A new players experience.

Wassup lads and ladies, I’ve never done a review on a game before, but this game is absolutely amazing. It definitely has its flaws in the current state, but with that said, I’m going to be as transparent as I can. I’m no game developer, but I’ve spent all 22 years of my life playing games, and I can confidently say that this game is, by far, one of the best Early Access games I’ve ever played. I didn’t play Path of Exile 1 sadly, but I’ve got a ton of friends who did, and I’m a big fan of ARPGs and grinding games in general. This game definitely requires you to grind for days if you want to keep up with everyone else.

I’ve got 554 hours in the game, but let’s take away 50 hours, because I know I’ve been AFK for that long (if not more). Getting into the whole Exile world was overwhelming at first, with the 1500 passive points, skill gems, support gems, and everything else. But I’m kinda getting the hang of it now. I’ve got two characters—my first one was a Monk. I had an absolute blast leveling up and going through the campaign. Without a doubt, those were the best 25-50 hours I’ve ever spent on a game. I didn’t rush through it or anything; I explored every corner of the beautiful maps to make sure I didn’t skip anything important. Even though I later found out from a video that I skipped the Venom Crypt and the Lightning Resistance in The Spires of Deshar, it was my first time playing and I luckily wasn’t the only one who missed stuff.

When I got to the endgame, I got so overwhelmed with all the new stuff that I had to take a break (for about 5 minutes, lmao) and watch a video. By then, I’d gotten a few Waystone 1 drops and some Trial of Chaos Ultimatums, and I started thinking, "Why get another one if it says I don’t gain more Ascendancy points?" So, I watched another video explaining it, and I got even more confused, so I just gave up on trying to understand the Trials.

I used a few Waystone 1’s and threw a few tablets into the Lost Towers. I found my first hideout and, man, what a feeling that was unlocking my own hideout. I spent hours decorating it, making it cozy as hell. Then I found out the hard way that you can only place 750 objects in your hideout, so my grand plans were ruined. But honestly, it’s probably for the best, because I’d still be decorating it if I had unlimited objects. That pushed me to dive deeper into the maps, figuring out what the Burning Monoliths were, what the citadels were, and just understanding the endgame overall.

After a bit of endgame play and finding my first citadel, I learned the hard way that I wasn’t strong enough to kill the boss. But that got me into the crafting system, which, in my opinion, could use a bit more spice. Maybe there could be a normal essence, then a greater essence, and then something else, followed by exalts. Then again, I’m totally new to crafting, so I’m still figuring it out. That’s just my opinion, though—not to say the system is bad. I haven’t crafted enough to fully judge. But after trying to craft a few quarterstaffs, I finally got a really good staff, and the feeling of creating something so nice is unmatched in my opinion.

The sad part about my Monk is that there’s some kind of auto-aim/aim-assist on Tempest Flurry, which really killed the whole Monk experience for me. I hope GGG implements a way to turn that off when it comes to Tempest Flurry. In a lot of my situations, I’d place down my bell and instead of hitting where my mouse is, it hits some random mob. I get killed by it more often than not. Yeah, you could tell me I’m just bad at the game, and I’d agree—I was definitely pretty bad.

I leveled up my second character, a Sorceress, and oh my days, I’ve never struggled leveling up a character so much in any game as I did with this one. But when I turned on global chat (which I’d had disabled for some reason), I asked for help with a few of the bosses, and that made the leveling experience way better. Thank the lord for those who helped me. I ran through the Trials, learned what I needed to quickly, and had most of the map knowledge, which was super nice.

I eventually reached the endgame with my Sorceress and had a blast with a Spark build, crafting new items, getting into trading, killing bosses, doing Pinnacle bosses, doing Breachstones, rituals (still haven’t gotten the Audience of the King yet, but I will get there), and all the endgame content. I now have around 350 hours on that character, decent gear, and I’ve sold some expensive crafted gear, which feels amazing, ngl. But now I’ve hit a wall with the Simulacrums, which, in my opinion, are way overtuned compared to some of the other endgame content. I like that there’s something harder than the rest, but the Simulacrums just don’t feel right to me. I can’t pinpoint what it is—maybe it’s the big monkey jumping out of the mirrors or something—but something just feels off, and I know that’s vague, but I can’t explain it better, lmao.

I’ve now made my third character, this time on SSF, and I’m absolutely loving it. Starting from scratch without anything and actually needing to craft items instead of trading feels way better for me. I know SSF isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay, but I’m just happy it’s an option. I’m currently going through the campaign on that one.

A whole life story holy smokes, but there is a few things I think would be some decent changes such as:
1. Auto-Aim/Aim-Assist on Tempest Flurry needs to be turned off or atleast give players the option to do so.

2. River Hags is a mob in the drowned city and in some of the maps in endgame and they need to be changed in a way where they have some cooldown of the big swirly thing on the ground.

3. Eternal Knights is a disgusting mob and without a doubt the mob in the game I hate the most. It looks hella awesome, but that shield needs to go or atleast do something where when you've hit the shield a few times they get stunned or something because they feel awful.

4. The big tornado bird in the Trial of Chaos is also not very nice they're moving way too fast, but I think yall already changed it if that's the case just ignore this.

5. As mentioned in the entire life story thingy I've got going on up there Simulacrums feels overtuned and the way mobs interact as soon as they come out of the mirrors feels awful, I know that's just me complaining without actually coming up with ideas as how to fix it, but I'm no game developer.

6. My very first simulacrum I used blink to get out of a shitty situation and I have the support gem Second Wind on it which allows me to use it 2 times before running out of charges on it and I used my first blink to tp out of getting stuck and then I used my second in panic and somehow I blinked out of the arena and got stuck and I did not know what to do so I used my Orb of Storm to kill the mobs that were still aggro on me through one of the gates in the arena bad explaining but I don't know how else to explain it. I were stuck like that for around 5-10 min without realizing I could just use my Portal to my hideout and go into the encounter again. I enter and INSTANTLY get killed by the encounter boss.

7. I also traded with someone who were currently in the Trial of Sekhemas and I tp'd to him which meant I tp'd to Sekhemas and we did the trade there. I then went back to mapping for a lil bit until I wanted to farm The Last Flame, but realized that the loot the guy I traded with still were there and I couldn't use the thing you use when you put in you Trail thingy and I pretty quickly realized I were still inside of the guy I traded withs layer, I tried relogging, I tried closing my game completely and I tried just about everything to get out of his layer so I could do my own Trail, but I just couldn't. I were full on stuck inside someone else's layer and It was like that for a damn long time. I then messaged the guy and he told me he would try and go back to his hideout when he is done with the current Trial he were doing and when he came out and went out of the Trails I finally got my own layer, thank you whoever you were.

8. Blink is a really nice spell to have, but I sometimes get stuck inside objects and inside weird stuff that I shouldn't be able to blink into, when I say objects I mean very small objects on the maps that you normally wouldn't even realize is there and I know by looking and reels on IG lmfao that you can somehow TP through the gateways in the gauntlet trials in sekhemas which is definitely something people will abuse like crazy.

9. The turrets that shoots in a straight line in gauntlet rooms in Trial of Sekhemas is just awful and again this could very easily just be me being a bad player, but the fact that they stun you when you get hit is awful, fair enough that they do crazy damage, but the stun + crazy damage is just awful, but I wont go too much into it because as I said it could just be me that's bad.

10. Currency in standard league. Divine Orbs have increased its priced by a crazy amount and I understand that this is probably insanely hard to get just right maybe even impossible, but I think something has to change when it comes down to how the entire Currency works because if I just began as a completely new player right now I would never be able to catch up with the current prices of Divine Orbs and just in general with how expensive some of the things actually is, this is also one of the reasons why I made a character in SSF league I already have 350 something hours on just one character and even that has a hard time following up when it comes to Currency.

Before I end this I would like to say that this is just my opinions and not me demanding or downplaying the work that the developers do. You are doing really good and I think its overall an amazing Early-Access so far.