Going blind into POE2 feedback

I tried out the free weekend of POE2, and haven't played the game before, nor really paid much attention to news the last year or so. I played Huntress, which apparently almost nobody else did. Was only able to play yesterday, but got in 8-10 hours I reckon.

In that time, I didn't get out of Act 1. Was stuck on Sir Wolftroll, and died to that lot at least 15 times. That was incredibly frustrating, cause I did only chip damage, and therefore had to play for 15 minutes with basically no mistakes to beat him, for all those 5 stages or however many there are. Eventually I gave up. Got him incredibly close once or twice, like at almost no life bar left, but couldn't get him over the line with (at the time) no more life flasks.

Going back to the start.

There was very little help in terms of what the classes do, what skills to choose, and the skill tree. Heck, it took a good while before I noticed we could flip 'tabs' when picking a skill from an uncut gem, haha. The brief videos of skills helped a bit, but it's too overwhelming for uninitiated players.

I'm sure I picked 'bad' skills and supports, because I had no idea really, going in totally blind and all. Which probably was partly why I did only chip damage to bosses like Gideon at presumably the end of Act 1. I was level 17 at the time for what it's worth. I did take a peek at low-level Huntresses on the Ninja site just to get an idea of where people pathed, and seemed like going for the Spear node 7 miles away was what they did, so I started down that road too, picking up a few things along the path. Don't see my POE2 character in the profile, so probably you lot can't either. Used Rake and Explosive arrow for example, and eventually got a Blood 'spirit', but it seemed like the best attack was the default spear stab, which I therefore put a support or two for.

The art and sound was good, and at times being able to hide behind stairs and such from those torrents of flames and crossbows or whatever was nice. In general I liked the gameplay. There is an actual game here, we need to interact with it, as opposed to the zoom-zoom hellscape of POE1. However, the difficulty is clearly higher, especially against bosses. Dodgerolling worked quite well, getting behind enemies and stabbing them in the back and such. Sometimes worked well on bosses too if they were busy with a big attack animation.

However, it did get a bit taxing when even white mobs takes a good while to kill, and they will often bumrush me. Worst with what I suppose is Abysses, as there were more magic and rare enemies, which are tough as nails. I had to retreat quite frequently, and at times felt almost like button mashing dodge roll and various attack buttons, hoping to not die. In fairness I didn't die terribly often to packs, but at times it was like I got oneshot to something, and I had no idea what.

The zones seemed too big to be honest. In one sense it's great that they are large, it gives us much to explore and kill. But it also means that they will inevitably reset when I need to go back, for example from the two mausoleums, or if I miss something, or spend a little too long in the main camp, listening to dialogue and so forth. Zones reset several times, including the Manor, and it's not fun to redo them. Sprinting helped a bit, but only until I run into a wall or pebble somewhere, and are stuck for two seconds, and it's not feasible in some zones with only narrow bridges and suchlike.

I read that the obnoxious 10% XP penalty is still there, once we get past the campaign. That worries me, because GGG still didn't learn, and have effectively made the problem worse due to the higher difficulty, limited health pool (ALL life is gone from the skill tree now? wtf?), high mobility from enemies, and their general one-shot ability from high damage and spike damage. When such things happen against white mobs in the campaign, it will of course happen a lot more frequently in maps, or whatever the end game loop is called now.

Many people call it soulslike, but I don't really see that, rolling aside perhaps. Elden Ring doesn't play anything like this. Not even bosses oneshot you, and certainly not random enemies, and of course we're not up against huge packs in a ER or Souls game.

Did try my hand a little at crafting. Not great results, but a few times I got something useful at least. And was able to buy a pair of boots from Renly with 10% movement speed. That was nice. Too few alch orbs to be used for crafting, at least so early in the campaign.

The skill points, or 'weapon set points' iirc, was a confusing name tbh. I've no idea how that works then, cause there was zero explanation of it. Just a name from some books I picked up that hinted at a feature.

Looks like we can only sell one item at a time, so presumably the vendor recipes from POE1 are gone, at least I didn't get anything back. In that sense it was nice when I got the bench from Renly, but by that time I had vendor trashed (for puny gold) the few items with quality I had picked up. Very few currency of that type from drops otherwise, but kinda hard to know how the balance will turn out more longterm.

Loved the "Identify all" character we eventually got in camp!

I played on a controller and the scheme generally worked well. But given that one button is for dodgerolling, and it's essential during combat, having more than three active skills is kinda tricky. I had spear throw behind the left shoulder button, but didn't end up using it very much because combat is simply too hectic and chaotic. Same deal with parry/raise shield really, cause that apparently meant I didn't attack, only try to block, so I kinda forgot about the ability as I played.

One issue I noticed was pretty darn bad lag in the main encampment, particularly after interacting with stash or inventory/character/etc sheets. Everything was blurred out, with only a few texts visible, until the game loaded back in after 3-5 seconds. That needs to be sorted out. Sometimes everything was at a total standstill for around 5 seconds too, and I feared the game had crashed.


In conclusion, some things I like and some things I didn't. I worry about the XP penalty (once again) given the higher potential for oneshots in this game. There was so much talk and proposals for less obnoxious designs, but GGG refuses to listen as per usual. But I like that there is an actual game here to interact with and play, outside of the zoom-zoom nature of Path of building "playing" in POE1. Unpopular opinion here it seems, but if they stick to that and make more sensible changes to oneshots and XP, maybe this game will be made for more than just the streamers and top 1% of the playerbase. I'm sure botting and RMT will be a huge problem once again, and maybe GGG won't take it seriously this time either, but a man can hope, eh? :D

Sorry for the length of this, but I hope a genuine "first look" feedback will be useful for the developers at least (cause I expect to get flamed again, it's just the nature of the forums unfortunately).

This game's full release definitely needs a more thorough tutorial in the game, or create an official game manual.