'm playing an ARPG, I should not be dodging every quarter second because it's early and I'm made of paper.

The big obvious one is loot. I think I've had a grand total of 3 regals drop, and maybe 5 exalts. I wanted to craft and used things early because we got told "If you're not crafting by act 2, we failed." But I never got anything else. Bosses dropped flasks and blues, chests dropped blues and gold. There was a point where I had two rares on the ground at once, and actually thought "Holy shit that's the most I've seen at once." This is a problem in an ARPG.

This isn't a hate post, I want it to be the opposite because I really enjoyed the core game. There's something amazing here, and as a completely different experience from PoE 1 I think it can be really good and really fun. But in it's current state I just can't bring myself to boot it back up.

I didn't see anyone mention this, but these restrictions really hamper the build diversity. First problem is that they've pre-nerfed the bell and now you have to get a combo with a quarterstaff before being able to use it. But there's also the fact that you can no longer be a slammer with a staff, you won't be able to flicker with a sword, and when swords and axes do make it into the game you won't be able to use their skills interchangably. That's a big deal, and it makes you feel like you don't actually get to make the character you want and are only allowed to make what developers wanted.

Skill weapon restrictions should either be eased or removed. Most, if not all, skills should be usable with multiple weapon types.

Edit: a lot of people are mentioning weapon swaps with weapon set passives. That's not the point of my post. There can be special interactions that are unique to weapon types. Swapping from a staff to a mace to bonk won't allow me to use special properties of any staff while bonking, no matter what. That's the point of my argument - not being able to use different weapons with one skill is bad

https://youtu.be/ZpIbaTXJD4g?t=1647

In the endgame trailer from a few weeks ago, Jonathan says "One of the things we think is really important is to make these options available to use as you play. All the items that add mods are much more common than they were in Path of Exile one, so that you can use them throughout your campaign playthrough. We want you to find things on the ground that can be crafted into upgrades much more frequently, as well as making the drop rates on these items much more common.". I'm in act3 and Ive gotten five exalts, four alcs, seven regals, and two essences, is that what he considers common? I haven't been able to craft a white item into a usable rare during my whole 20h play time.

edit: i had two raw regals drop for me. i got five from disenchanting rares.

i am level 51 and i need to pay 2k gold per respec. i went in blind and just skilled whatever and now that i kinda got the hang of the tree i wanted to respec into a proper tree for the skills i am using.

i need to respec like 20 points which would be 40k gold. by the time i farmed that much i am atleast 5-10 levels higher so the cost would be higher too. that also means i cant use my gold for anything else.

i am literally holding my skillpoints right now to be absolutly sure i really want to take the next nodes. its hilariously bad. respeccing sub lvl 60 (70or 80) should be free.

I think PoE 1's biggest flaw is how the bosses mostly boil down to tank-and-spank fights or straight-up DPS checks. With PoE 2's new engine combat system, the fights are way more skill-based and interesting. Honestly, if they just brought PoE 1 over to this new engine system without changing anything else, I think they'd have lightning in a bottle.

Anyone who tried the arbiter fight knows what Im talking about and once more people try it you will see more posts about it.

Some of the mechanics(notably the one where you have to get into a safe spot otherwise you get one shot) sometimes feel borderline impossible to manage even with 30% MS. So not even being able to at least practice them without paying additional 60+ex for a try is ridiculous.

I have many issues with the game but this is the only thing that is actually pushing me towards just quitting the beta, I absolutely love bossing but asking me to pay 60+ex or explore the atlas for god knows how long until i can get a SINGLE try at it is just too much