After 300+ hours

Well, I played the game for more than 300 hours, all characters, almost all ascendancies. A couple of feelings.



-Crafting.
This is something that a lot of people talked about already. But here is the thing. PoE 1 is also equally rng-based, the difference is that you can backtrack with Scourings or fully reroll with Alterations/Chaos, this way the item is not lost and you can try again, sinking a lot of resources to craft a good one.
The problem that I find right now, is not only the fact that the crafting is rng, is the fact that 1 undesired mod can break that item and make it be worthless. I consider that mainly the problem is the fact that the single first orb that you use on a normal item can instantly destroy it and make it unusable.
Essences are good in certain cases and really bad in others. For example, using a Speed Essence in a pair of boots is always going to give you %MoveSpeed, but using a Physical Essence on a weapon can give you: %Phys, %Phys+Accuracy, +Phys, PhysLeechAsLife and PhysLeechAsMana. This makes the use of certain Essences way less powerful in comparison to others.
Let's talk Omens. Omens are a decent way to try to be a little bit more deterministic (not deterministic enough imo) but this items are gated behind a specific mechanic. The reason meta-crafting is so popular in the first game, is not only because is powerful, but also because is accessible, everybody can do it if you have the recipe and the Divines to do it. Here you are forced to do a mechanic (that you may not like) to achieve this.



-Affixes.
The existence of multiple undesired mods makes the above system be even worse.
Mainly things like Thorns and Light Radius are things that 99% of the players don't like exalting.
Most of these mods don't really have a place for the majority of builds, and the few that try to use them are force to use the mandatory uniques to make them viable.
This begs the question, why these mods exist? Your players increases in Light Radius are barely noticeable and Thorns is not something that MOST players are interested on.



-Mandatory Mods.
At the moment, a couple of mods feel TOO mandatory for almost every single builds. Mainly the +Levels for damage, and %MoveSpeed for qol.
Almost every single weapon that doesn't have +Levels is worthless in the majority of builds. Every spell needs it, any Mace-based character, any Crossbow-based character.
Right now, the two archetypes where it doesn't feel mandatory are Quarterstaves and Bows. In both of these cases the +Levels are great, but there is other options that go head to head like %CritChance or +Arrows.
Movement Speed is sadly in a similar place, almost every pair of boots without it is undesired by most players, even if the other stats are good. I know that is an affix instead of an implicit to make the player make a choice. But there is no choice, boots without movement speed suck and no one is going to pick them even if it has T1 life and double res.



-Skill System
This is mostly fine, but I have a couple of complaints.
First of all, the 1 support limit. I think is an interesting concept, but at this moment in most cases it makes it really difficult to have 2 or 3 main skills. And almost impossible to have them all 6-linked with good supports.
Second, is the mana cost of skills. Is extremely high, and the mandatory +Levels makes it even higher. I'm a believer of the concept "Attacks should not cost mana because there is nothing magical about a bonk", but I understand that you don't think similar, so reducing them would make a long way.
Third, the non-activeness and easy automation of everything. This is a topic that maybe a lot of people will not like, but there is too much easy access to automation, automating a skill or a buff should be something that you do to min-max your character or something that you completely build around and have to invest a lot to make it work. Right now, is extremely easy to automate everything, if you are playing a cold build an lack single target just use Cast on Freeze + Comet, done, solved. Shouldn't be that easy.



-Jewellers Orbs
I very dislike the idea of jewellers with the current gem system.
Lesser Jewellers are very very common, Greater a little bit less and Perfect almost never drops. From all my playtime I haven't got one from the floor and refused to buy one because they were too expensive and there wasn't a support gem that would really help the skills.
I feel is kinda crazy how easy it is to get levels instead of a 6-link when in the first game is the opposite where a 6-link is a granted and levels are something "premium" with things like Empower or Corruption. I mean, you can get levels from everywhere now, even normal support gems. I'm not a big fan of this for the same reason as the automation of things, levels should be a min-maxing thing, but right now it feels like levels are the baseline and 6-linking is min-maxing.



-Defenses
Right now there is a clear difference between the 3 types of defense in the game. But I have a problem with these, it feels to me that you consider Energy Shield to be a defense comparable with Evasion and Armour, when it should be compared with LIFE.
Evasion and Armour have a pretty similar theme where both of them help you absorb hits in different ways, one by reducing the damage of the hit and the other by evading it sometimes.
But Energy Shield doesn't fall into that theme, is thematically closer to Life than it is to the other two defenses. As it is "another Life bar" or "blue Life", it functions very similar to how Life works and the other two defenses apply to it as well as they do with Life. Because of this there is a huge amount of people going Energy Shield or CI, the lack of life on the tree and the overabundance of Energy Shield make it a super easy choice. I believe that you can cut the numbers on Energy Shield as much as you want, but if you keep treating it equal to Evasion and Armour, Life based builds would be always worse.
Not talking about the Armour problem, 15% more effective? 15% of 0 is 0.



-Passive Tree
Not a lot of problems here, just a little bit of nitpicking.
I am amazed on the amout of attribute nodes that don't have anything connected and could easily not be there.
For example: Directrly north from the Witch start, just before the jewel socket in the top-mid part of the tree, there is 2 attributes nodes, back to back. One of these nodes is giving access to the "Refocus" cluster and the other one is just there. Nothing connected. Could aswell not be there entirely. Even better, both attribute nodes could not be there and conect "Refocus" to the jewel socket.
There are multiple cases like these ones in the tree, I would assume that the average build is wasting at least 5 passive points in attribute nodes that lead to nowhere.



-Endgame
I believe I don't have anything new to say.
Is monotonous, with 0 fun or engaging activities, and just mostly boring.
Map bosses were removed from every map and I don't understand why. Replaced for a wanky "kill all rares while they hide from you" mission. I believe that at least having a node in the Atlas Tree that enables bosses in every map would be good. The problem is the balancing of rewards.
Speaking of which.



-Rewards
All of them come from rares and bosses. There is not a single reason to kill white or blue mobs in maps aside from experience.
This could be the problematic reason to not have an Atlas Tree node that enables bosses in every map, but if that is the case, the problem is comming from the rewards tables of the other monsters and that should be adjusted.



-The Tedious systems
This are things that are thematically correct in the universe, but just unfun to interact with all the time.
Disenchanting, Salvaging, Selling, Reforgin. All different NPCs, why? Allow me to do all from the same NPC, don't make me go to a bench to salvage 2 Whetstones and then go to an NPC to disenchant for 1 miserable Regal Shard, and before that I need to go to the NPC to identify all my stuff. Is just boring.
The Well, oh my god, just. I remember watching an interview where someone asked Jonathan why they decided to have the well, and he said "Because is fun". Let me tell you something Jonathan, it is not. Having to go and refill every single time I come back from a map is one of the most unfun things of this game. Again, thematically correct, but extremely unnecessary.



-Identifying
Why do we still have identifying in 2025? It is because you want items on the floor to matter and if people can filter out specific affixes they would do that? Well, let me tell you something, most people filter out 95% of ALL items that go on the floor already, because most of the items from the floor are not good.
I don't understand why we have to keep with an arcaic system from a game released in 1996. You clearly understand that having to identify everything is something unfun, that is why there is an NPC who's function is to identify all at once. It is just so unecessary to have.
People are going to filter out 95% of the items wether they drop identified or not.



-Combat
I have to say, with a lot of pain, that this is far from what I expected.
In the Exilecons and all the videos there was premeditated actions in every button that you pressed. And now, you just right click, like in every single other ARPG. Don't get me wrong, I love that, I played the first game for 8 years now. But with so much potential to be different, it ended up being the same.
Well, not actually, is even worse. In the first one you have your buffs, your mobility skills, your debuffs. Here, you literally just press right click and occasionally Blink or dodgeroll.



-On Death Effects
I was really hoping you wouldn't add this, but you did. You fallen into this whole again.
On death effects are the MOST UNFUN THING IN VIDEOGAMES. No one likes them, no one will ever be like "it was SO MUCH FUN when the guy exploded and killed me making me having to backtrack to 5 minutes ago".
It is so unfun AND unbalanced, the explosions do too much damage because they are based on the monster hp.
It is crazy that you found new ways to have on death effects, like making an enemy forcefully kill another enemy to leave a degen pool in the ground.
The only reason that I think someone would make a character have an on death effect is because they were not able to make that character interesting to fight in the first place.
If all those on death effect monsters were interesting monsters to fight, there would be no need for the explosions or the puddles.
Also you can evade them with Acrobatics, what a joke.



-Clarity
A lot of the times you cannot see at a first glance what rarity the enemy in front of you is because you decided to not use the glow when it is clearly the best way to identify those enemies, or if an enemy is using a skill that the animation is completely eclipsed by the 17 monsters that are obscuring that.
A lot of the times, the game is incredibly unclear, you are not seeing what is hitting you, you are not able see the animations so you get hit, and for some enemy abilities there is no telegraph other than the animation.
This is even worse if you are a Delirium enjoyer.
The idea of a "miningful combat" comes from watching and reacting against what the enemy is doing. If you can't watch it, you can't react to it.



-Runes
I like Runes, I actually like them so much that I believe there should be a "Greater Rune" type. 12% resistance is kinda low when you consider the crafting system and the fact that you can get 6% fire res in an ilvl 81 item (why?).
So the idea of a "Greater Rune" item came to mind, one that instead of 12% is 20% for example, allowing people to toy a little bit more with the items and it would be closer to the Tiers from the crafting bench from the first one.
(Also, I don't really like them, I feel they are a bandaid system to help an hollow crafting system that lacks expresion).



Well, that's all. I think I have a couple more things around the head, but can't really put them to words.
I want to clarify that I like the game, quite a bit in fact, coming from Dark Souls games and alike I always enjoyed this style of game. And now that is combined with my favourite genre is even better. But, it needs a lot of work still. I'm highlighting the things I consider that either don't help or straight up hinder the game.
Remember, your experience and your opinion may be different than mine, so if that is the case we can talk it out.

PS: Also sorry if things are written incorrectly, not english native.