Path of Exile 2

Just tired of the cheap capitalistic tactics they put in games now a days.. Like the boss fights are just freaking cheap man... adding random kill shots so you just WASTE YOUR TIME.... I don't pay for a game to brutalize myself all day. Just annoying.

I wanted to wait for the 1.0 release before writing this but the last trailers and interviews have proved to me that they don't want to change anything about this. This entire game feels like one gigantic pile of wasted potential. Gorgeous visuals smeared by never-ending and ludicrously over the top visual effects, ruining performance and resulting in worse visual clarity than even poe1 (and that is not an exaggeration, they somehow managed to make it worse), presumably because the vfx artists don't know when to stop. Great boss fights ruined by awful balancing, all those cool fights don't matter when even my crappy builds can melt them in 3 seconds. Fun new skills and interactions, except most of them are either pointlessly limited by obnoxious conditionals, stupidly long unmodifiable attack times or are purposefully designed to be useless unless used as part of a combo, severely restricting versatility and build diversity for no good reason. Waste of time mechanics like item identification and pointless systems like sprinting are still a thing in 2026. And yes, they added sprinting that blocks all other actions and stuns you on hit, in a power fantasy arpg, instead of making the player even a little bit faster by default. It feels like those only exists because some of the devs cannot contain their diablo 2 fetish. Designing character rigs and animations to make them fully compatible and properly playable with WASD movement and controllers, only to never make use of this whole new freedom of movement, outside of some ranged skills. Most melee skills in this are pretty much the same slap fight they have always been in all other games of this type, while most of the remaining ones can only move you forwards. And my biggest overall complaint, for a game that is supposed to exist alongside PoE1, is that there is not enough of a difference between those two games. As it stands now, PoE2 is a slower, clunkier version of the old game, which replaces one button spam builds with spamming a fixed and forced skill rotation and pretending that this is somehow skill based gameplay or a real difference. The progression is no different either, in the end you still only want to be able to complete maps/trials/bosses as fast as possible, there is no other goal or playstyle. There are no real tests of skill or anything else that would push builds into any other direction, it's all still about speed and simplicity, just as before. TL;DR It's the same thing but clunky. There is basically no skill-based gameplay, no innovation, worse visual clarity and performance, a lot less content (obviously), all in the same environment and progression system that rewards speed, automation and overall build simplicity more than anything else. And all of it seems intentional. Overall it may not be a truly bad game, just kinda mediocre. And i cannot recommend it when games such as PoE 1 and Grim Dawn still exist. Those do pretty much everything this one does, but better. It's just a worse PoE1.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/219990/Grim_Dawn/

The design philosophy of this game feels like it came from someone who was inconvenienced once by a slow checkout line and wanted to take that frustration out on their players.

I enjoy the game but am unable to play it effectively. I am tired of the lag and would love resources dedicated to fixing it. EDIT Went back and played a bit of POE1 with no issue. If you want to play the genre, wait until POE2 is out of its development phase.

Path of Exile 2 had the potential to truly revolutionize the genre. Early on, it promised a slower, more tactical, Souls-like approach to ARPG combat where positioning and timing actually mattered. Instead, it devolved into just another speed-runner clicker. By Act 3, all depth evaporates. You stop engaging with enemy mechanics and simply turn into a walking vacuum cleaner that erases full screens of mobs without even looking at them. Bosses die in seconds, and any semblance of actual challenge is thrown out the window. It is an absurd waste of potential. Beautiful engine, great animations, zero meaningful gameplay, and absolute lack of difficulty. If you were hoping for a rewarding, strategic combat experience, look elsewhere.

a character with this name already exists

A prime example of style over substance. Theres some interesting bones on this game but a lot of good that does when every single organ is failing. Build diversity in this game is pure illusion of choice you are actively punished for trying something new or non meta which is furthered by the fact you need 800 divs to make your meta build come online so that build goes from "ok" to "good". This is a game whose foundation relies explicitly on math, and that math constantly refuses to math because the devs are hyper paranoid people might actually have fun like they did in the first game. First game evidently is an open sandbox that expects you to break its mechanics for the sake of the power fantasy fun. The devs have gone out of their way to strip that out of this game, so perniciously that the math systems break down for no reason other than the inexplicable hard coded walls they've programmed to trigger if they detect a wild power spike. It coincides with their admissions of how they feel they made mistakes with the first game in that regard. Even with linear math the safe guards they have in place will brick your builds sometimes. I had 2 meta builds suffer this irreparably. Man it sure would be a shame if you found a non meta build that slaps well above its weight and is relatively cheap. Ooops were you having fun? An integer error after you reach X level has been hard coded to stop that. Aww are you trying to troubleshoot your build by un-equiping and re-equiping or similar? Too bad because our game is client>server>client so better hope we didn't save a destructive version of your build that we'll default you too every single time you boot. Nevermind what PoB says dont trust your lying eyes please buy $200 of microtransactions to take that sting away oh please. I'm being facetious but this is how you will feel when trying to overcome the oppressive incompetence of these developers trying to pull a Helldivers 2 by nerfing the fun and variety. I made 6 builds this season each from a different class and each one became fundamentally broken because of the games inept handling of math systems that seem so pervasively designed to stop, hinder or outright inverse any power spike you acquired... its actually insane. I had only one build by T16 mapping that felt relatively good and its a build, with mechanics, they outright plan to nerf in the future... for a non busted barely pinnacle passing build. Oh as a fun bonus these developers actually found a way to f**k up the pause function. You know that basic feature we've had in videogames the last 45 or so years? In 2026 these absolute specimens have left in a bug the last 3 major patches that makes your game continue on while paused. Imagine the seethe from the HC cattle out there on that one whew boy. "Play our game the way we want you to" is all you need to take away from this review.

¿Te gustan los guerreros? ¿Te gusta mirar la vida de tu enemigo y la tuya fijamente y ver cual baja antes? ¿Si? Pues este es tu juego. Tienes guerreros guerreros , guerreros con apariencia de mago y guerreros con apariencia de arquero y puedes hacer mezclas de guerreras con criaturas, guerreros brujos, bueno... en fin guerreros que hacen que tiran muchas cosas diferentes pero como no te puedes mover mucho y la vista es tan cercana, pues más o menos es lo mismo siempre. ¿Los gráficos? Impresionantes, muy buenos.. ¿La música? Perfecta , la ambientación genial... ¿El botín que cae? pues... espera que piense... es tan raramente útil que han hecho un inventario que te caben de 6 a 8 piezas como mucho... llega un momento que ni piensas en que te va a caer... wow X'DD ¿Habilidades o sea hechizos y demás?, pues lo de siempre defenderte en circulo y atacar en circulo porque no hay casi espacio, mas que alguna voltereta hacia algún metro cuadrado que quede libre X'DDD Creo que no me dejo nada, en fin pues nada a quien le guste mirar que vida se acaba antes si la del enemigo o la suya, este es su juego. A los que les gusta moverse por el escenario utilizando habilidades y utilizar el entorno en las batallas, pues no... este no es su juego, salvo en contadas ocasiones, el 80 o 90% son pasillos o entornos redondos de batalla, vamos.. lo de siempre. Venga un saludo