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Path Of Exile 2 early access review: an expressive, characterful ARPG with plenty to chew on
- Path of Exile 2 is a great sprawling mass of a game, even in its incomplete early access period. The spider-web skill tree has returned, but as before, it functions as something of a trap. Rather than being earned, skills in Path of Exile 2 are found in gems, as pieces of loot. The visuals are great with a dark fantasy aesthetic. Each class can unlock one of two “ascendancy” subclasses that go diving back into the initial fantasies and come up with extremely violent, showy new skill options. The longer you play, the more authorship you start to feel over your character. As more of their core players wring the systems dry over immense year-long playtimes, will the studio be able to keep the improvisatory, expressive play intact, or will the numbers get ever bigger and the consequences ever smaller? Path of Exile 2 is a game built on top of a highly interconnected stack of systems and choices. The studio’s willingness to carve away and reshape them renders the future uncertain.
- Path of Exile, a vast and metastasising ARPG perhaps best known for its spidery skill tree.
- Path of Exile 1, this deep into its lifespan, is a dark and austere game for new players
- Path of Exile 2 is, on the face of it, a more focused and welcoming journey through the dark.
- Rather than being earned, skills in Path of Exile 2 are found in gems, as pieces of loot.
- New players stare, enthralled, in its direction and at that exact moment the true complexity of the game comes from behind and wallops you over the head.
- A better cuirass. A worse staff. An unidentified item. Here, though, the items are often responsive to the swirling mass of choices you’ve made elsewhere.
- Playing Path of Exile 2 feels like improvising alongside the game.
- Path of Exile 2 is a game built on top of a teetering, highly interconnected stack of systems and choices
- As more of their core players wring the systems dry over immense year-long playtimes, will the studio be able to keep the improvisatory, expressive play intact?
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