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 ...

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.

I started playing this game in February of this year. As you can see, I've already sunk in...a lot of hours.
This game is *good*.
I could talk a lot about how much fun I've had with the endgame of POE, how I've already tried out something like 9 or 10 builds (most of which were pretty scuffed but at least somewhat functional), how I can't wait for 3.26 and all that - but instead I want to talk about something else.
I want to address anyone who has ever thought Path of Exile LOOKED potentially really fun or interesting, but found it too intimidating or dense and ultimately decided against playing it.
Path of Exile has a long and storied history of being "overly complicated" and you hear so many memes, jokes, but also serious advice about how you "NEED to follow a build guide" to enjoy this game, how you NEED outside tools and resources like loot filters and how if you don't go do hours of research and watch guide videos and read a Leaguestart Build Guide on Maxroll.gg before even installing the game you're going to have a bad time and not understand anything.
THIS IS ALL 100% FALSE.
Or, at the very least, HEAVILY over-exaggerated.
Is Path of Exile a complex game with a lot of interlocking systems that take time to learn and understand?
Yes.
Does Path of Exile do a good job tutorializing these systems adequately within the game itself?
Not really.
But - crucially - is a robust understanding of these systems necessary to try the game out and enjoy it?
NO.
Path of Exile is no more or less complex than any other isometric RPG out there - I would easily compare the first-time playthrough of POE to something like Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, or one of Owlcat's Pathfinder games in terms of system complexity - although certainly not in narrative design. Path of Exile's strength is certainly *not* in its narrative but that's not a bad thing!
So if you are an RPG enjoyer, if you enjoyed the MECHANICAL COMPLEXITY of the above or similar games and want to try something more real-time, action-combat focused - PLEASE DO YOURSELF A FAVOR, IGNORE EVERYONE TELLING YOU THAT YOU NEED A BUILD GUIDE AND A LOOT FILTER AND THIS AND THAT AND THIS OTHER THING AND JUST PLAY THE GAME.
The campaign of Path of Exile, the first time you play through it, assuming you're not trying to speedrun it for some reason and you take your time to just enjoy the game for what it is, will last you somewhere between 20 and 35 hours.
For FREE.
And it's GREAT.
As long as you have a *baseline understanding* of how RPGs work, how to generally understand things like stats from your passive skill tree and items, and you put in SOME amount of effort to actually engage with the *basic* systems the game presents to you like the skill gem system, you can 100% beat the campaign without any sort of build guide as long as you're not just allocating your passive skill points by essentially throwing darts and hoping for the best.
You don't even need to "decide" what kind of "build" you're going for, really, until you're done with the first two Acts of the game. You have plenty of time to experiment with the variety of different skills in the game, because Path of Exile's variety MOSTLY comes from its Skill Gem system - something you can easily experiment with and swap around freely in the early game with little to no opportunity cost. Even in the later stages of the campaign you can still experiment and play around with swapping skills - it might take a bit *more* effort than in the early stages of the game, but as long as you're not trying to swap to something that's the polar opposite of what you've been doing for the last 15 hours, you'll be fine.
So - pick a class that seems to have a power fantasy you enjoy. Do you like throwing lightning bolts and fireballs? Play the Witch or the Templar. Do you like being a sneaky, stealthy ninja or assassin? Play the Shadow. Like killing enemies from a whole screen away with a bow? Play the Ranger. Do you like being a jack-of-all-trades of martial combat, able to use any weapon to a reasonable degree? Play the Duelist.
Do you like bonking things really hard with a big hammer/mace/insert other two-handed big weapon here? Play the Marauder.
Then, when you see the passive skill tree for the first time, *don't panic*. It seems VERY intimidating at first - but I promise you, it isn't. The reason the passive tree is so big is because it's the SAME TREE for EVERY CLASS - each class just *starts* somewhere different. So zoom in to *your class's* section of the passive tree, and just take a look at what the class has easy access to. You don't need to make any decisions yet - just take a look and start feeling it out. For now, all you need to do is start putting your skill points on a path to things that give you stuff that will serve you well on any sort of build - for example, it's NEVER a bad idea to path towards more Life with your passive skill points until you've filled out the two or three clusters of Life skills closest to your starting location in the tree.
Meanwhile, try out all the different skills the game throws at you in the first two acts! You can buy more skill gems from Nessa or Yeena, so try try try! See what *feels good* to play. By the time you start running out of "generalist" passive skills, hopefully you'll have settled on a skill that feels fun and good - and you can start investing your precious skill points into passives that are a bit more specialized. Don't just abandon investing in things like Life and Resistances - but you can start really "building" your character a bit here!
That's it. As long as you have some semblance of a *plan* for your character - like you should in any RPG - you won't screw up your "build" to the point where you can't even beat the campaign. And it doesn't have to be a very specific plan - you just have to have a solid idea of what you want your character to DO, even if that idea is as simple as "throw fireballs until the whole screen is dead" or "do my best Mario cosplay and stomp on heads Really Hard". Trust me. My first playthrough of POE was on this same advice - no build guide - and, well...clearly I had a good enough time to end up here.
If you hit any roadblocks or if the game starts feeling too difficult - it's probably NOT your passive tree, or anything you can't fix. In fact, the problem will usually be your gear - something that can *definitely* be fixed. If you feel like your damage is too low, if you're dying too much, checking and upgrading your gear will fix 90+% of your problems. A good rule of thumb is to always prioritize gear that has high Life and at least one Elemental Resistance stat - except on your weapon, where you want high damage. A pair of gloves that only has two stats, but those stats are +70 Life and +26% Fire Res, are better than a pair of gloves that has 5 stats but only +10 Life and no resists.
By the time you beat the campaign and reach the endgame, with maps and the Atlas Tree and Crafting and Pinnacle Bosses and all that - the parts of the game that DO need a build guide, that DO need a more robust understanding of its more complex systems - you will already have had 20+ hours of a fun RPG experience to inform you if the game is something you enjoy enough to be *worth* all the legwork.
So - do yourself a favor. If POE looks fun, or interesting, and you've always *wanted* to try it - but everything *surrounding it* sounds really intimidating?
Try it anyway.
You might not like it. You might get halfway through Act 3 and feel like the game still isn't meshing with you, and you're not having fun. That's okay! At least you can say you tried!
You might only play through the campaign once or twice and have a good time, but then move on to other games. That's great!
Or you might end up like me, and find your new favorite game to pour 1,000 hours and counting into.
Besides, it's free. And in this economy? What do you have to lose?

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...