Path of Exile

Path of Exile isn’t just a game; it’s a lifestyle choice. You log in thinking, ‘Just one map,’ and suddenly it's 3 AM, you’re knee-deep in loot, and you’ve forgotten what sunlight looks like. The story? Sure, there’s something about Wraeclast being a cursed hellscape, but you’re too busy looking at your passive tree for the 20th time because you accidentally turned your mage into a glorified punching bag.
The loot system is both your best friend and your worst enemy. Every drop feels like Christmas morning... until you identify it and realize it's a pile of garbage. But don’t worry—just slap on some currency and pray to RNGesus, who loves nothing more than crushing your dreams.
Trade chat is where you’ll develop an economics degree trying to figure out why your precious item is worth less than a Chaos Orb, but some random guy’s rusty helmet costs an Exalted Orb. And don’t get me started on crafting—it’s like gambling, but instead of money, you lose your will to live.
But hey, you’ve got companionship! Your summon skeletons are your real friends now, and Zana? She’s your work-wife. Together, you’ll face monsters so terrifyingly complex you’ll wonder if they moonlight as NASA engineers.
So yeah, Path of Exile is a masterpiece. 11/10 would sell my soul to delve deeper again. Just remember to stretch occasionally and tell your family you’re still alive ... Maybe ...

For perspective, I'm over 50 and not as sharp a gamer as I used to be. But, on to my thoughts about POE:

It's free. Give it a shot. Heads up if you're new: if there are too many things in your maps going on (too many other league mechanics making maps a little much), you can disable several league mechanics from showing up via the Atlas Passive tree. That is the main reason why I still come back every once in a while to play. Otherwise it feels like being at the county faire and everyone is trying to sell their league to you. Come, play Betrayal! No, come play Harvest! F-Harvest, come check out Blight! Anyways, just a PSA for new players.

Other advice? Really, follow a build guide. Just accept that you will be using one for a little while until you start to understand the relationship between what you're building towards and your small choices along the way. If POE is too much game, definitely play Last Epoch. Heck, just go play LE anyways! But don't let content bloat and build complexity get in the way of trying POE.

Have fun regardless

This game could be good if they'd just introduce some complexity, y'know? LIke, maybe give us some options on the skill tree. Where's the variety? I ran the numbers, and there's only 3,916,742,971,342 ways to build a unique character, and that's counting the new ascendencies they just added for free to their already free game that they're still actively developing for after over a decade. Lazy devs SMH.

I just got sucked into this game. I am a new player, but after I learned how to get myself started, it has been so much fun to play. If you're seeing this and you want to start playing this game do these things.

1. Watch a video on what each of the classes does and choose your favorite.
1.5. Play on the standard, softcore league.
2. Download Path of Building and find a beginner build for your class so you don't have to worry about the giant passive skill tree
3. Go to filterblade.xyz and make a loot filter set to "semi-strict" so that all the useless junk is auto-hidden.

I promise, once you jump the hurdles of starting, this game is addicting as hell. I HIGHLY reccomend.

Game's good, despite what the recent review bombing would lead you to believe. Anyone having a meltdown about the recent announcement needs to touch grass.
No new updates suck (specially if you don't like PoE 2), but some of the takes in the community have been absolutely insane and it's a major part of the reason GGG cut near all direct community interaction.
If you're new, you still have a wonderful game with thousands of hours in content.
If you are an old player, relax, game something else. Stop acting as if GGG scammed you, or is killing poe1 for good. Do it if it actually happens, not based on speculation from a delay announcement. Be rational, please.

This is a weird genre to review, as it's a loot based arpg that also seems to have co-operative / social mmo-lite elements included. One way or the other it's designed to suck up as many hours of your time as is humanly possible, whether that's the grind to level up in the single-player content, or the end-game content that seems nigh on impossible without another players assistance.
The fundamentals are quite enjoyable and there is a fair bit of depth to its mechanics. The only problem is that by the time you get to the point where you can really start experimenting, well, you'll have finished the most meaningful story content and along the way have encountered some horrendous difficulty spikes that put a blight on the enjoyment to be had.
You can't "get gud" with this type of game, only understand its systems better, and hope to get lucky with the random drops. As it isn't a reflex-driven action game like Dark Souls, but is instead one where you load up with the best spells / armour / weapons and then mindlessly obliterate enemies whilst most of the time you can hardly even see what's going on due to all the special effects.
Every time you level up, or upgrade your gear, it gets "better" to play, but at the same time devolves when it comes to the action. You're either going to get one-shotted by something that will takes ages grinding to be able to overcome, or you'll cut through mobs like a hot knife through melted butter.
Come a certain stage of development this is the default response. It's either ridiculously easy, or insanely hard, and both to my mind are the kind of poor design (or not, if you like this kind of thing) that sums up the genre. Yes, you have to think when setting up your gear, but in the heat of battle it's just spamming attacks and anyone will do (even when an enemy is supposedly resistant to its effects, if you're high enough in power they will die to anything)
So it can be fun and thoughtful as you min / max your loot, and the action is visceral with its graphics, sounds and feel. Up to a point it's enjoyable, but then the difficulty spikes for bosses, and the somewhat clumsy general game-play that accompanies them, take off a lot of the shine.
The narrative is...there...and it's...okaaaaaay, I suppose. Even though it seems like its made up of several different stories bodged together (which it is, given that this was developed over years of early access) and none of the characters or plot-points are especially interesting, or original.
There's enough here to be reasonably satisfying, right up until the time where it gets tedious trying to do the end-game content. But by then you'll have had a 100+ hours out of it, and for the cost of nowt. For myself I can't be bothered seeing if there's anything particularly meaningful for a grind that could take years (!! no joking) and seems to be designed around playing with more people.
Since its nowhere near possible for me to carry on playing it by myself, as it's just an endless grind and praying for a good drop. yet who knows if there's anything worthwhile for doing so. It can be fun, it can be crap, but overall I think its worth it for free. Just stop playing when it becomes a chore, and that's what I'm going to do.

Feels like the genre of "ARPG" is starting to mean a lot of different things. Much like "Souls-like" and "Rogue-like", I wonder if we could normalize "Exile-like" for ARPGs that follow the Path of Exile formula...