Path of Exile Review

Hey guys, today I'd like to talk about the OARPG (Online Action Roleplay Game) Path of Exile, or PoE for short. If you've never heard of it, it's in the same genre as Diablo II/III by Blizzard.

Path of Exile is developed by Grinding Gear Games, a New Zealand company founded in 2006. The developers started the company with nothing but their life savings and a fervent passion for gaming. They have since grown to become (In my personal opinion) the best OARPG on the market.

Gameplay

This game has so many intricacies and subsystems that there is no way I could list and possibly explain them all while simultaneously doing them justice. So please understand my descriptions are very simplified versions.

PoE has depth. A freaking crapload of depth, if you'll pardon the crude colloquialism. I'll try and explain what I mean.

For starters, the way obtain and use skills. Skills come as drops/shop items that go into your inventory, which you then 'socket' into your gear to use them, you then 'link' them with other 'support' gems that modify how the 'active' skill works. There are 186 active skill gems in the game and 88 support gems, the skill selection is massive.

Let's take the skill gem "Fireball" as an example, a classic RPG magic spell. Well, Fireball all by itself is exactly what you think it is, a single ball of fire that blows monsters up. However, if you link it correctly, it can turn into a dozen frozen fireballs coming out of a totem you placed on the ground, shattering enemies across the whole screen.

Then, you have the skill tree. A vast web of 1325 interconnected nodes. I'll include a picture below just to show you how ridiculous it looks. The bigger nodes called 'keystones' will have the biggest impact on your character, the rest being things like attack damage, health, weird specialty nodes, etc.

To say that between the skill gems and skill tree offers tons of customization is a massive understatement. You also have items!

There's 3 ways to get the gear you need: It drops from monsters, you trade other players for it, or you craft it with PoE's currency system to 'enchant' your items with different properties. Honestly the system for crafting/enchanting is pretty complex and deeply connected to the 'currency' aspect of PoE. Explaining it would be a novels worth of text. That being said, there is no 'gold' as such, only crafting 'orbs', which effectively act as currency for most of the playerbase.

'Unique' items also play a massive role, some of them completely change how your character can work. For example, there's these gloves you can equip called 'Facebreakers' that increase your unarmed damage by an insane percent, however you can no longer wield a weapon. Your fists become your weapon damage.

Getting items in PoE however is very time consuming and most times completely random. You can absolutely get one of the rarest items in the game on your first zombie kill. However, you are far more likely of winning the real life lottery.

I hope the above gives you a decent feel for the crazy depth present in this game.

The last thing about the gameplay I'd like to mention are temporary Leagues. Leagues are a way the devs test out new game features over the course of 3 months or so, everyone gets a fresh start. Some of them have been pretty crazy, adding completely game changing features, which then get added to the main game!

Don't be afraid to try a League though. While they are temporary leagues, at the end of 3 or so months everything you have, character, stash, etc. all get deposited into standard.

Graphics & Audio

Years ago, they graphics looked like poo. Your characters looked like literal, pixelated turds. However, due to the growth PoE has received in recent times, their dev team has massively expanded. As a result, the graphics have wildly improved. They've added DX11 support, tech upgrades, things look extremely pretty now. Skills are chaotic and beautiful, particle effects are spot on. Bosses and creatures look freaking horrifying.

Which leads to me the aesthetic for the game: dark, beautiful, cruel. Pantwetting, on occasion. As the graphics have improved, so have the thematic elements. Some areas of the game actually scare me now. There's no secret rainbow unicorn level, either. All death and decay, all the time! Extended play sessions may leave one left feeling a little macabre, but not in a bad way.

The audio, once again, was something that was poo before and awesome now. It fits perfectly with the gruesome themes of the game. Voice acting has been updated, spells don't sound like explosive orgys anymore, etc.

Overall

It's obvious that I'm a huge fan of the game, but for good reason. I've completely omitted things like the endgame system 'mapping', trading, the patch 3.0 and everything it entails. I'd be more exhaustive, however the intent of this post was more to get people interested in it, not write up a novelette worth of information.

The game is ridiculously good, even if you're a casual gamer I'd suggest giving it a try. Oh, and it's totally free!