My point form positive feedback list

I am really enjoying the game and figured I'd chime in on what I think the developers did really well, especially someone who really appreciated the "Action" in the ARPG genre:

1. Gem sockets - Getting rid of gem sockets in gear and socket colors was absolutely the right call and lets the player spend more time playing the game rather than fiddling with their inventory/crafting

2. Limits on skill gems - Being able to use only 1 skill gem of each type makes the build process much more strategic and requires much more thinking. This leads to more creativity IMO

3. Spirit system - replacing passive buff/mana reservation with spirit system keeps things a lot more tidy and digestible, also makes things less frustrating in trying to keep mana topped off

4. No more flask piano - seemed unnecessary and just busy work for your fingers

5. Story/characters - seems like there is less NPCs and more meaningful NPCs than POE1, and these NPCs actually go out into the world and do stuff with you. I really hope POE2 has more story elements like this to help the player feel immersed and invested in the world

6. Environments - environments are beautiful and incredibly detailed, and with some modest use of set pieces. This helps with the maps being kind of huge.

7. Skill based gameplay - I like how in this game you can make up for a lack of gear with skill. This is a huge departure from typical ARPGs where timing and positioning is not all that important. IMO it was a risky move but a huge portion of the community loves it, and I seriously hope this doesn't change to appease the crowd who doesn't want to invest time to learn the timing of the bosses or mob abilities

8. Active block - It's really impressive that this was integrated in such a robust way, especially with the magma barrier skill where if timed correctly you can build up endurance charge and damage enemies. Again, making the game more about the "Action" rather than the clicking/watching youtube in the background

9. Timed attacks - On a more general note, attacks that get boosts from perfect timing are also great. This again makes the player more engaged and rewards skilled play.

10. Bosses - something to be said about bosses in that they are very well made. Very tough but very fair (except maybe the lava boss where you run out of space if you don't do damage fast enough). Multi-phases, multi-attacks, and them having interesting personalities by yelling random things at you during battle, all very well made and very rewarding to take down.

I died about 220 times (LOL) during the first 3 acts because I played this game like an action game where I didn't want to use gear to overcome the boss challenge. When I got really stuck I went back to try and mix up my skill gems, upgrade quality, use orbs, or try to find better gear at vendors, and that was always enough to help me keep moving. I think people really need to give this different style of gameplay a chance rather than wanting every challenge to just be a gear check and wanting to keep moving forward and never get stuck. If I never got properly stuck anywhere in this game it would a fraction of the fun. I suppose the division around this game might be whether someone wants to get around a challenge through skilled gameplay vs. skilled character optimization (personally I think the game is quite balanced around both of these).