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Wife and I have been playing on the xbox

It's just too hard too soon. I'm a casual gamer. I really really like the game and want to play more but it's too punishing, as it stands we'll pop back from time to time and check if its a bit more accessible but until the difficulty level is tuned somewhere between a bit and a lot it's a no from us.

The best times we've had so far have been in coop when mrs out levels me by 5 or so levels, assume coop scaling is making it easier for us both.

As soon as either of us goes back to solo play the difficulty just gets silly again. Wife is better at boss fights than me and has more patience to learn the mechanics etc. from her Diablo days. I don't.

Insert L2P and get good comments here. I'm in my 50s. I lose track of who I am on the TV every 10 mins or so lol. I want to get into the game but the difficulty is a barrier to entry so I'll go back to Wow and some strategy games instead. Coop stellaris with the kids later tonight hurrah!

The game is just not fun. Its too slow, the skills are like moving in slow motion. The movement is terrible. The gem and skill system is terrible. The UI looks worse than POE 1. Flasks have been ruined. No movement skills so everyone is just dodge rolling around the entire map like dark souls trying to not get hit. Its just not a good game. You should have taken POE 1 and updated the graphics (which arent even that good in POE 2) and kept what everyone already loved about the game. All these changes make no sense and unless there are some drastic changes, I wont be playing. I paid for the 500 dollar supporter pack for no reason. I guess lesson learned.

These are my random thoughts as I play POE 2.

I feel like this game is too oppressive with no ways to mitigate damage. There are not enough drops that help out your character as the mobs increase in difficulty. It makes the game feel like there is just bad pacing in that your character is constantly half a second away from death. For some games thats good, like in a game like Sifu where its shortish and you do have the tools to answer challenges in combat. In an ARPG like this its just stessful because the game doesn't give any tools to answer the challenges of combat, except a dodge roll. Which means the stress just becomes constant frustration. Even something like Arctic Armor doesn't even provide any defense, its just a cast on hit cold nova. This frustrating gameplay might be by design I suppose, which makes me disappointed but I understand the goal to make something different than POE 1. Also fighting bosses and rare monster just seems pointless, they're both rewardless fights, which means the best action when encountering a rare monster is to run away if possible because you're putting yourself at risk of having to get dark souled and do the whole map again, I hate Dark Souls. Sorry this is sort of rambling stream of conscious. Also the dodge mechanic is way too long before you can take an action again.

You can simulate POE 2 by going to POE 1 with a naked lvl 1 character, then disable XP, all loot drops, and using basic attack only try and beat mud flats and if you fail you have to restart the instance, if you succeed you get to do it again but for Act 6 mud flats, still naked, no XP, no loot, basic attack only. That's what POE 2 is.

At my job I have to retake these tests every year, there's probably like 15-20 of them covering a large range of topics from fire rescue to elderly care. To pass the test you need to correctly answer 100% of the questions. If you get a question wrong its not a big deal, but you have to retake the entire test until you get 100%, so its not super high stakes either. There's also some sort of powerpoint presentation that has all the relevant information to pass the test. Once you pass the test nothing happens you just get to keep your job and passing doesn't certify me in anything or help me get a better job somewhere else, just not get fired.
Playing POE 2 in many ways reminds me of the overbearing tedium of having to take these tests but without any information/powerpoint presentation. You gotta be right 100% of the time still or start over. Its not high stakes sure, but its tedious and there's no margin for error.

The game starts off very fun and engaging, but the difficulty ramps up far faster than our ability to deal with it.

The drops are execrable.

I find the need to constantly dodge or be destroyed utter drudgery. The way things respawn if you get killed is also drudgery. I freely admit I'm not one of the top tier players out there, but this game is designed with only their level of skill in mind.

The vast majority of your players are not of that tier, in my opinion the proper level of skill to base the game on is the Average player, and then add options to make the game fun for the uber players.

I have been playing the game pretty much all day, and as I said I had a lot of fun initially - but the Rotten Druid fight stopped me cold, especially with the realization that I'm barely into the game, and if by some miracle I manage to get through the three acts I have it to do all over again *on cruel*, meaning it will be even harder has killed any desire to try further.

A pity, I was a faithful player of POE from Alpha - I played for many years, and I spent a lot of money on it, but this is absolutely not enjoyable. If you don't adjust things you'll lose the vast majority of your players that so desperately wanted the game to be awesome.

I was excited and super stoked to give it a try, well, that's my $0.02.

I /might/ check it again in a few months.

As a spell caster, I'm cool with the game's current direction, but it needs bunch of tweaks and balancing. For starter "Dodge roll" could use improvements like "increased roll distance", "phasing while rolling", and "longer invincibility" and such. It's lame to see these on the Passive tree as it will be mandatory... Maybe link them to STR/DEX/INT somehow?

Also item drops are too scarce, and it's a pain to get decent defense or health. If Dodge roll could actually save my ass, then the crappy equipment might make sense. But right now, it just feels bad. And just simply it's not fun to see only magic items.

-Too slow
-Dodge roll not having any phasing
-lack of movement (why am I slower than molasses yet every mob is Usain Bolt?)
-large winding boring maps
-not having duplicates of support gems is obnoxious
-skill progression and expression feels HEAVILY stifled
-everything is a sponge
-Sanctum has, and always will, suck. Shoehorning it in over Lab which was so unique and felt organic makes no sense
-entire class balance seems to work around the premise that half of the classes can walk backwards while shooting. This is a problem.

There's probably more but I'm just too disappointed to keep playing at this point. The music/art/character designs are absolutely amazing but it feels like someone took an art project and intentionally sabotaged it out of spite.

Feels way too slow and getting new skills doesn't feel meaningful at all, nothing feels particularly punchy for long before it's completely outscaled and the drops for increasing power just dont happen often enough.

Mobs feel way too fast and rush you like crazy constantly interrupting while the player is super slow. I've had moments where the mob kept rushing and just jankily pushing me across half the map, that just doesn't feel good. Evade just getting stuck on every little tiny critter also feels awful. Pretty much every death outside bosses ive had was due to insanely fast enemies just surrounding me and when there's no reasonable way of dealing with that unless you have a specific build it just doesn't feel good.

Ultimately though, who thought the ascension trial was a good idea? Honor is an absolutely awful system that straight up punishes a ton of possible builds, why would you put that in a game with so much choice and RNG?

I was excited at first, game feels and looks beautiful, but towards the end of chapter 1 and now in 2 the cracks are too big to ignore.

Game is extremely boring. Builds have ZERO variety & truthfully nothing feels rewarding. Will probably have less total players than POE 1.

Hey! Iam so impressed by the graphics and the gameplay is fun but little bit too hard even when iam experienced player. It would be nice to just increase drop rate (a lot) of blue/yellow items so we can actually work with something iam slowly progressing currently middle of act3 and i didnt find better boots then blue from act1. My advice is increase loot and u dont have to nerf monsters or buff builds so new players can adjust to it.

Hardly any loot and no viable crafting options make whatever is there much more of a slog to go through than necessary. It feels like this was playtested with 500-1000% magic rarity turned on for the playtesters/developers - then turned off again for the release.
It says a lot if npc's in the shop are too often better chances for gear than drops