My 332 hour review / feedback

After 332 hours in Path of Exile 2, I feel it's the right time to share my thoughts on this evolving masterpiece. To provide some context, my gaming background leans heavily toward MMOs—I’ve logged over 12,000 hours in World of Warcraft, nearly as much in mobas like League of Legends, and a few thousand hours across most major MMOs. When it comes to ARPGs, my experience is lighter, with about 600 hours in Lost Ark, 100 hours in POE1 (just before POE2 launched) and little to no time spent in other big titles like Torchlight, Last Epoch, Diablo, or Grim Dawn.

Positives:
Let’s start with the positives: Path of Exile 2 feels and plays like a high-quality game. It avoids the "cheap" or rushed feeling that many modern online games seem to embrace. It’s difficult to put into words, but the best way I can describe it is that PoE2, ironically, feels like a mostly “finished product,” despite its Early Access label.

The campaign maps are fun, interesting, and engaging, which kept me hooked and wanting to continue playing without taking much of a break. Other strong points include the excellent sound design, from the abilities and environments to the music, all of which contribute to the game’s immersive atmosphere. The zones are equally impressive, featuring stunning artwork and truly beautiful designs that bring the world to life.

While there are some subtle changes to the Passive Tree, I found its overall function to be largely the same as in Path of Exile—allowing players to customize their skills and power as they see fit. However, the largest improvement lies in the streamlined pathing between areas of the tree, making it easier to plan and execute builds. Additionally, the ability to quickly change nodes in nearly every town using gold is a fantastic and welcome quality-of-life improvement over PoE1.

While there are many more things I enjoy about the game (and there truly are plenty), I believe it’s more constructive—and hopefully helpful—for the development team if I share some thoughts on the aspects I’m not enjoying as much.

Constructive Criticism:
The first issue that comes to mind is the disparity in wealth among players. A small group of very wealthy players is breezing through juiced T18 maps with high Rarity gear, effortlessly filling their storage with divines. In contrast, the vast majority of players are grinding through T1–T9 maps, earning significantly less currency and struggling to save enough to afford the gear needed for more challenging content.

I find myself firmly in the second group—the less wealthy players. While much of my time has been spent creating alternative characters and pushing them through the campaign, I’ve also dedicated time to trying to gear up a class and clear maps for currency to improve my builds. To my surprise—and disappointment—I’ve found this to be a struggle. The maps I do manage to finish yield very little currency, and higher-tier, juiced maps often result in repeated deaths due to my lack of proper gear.

With at least five characters around 70-75, I thought I’d be able to find a build that would allow me to comfortably farm maps for currency. However, the yields have been so small that I’ve gone 4–6 hours mapping without seeing a single divine orb, and only a handful of exalted orbs in that time.

I should pause here to acknowledge that perhaps I’m doing something "wrong," and that adjusting my playstyle could lead to better results. However, I’m troubled by the thought that my experience might be typical for new players—casual or not—joining the game. Keep in mind that I’ve already logged over 300 hours at this point, I would suspect that players who struggle with mapping might eventually give up on the game due to the frustration long before that 300 hour mark.

Group item drops do help address this issue by making currency drop more frequently. However, many solo players struggle to find groups that are willing to share drops. I understand that currency drop rate scaling is a delicate matter—if easier maps drop too much currency, higher-geared players will farm them relentlessly, bypassing higher-tier maps. While I’m not sure how to perfectly balance this, I’m certain that something needs to change. My suggestion would be to remove the increased loot from groups (perhaps replacing it with increased XP, more gold, and higher-tier gear drops). If solo players could receive currency drop rates on par with full groups, lower-tier maps would become a viable farming option for those trying to save up enough to purchase gear upgrades for progressing to higher-tier maps.

To summarize my current complaint with the game: early endgame mapping experiences feel unrewarding, and while higher-tier maps offer much better rewards, they are often inaccessible to undergeared players. As a result, the lack of funds to craft or purchase necessary gear creates a gear loop that stalls progress for some players, myself included.

Trial Troubles:
Next, let’s talk about some systems in the game that need improvement. Trials have become a major thorn in players’ sides. They are so unenjoyable as part of the ascendancy process that the vast majority of players end up paying 5 exalted orbs for a 30-second carry through Trials 1, 2, and 3. Later, when they've saved up enough currency, they pay 30 exalted orbs for a 30-second carry through Trial 4. Only after players are significantly overleveled and overgeared do they even bother to go back and do the trials themselves. These are symptoms of a deeper issue—imagine a system so unloved by players that the preferred method to complete it is to pay for a boost from others.

In my humble opinion, the solution to making Trials more enjoyable lies in introducing a bit of good RNG. Instead of overwhelming players with afflictions, it would be great to allow them to purchase boons with Sacred Water before the trial even begins. For example, in the Trial of Chaos, some of the debuff choices could be balanced with small, positive effects that benefit the player. Small positive RNG like this would go a long way in improving the overall experience and would definitely improve my opinion of Trials.

I think paying for boosts through the Trials ultimately invalidates the entire system. Although I may get some pushback for this, I believe players should be required to complete the Trials solo, only allowing grouping afterward—if at all. That said, I would still hate to lose the ability to buy boosts in the current state of the Trials. If the option to be boosted were removed, there would need to be significant improvements to the Trials to make them more enjoyable to complete. I also suspect that some of this comes down to necessary balance changes—such as the Chaos end bosses, which deal far too much damage with abilities like the giant tornado that you can’t outrun, resulting in one-shots. Or for example afflictions in some trial rooms that cant be avoided that completely ruin player builds. The concept of the trials is fantastic, however the "fun factor" is just not delivering.

What I’m getting at is that things can be both fun and challenging. For example, I’ve attempted raid bosses in WoW expansions that took over 300 wipes across weeks of attempts, and I had a tremendous amount of fun during that process. However, on my second day playing POE2, I attempted the Trial of Chaos with a group no less than 30 or 40 times in a row without success, and not a single attempt felt enjoyable. That trial specifically has some of the most "unfun" bosses, not difficult... unfun.

Trade Issues:
Price fixing has become a significant issue on the trade site. I can post an item and immediately get spammed by 20 bot accounts trying to buy it. These same bots then list the item for much lower prices, hoping to mislead players about its true adjusted value. While I don’t know what the solution is, these bots are listing thousands of items and never respond to whispers for purchase, as they never intended to actually sell anything. Although I’m getting better at recognizing and blocking these bot accounts, I suspect the purchasing experience for new players is likely very poor due to this.

A possible solution to this would be to place items into escrow when they are listed. When a player clicks "buy" on an item on the trade site, it would function like an auction, and the item would be moved to a unique trade stash tab holding all purchases. This is my limited suggestion, but if something isn't done to improve the trade experience, I feel it's only going to get progressively worse. Don’t believe me? Try searching for an item and whispering the first 20 or so listings—you’ll be lucky to get a single response.

Super early game class imbalance -
Super early-game class imbalance is another issue, with some classes being painful to play from level 1 to around level 20. Specifically, the Warrior and Monk classes have abilities that feel clunky and unfun. So much so, that many players opt to equip a bow and use Ranger abilities until they can get past those early levels. While this method works, it highlights the underlying issues with those early levels for these classes. There are many potential ways to address this, but a simple fix could be increasing the base damage of low-level abilities for these classes.

Rarity on gear:
The topic of rarity on gear is controversial because it works so well that many players would find it painful if it were removed. However, the issue is that you have to sacrifice either defensive or offensive stats to add rarity, which makes your character weaker in order to gain more currency. I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I do have a suggestion for improvement. Why not move rarity to an additional implicit, as if it were added by a Vaal Orb, without taking up any other implicit stat? This way, rarity could be an extra bonus, available in addition to other useful stats. Another option would be to remove rarity from gear entirely and make it available only on charms as a bonus implicit, with values equal to the amounts lost on gear. This would preserve the current effect without forcing players to sacrifice essential stats.

Quality of life suggestions:
* A "/passives" command like found in POE1 would help tremendously with seeing at a glance which side quests/bosses that reward bonuses are completed.
* When searching in the Passives tree, highlighted nodes should flash much brighter as seeing which is highlighted can be difficult when zoomed out.
* A UI element with build-your-own loot filter options would be fantastic. One where a player could toggle off/on various currencies and loot types.

Those are just a few of my early thoughts on the game. I wanted to put them down in writing so I could come back and see if my opinions improved over time.