Overall it's not that great

First of all, the combat and feel is great, abilities are fine and everything in the world feels like an improvement. I liked many of the new systems and features, however at the end of act 2 i'm just litte bit frustrated... not having fun anymore.

1. No real power progression in terms of items and skills that can be felt. I'm forced into my lightning spec bcs of the 10iLvl staff i got in act one. No other drop was good. the further into the game the less useful drops I see. My staff is 20 levels behind me, and it will not go since it has +80% spell damage. No passives to aim for, I don't see any relevant nodes in the vicinity after speccing all lightning dmg and defence. How to upgrade? dunno, wait for drops (in the campaign...)

2. Ascension. My only fear was that the devs would make Lab 2.0 - and they did. I wasted good half-hour navigating the damn Sanctum (as a level 20 noob char with shit gear). To be obliterated (by honour) by final boss. Time wasted - go again, from the start, yes. Lab 2.0. Rly?.. So I skip it until... level 40?

3. Bosses, field bosses are trivial. 1st, 2nd attempt, done. easy. Final act boss? Let's play bullshit on top of the new bullshit game. More and more mechanics add up on top of each other when boss HP drops, slowly, very slowly. Then the 2nd boss on the 2x2 arena adds up. That not difficulty, just annoyance and playing repeat until lucky style of play. And I do enjoy the mechanics, they are fine, it's just that they are overtuned on HP, it takes good 10mins to make one mistake on the last flask charge and die. Make them more deadly, but with less HP.

Arenas are tiny, the Jamanra boss throws 3-4 AOE traps on the ground while swinging 10m cleave. I will not avoid that physically!

4. I don't see a way to up resistances up to the needed level. Nothing drops. All my yellows are outdated from level 10. New blues are not good, currency drops are not useful (upgrade normal to magic... rly? my resistances need like 40% each)

4.a. Mobs hugging you from all sides without the possibility to roll out is also nice.


5. Subjective. I feel weak and the further I go the weaker I feel. With no real prospect to get stronger, I just don't see how for now. This is campaign we're talking about!

Keypoints of the campaign feel like I need to go level more. But I'm overlevelled as it is..


Otherwise, the game is good. Very nice, like it a lot.

this post could be almost directly lifted from OG PoE 1 beta hehe. Way back in the day, rhoas were death traps for everyone, the area around "the butcher" (lets be honest, just a direct copy from D1/D2) was tiny compared to his aoe and speed, and power growth was non-existent until way later in the game.

Give it time, it will devolve quickly

Oh and a nice mechanic of mobs hugging your from all sides without being able to escape and accept death is also nice. Gotta wait for those 'move through enemies' shoes affix later on

would be fun to see a stream form a dev to play from level 1 to act 3 with live commentary. every step of the way telling us how this is the best they did.

Yeah, can't argue with most of that. Love the game and a lot of the very noticeable improvements. But, it's really becoming a chore to try to progress. Went and leveled some more, got some better gear (not enough decent drops), and tried again. Minimally better but really discouraging when you can't make any progress. Jamanra is very tough - maybe too tough for an Act 2 boss (after all, this is just the campaign - feels like an uber-boss). Working, working to inch forward is not fun at all. I cannot imagine that more than 5% of the players are happy with this. and the players who never played POE1 - what must they be thinking????