Review - Path of Exile

7thCircle

The corruption of the Vaal has spread across Wraeclast. Did it influence RPGamer's reviewer to praise this gem, or was Grinding Gear Games' undying love a wasted sacrifice?

Review

Ocelot

Huh! I'm not a 3rd person looter fan myself, but Mr. Ocelot is and has said he's enjoyed Marvel Heroes more than Path of Exile. I suspect the skill tree turned him off since he likes this kind of game to be simple.Mostly I'm impressed by a game that rates a 5.0 from 7th!

watcher

This is a game I mentioned having been impressed by at PAX 2011. I helped beta, and they sure took their time, but I've been glad to see my initial instincts verified by the reception it has gotten.

Balance

I just checked, I've clocked an insane 1056 hours on one character-my marauder in Path of Exiles. No regrets but a couple of months ago, I thought I should give other games have a chance, lol. Now I'm mostly playing Reaper of Souls
My brother's go to game is Marvel Heroes, he took a short break to beat Child of Light.
I got a strange thing going on in my head, I worry that games will not be supported as they shut down servers, recently they are shutting down Gamespy, I mean- it's not like the old days when you can plug in something and play it as much as you want. But I do not want to go into a rant about online gaming
I'm wondering which game I have grinded endless hours will shut downtheir servers permanently first, Diablo 3 or Path of Exiles, I'm betting Diablo 3. Don't worry folks I got a more healthy range of games now with Dragon's Crown and doing the whole Atelier series.

Rya_Reisender

I probably won't like the game due to its complexity, but I must say that I personal like trade shops more than auction house. Browsing through shops, looking for good deals, is one of my favorite things to do in MMORPGs (I remember doing that in Ragnarok Online all day long instead of fighting and in the end ending up richest Priest on server, heh). With auction house you just see the cheapest offer directly, so that whole aspect of learning the market prices and searching for good deals is lost.

freykin

This has been my favorite game since 2013. I've been sucked into it hard, and my backlog has grown accordingly. It's my favorite game of this type, and is a great take on FF7's materia system combined with the Sphere Grid in FF10, both of which I highly enjoyed.

I'm also highly impressed with how often new content comes out. They've been consistently releasing content updates every 2-3 weeks, with larger mini expansion packs every 4 months or so.

Phillip Willis

This is, hands down, the best free to play game on the PC, IMHO. It's a no brainier to recommend to any and all my friends who like RPGs. Glenn has hit this one right on the head in his review.

Rya_Reisender

Hmm, since it seems quite popular, do you think I could like it even if I don't like bothering with builds? If I think of FF7 Materia system it has one advantage - you can replace bothering with builds with grinding, so in the end you can just learn everything. In other games with builds you are limited because you only get skill points and level up and leveling up continuously needs more exp. How is it in Path of Exile?

7thCircle

Rya.Reisender wrote: »

Hmm, since it seems quite popular, do you think I could like it even if I don't like bothering with builds? If I think of FF7 Materia system it has one advantage - you can replace bothering with builds with grinding, so in the end you can just learn everything. In other games with builds you are limited because you only get skill points and level up and leveling up continuously needs more exp. How is it in Path of Exile?

I think you'd be fine with the active skills in gems, but not the passive skill tree. Below is the link to my level 81 summoner's skill tree. If you make it full screen and look around, you can see I've only gotten access to less than 1/3 of the total area of the tree. This character is deep into postgame content and has only 100 skill points. Almost the entire tree is unused. The vast size of the tree, its options, and the limited number of passive skill points seem like something you wouldn't like. You should be able to make it through normal without a set build in mind, but much longer than that and the passive skills need to be somewhat planned and cohesive.

My skillz

watcher

Yeah, the passive tree is the monster of character building. That said, it's not as bad as it looks and you can get respec points as I recall. Generally, you want to pick a specialty (an element type, summons, weapon type, etc.) and find the key nodes on the tree and get there efficiently while grabbing any worthwhile bonuses on the way. And they made the passive skill tree builder searchable, so say for 7th's summon build if you search for "minion" you'll find he snagged all the highlighted spots.

TGBarighm

There's more to the system than just passive bonuses, right? I've really soured on stats. build systems lately.

Shinseitori

If you boil it all down, the system is all passives and skill gems. The only difference between the character classes is where they start on the grid, what gems they get as quest rewards, and their appearance. You could have a tanky Witch or a spell-slinging Marauder if you wanted, they just may not be optimal since you'll have to go through some passives you may not necessarily need.

While I like the skill system, I like Diablo III's better, where the only restriction on skills is level. In Path of Exile, if you want to change up skills, you may have to level up new gems, and you'll probably have to find/make new gear first that has the necessary colors. And god help you if you need to move points around in the tree. I like every other aspect of PoE, though. The barter system is a breath of fresh air and I love sphere grids. Most importantly though, they absolutely, 100% nailed the atmosphere. You could drop Diablo II characters into these environs and feel right at home. Meanwhile, I couldn't get past the first act of Torchlight II because getting items I couldn't use for several levels as quest rewards pissed me off.

Seriously, though, all it will cost you to try the game is a lil bandwidth. It's worth a look.

7thCircle

TG Barighm wrote: »

There's more to the system than just passive bonuses, right? I've really soured on stats. build systems lately.

Most builds are centered around a single active skill and/or keystone passive skills. I didn't get into it in the review, but there are keystone passive skills in the tree that can alter the entire focus of how a character gears and plays. Something like Blood Magic (which does what you'd think) or one that adds a dodge chance at the expense of armor and energy shield. So a build Blood Magic Flame Totem would take the Blood Magic keystone and primarily attack with flame totems, but it's up to you to allocate passives as you want as long as you end up with a whole lot of HP and get totem bonuses.

Once you have a skill and some keystones in mind, you just find and grab all the other passive skills that support them as efficiently as possible. The trick, of course, is you don't know the skills in the game when you first start out. So you can either look some general builds up online if don't think you'll want to restart later, or find a specific one to follow.

What I've done twice now is see some active skills I want to use, check the PoE forums to see if they're viable endgame (they were) and look at others' passive trees for general ideas, then wing it. So far that's worked, and I don't feel like I'm copying a build I've read online. I had to respec a lot of points for 1 character to change focus after deciding a build, and that's not always viable. My brother made a 2nd character when he ended up disliking how the 1st one he made played. He refuses to look at builds online and that's working out okay for him. You can handle it however you want.

Phillip Willis

Your brother and I have a lot in common. I *hate* looking online at other builds. But, then I get cranky when I get to the end game, and my build, which worked great early on, falls apart for whatever reason. In a game that allows respecs, that's not a huge deal. I respec and try something else. However, in games where respecs aren't allowed or are very limited, I can get backed into a corner and feel like I've wasted a lot of time...which I have precious little of. So, generally, games like this are not for me (and its a huge reason why I do prefer Diablo III to Torchlight II or Path of Exile). With that being said, I know a lot of people aren't like me. For those who don't mind a little trial and error, or don't mind doing a little research, this game is a no brainier.