We welcome First Impression posts! Please be nice to those posts.

Thoughts from over 9k hours in POE1 and a great love for the game, including many private leagues and enjoying SSF recently.
Completed first 3 Acts as a Blood Mage, utilizing Ice skills.

I completed the 3 Acts and Ascended twice. I'm not sure if I'll continue my Blood Mage or not. The mandatory first ascendancy node felt disgustingly punishing and I actually got rid of it at about ~level 33. It felt better to be UNASCENDED than to have my spells cost life that early on... Investment into Vitality, 6pts Recoup on tree, and Life regen on 2 gear pieces was not sufficient for sustain. Did NOT enjoy this experience specifically.

Cons:
Both methods of Ascension.
It's not a difficulty or a tuning knob situation, but rather the ideology. Having the capability to skip these two league mechanics came with tolerable downsides in POE1. That capability has been removed with no compensation. My ultimate power gains are gated behind content I do not enjoy doing. They feel punishing and, at times, insufferably frustrating.

The lack of phasing on dodge roll.
I found myself surprised this was the functionality of the dodging, surely I must just be hitting a pebble. A handful of deaths later in A1 and it's clear that clearing 1 screen at a time, taking 3 steps forward just to kite back 4 steps while the mobs charge me. Fear of being overwhelmed forces my hand to clear everything. I understand it's a mentality shift from POE1, and that's okay, they're diff games. But coupled with my next point, it made my experience feel draining with effort.

The size of zones is too large.
I thought one of the early reviews was being hyperbolic and clearly mistaken, when they claimed it took 25min to clear 1 zone. No way they were accurate, right? Unfortunately...they were accurate. I can handle the quest objectives being a bit obscure, exploration being encouraged. But the time spent with checkpoints being too few and far between to feel meaningful zonewide progress. It left me bored, at times, and at others immensely frustrated if I died after clearing ~80% of a zone. That's a long runback with a lot of respawned creatures to re-kill. Big bummer.

Pros:
Atmosphere is outstanding.
The music, ambiance, lighting, shadows, you name it. The entire world transforms with the environment, and it feels great. The polarity of the different acts, the variety between the zones throughout each act. The underground caverns and caves versus the aboveground temples. Excellent variety across the board that kept it feeling fresh enough, albeit wishing the zones were ~50% smaller.

Map indicators are a nice breadcrumb to chase.
Actually found myself enjoying the habit of checking zones to learn what objectives may lie inside that weren't quests. Should I hunt for a specific boss before I proceed thru the next door? Do I need to go disenchant before diving deeper to find the next 2 loot bags? Was a fun mini-puzzle to encouraging exploring.

The new gem system feels great.
After some small growing pains with attribute stat understanding of power:number of socket ratio, the process felt amazing. The ability to swap supports freely with new gems, regardless of color restrictions on gear. An extremely nice change from POE1 and a revolution on a system I would've never imagined. Great stuff here.

Bossing feels great, in terms of design.
The fluidity of combat was outstanding as a ranged caster. Finding when to weave melee-proximity for my blasphemy damage windows, versus peppering and setting up from range. Really enjoyed the pacing, the music, the voice lines, voice acting. It was outstanding experiences, combined with unique performances across the different mob types.

Just adding another voice to the choir here. Just saying I agree fully with most of these posts. I’ll try the game again if you guys address this stuff. In the meantime please don't take resources from PoE 1. PoE 2 just isn’t fun right now.

The game is beautiful, the music is beautiful, the graphics are beautiful, the sounds are beautiful. I do have a gripe with the nasally witch voice though, trying to be cliche but sounds cringy instead..

But..

I have thoroughly enjoyed PoE2 despite it being a challenge. The challenge itself wasn't the bosses, but it was the slow paced slog fest of fighting minion wave after minion wave with nothing but potions laying at my feet. Worse? The map size forces these endless slog fests, where you're fighting damage soaking mini-boss like minions that leap on you, corner you, and put you in designed areas to choke you and kill you.



The rolling mechanic absolutely needs a phasing, as it's slow as hell and more often than not gets you stuck on some weird piece of wood poking out, causing you to get surrounded and die.

Why does everything have to be slow? My damage is slow, I am slow, map coverage is slow, my rolling is slow, and my very large patience pool is slowly dwindling. I understand and have zero expectations of it being like PoE1, however where is the fun and the power spike? I am tired of spending 15 minutes in a boss fight, only to die at the end and have to start all the way over.

The dreadnaught was a challenge for a lot of people chatting in Global. A long, mindless slog fest of minions leaping on you in incredibly tight corners with absolutely zero checkpoints and no loot; with the exception of that Colossal Health Potion.

I don't mind a challenge, but this just simply isn't it. I am having fun, once I get beyond traversing the endless maps and getting through the waves of god-health minions. It's exhausting getting no rewards, no loot drops.. nothing to craft with and using all your gold to buy scraps from the shops isn't it either.

I do also want to touch on Ultimatum on whoever thought this would be a good idea? A good chunk of the options are trial ending options, before you even get to the boss. Why are you punishing so harshly here? Ultimatum needs a nerf, or it'll never be touched by another soul beyond forced ascendancies that everyone will hate you for.

Other then that, I recognize that this is not a full game. We're missing a portion of it and there is more to come -- however, as a person who has experienced most ARPGs, no one will want to stick around for this or grind this. Whether it be new to the genre, poe ancients, moderates, etc. No one has the patience to slog through this every league, begging the mobs to drop a sliver of useful item while dragging our starved-for-shiny bodies across the map, blotting our tears with waystone outside the boss room that we're about to spend an hour in for making one mistake at the very end of the fight.

I hope you fix it, I'm really enjoying the idea of PoE2 and what it could be.

This post is gonna be a bit long and ranty, but I need to vent a little over my day 1 experience. There will be actual feedback suggestions in it though for anyone who cares to read, I just gotta get it off my chest because it actually left me a bit depressed

So, first for a little context, my first d&d class at age 12 was the monk, favorite d3 class was monk, and last character I built in elden ring was a dryleaf arts bleed monk. They literally sold this game to me because of the chance to play a monk again in a fantasy game, so my hype was pretty up there

-First change that needs to be made is the naming system. Sat here for a literal hour(not an exxageration) trying to find a name for my monk that wasn't already taken. This game has more hype behind it than poe1 and at full release is probably gonna attract a LOT of new players, and not being able to play for an abysmally long time because you can't think of a name that isn't taken is gonna turn a lot of them away

My first impression of the game once i finally got in was that it's beautiful and is the closest we've got to an actual d2 sequel. The white monsters at the beginning were challenging but in a fun way. Then I hit the first boss.

-Second change I think needs to be made is re-implement the boss health system from poe1 where you can die, get back into the fight, and slowly chip away at them until you get through them. Right now, bosses just feel like an unfun roadblock halting story progression. And for people who like the soulslike state of current bosses, you could still fight them from scratch after a death by opening the boss arena in a new instance. Only time this wouldn't really work would be the random field bosses that have a nearby checkpoint instead of a door to an arena. But seriously, changing bosses back to the way they were in 1 would be a solution to give both sets of players what they want.

Now, on with the story. Finally beat the first boss, but we killed each other at the same time, so all his dropped loot disappeared when I respawned. That's just insanely annoying and needs a fix. So, leaving the first village with still no armor or weapon upgrades. Continually got 1-2 shot by almost everything. Once I finally found some armor, the deaths eased up a bit but were still annoyingly frequent, leading me to my next 2 points

-Change 3. At the riverbank at the beginning of the game when dude gets ate by a zombie, why can't we just take his clothes? Make his corpse drop a basic bitch set of armor to get us started. Also, just overall increase drop rates at least at the beginning. Maybe taper the drop rates off at mid/endgame and make people work for the good shit once they've got a build together. And vendor prices need to go WAY down.

-Change 4. Monsters you've already killed should stay dead if you die and respawn. It's such an annoying and unfun game loop to die, fight back through mobs of shit you've already killed, only to die again and repeat. Had a nightmare in the cultist village where I'd respawn right in the middle of a pack of 8 and theyd rush me and stun lock me before i had time to roll. Died about 10 times to that bullshit before I got lucky.I guess they did the new system to try and alleviate the "walk of shame" but a better solution would just be to add more checkpoints so we don't have to travel 15 fuckin miles after a death. More checkpoints would also alleviate peoples complaints about maps being too large. I'm fine with map size though. Running through a large field is more fun than running through a dungeon path the size of a sidewalk, but I've seen a lot of map complaints

So, after about another hour and a half of grinding the area beyond the first town, I finally had enough gold to upgrade weapons and get better gear. The level 5 quarterstaff I got is still the same one I have at level 18, because a better one hasn't dropped or become available at the store. Picked a monk and my most common drops have been wands or quivers. Go fuckin figure, right?Like, I hated diablos smart loot system for a while but one day of this game has made me completely rethink my stance. This has led to me being stuck in act 1 all day long, not doing enough damage to farm efficiently in later areas while being too over leveled to gain xp in early areas, and absolutely STRUGGLING against the act 1 boss. The thought of spending 2-3 hours farming a better weapon only to trash it later on just makes me not want to play. The time invested simply isn't worth the rewards

Seriously, this day has felt like a waste of time and just left me feeling like a deflated balloon. All the hype is gone. I know it's early and there's still room for improvement because the bones of a good game are here,and maybe rolling another character with some better luck would let me have a decent experience, but it's kinda causing me to have cyberpunk flashbacks. Obviously this game isn't nearly as buggy as that pile of hot dogshit was on release, but cyberpunk is one of those games that's in a fine state now, but the initial impression soured me so bad that I can't bring myself to try again, and I'm worried to be getting the same vibes from this

Hopefully this games early stages feel completely different in a couple months, but right now it just leads to a miserable play experience unless you're lucky enough to get the right drops. Oh, and before anyone says to just craft a better weapon, haven't got a single regal or exalted orb. The RNG gods have thoroughly shit on my head today

After 14 hours of play, my first impressions are mixed.
Overall, the game has a lot of potential, but with the current balancing it's just no fun. I consider myself an occasional but experienced ARPG player and think the balancing in POE2 is too hard and even borderline unfair.

I see that some overpowered skills are nerfed in the current hotfixes. This gives me hope that banacing is on the developers' radar, I just hope they don't just nerf skills but also increase player damage.

As an example, the problem with my current minion builds is that I'm stuck at the end of Act 1 and have no chance of upgrading skills, numbers or my gear to do reasonable damage. I've maximized all available damage boosts, including the passives and gems I've gotten, but the minions still pack the punch of a wet sponge.

Another problem is the mouse control:
It's almost impossible to control a character like the Wizzard with the mouse, because the character keeps moving while I have to let go of the mouse to cast a spell. This is especially deadly against bosses.

Overall, the game is no fun with the current balancing. It has so much potential that is overshadowed by a frustrating experience.

12 hours of play.
Hardcore fan of Diablo 2, not so much Diablo 3, hated Diablo 4.
PoE1 - spent some hours there too (~100).

Overall, I can say that for a person who is a lot into the ARPG genre, this game hits the spot, especially for mature audiences.

Challenging environment, outstanding boss mechanics, tons of mobility in combat including roll dodging, progression and skill trees, changes to the clunky PoE1 gems system, everything seems to be exactly how the ARPG fans want it.

It is a difficult decision whether to succumb to the crying of the modern audiences and make change to the difficulty or not, but if you do - that will make the game unenjoyable for everything but the endgame, shaping it more like all other modern crappy "ARPG"s.

You have made an excellent product, set a bar to new level in the industry, the crown is yours now, GGG, you define the ARPG genre now, do not screw up like Blizzard did.

Game is amazing.

Love how it challenges you, but maybe it's a little bit too easy most of the time.

It could be made a little harder.

I have a few suggestions:

-In trial of sekhemas playing on controller, I would often fail the death crystals, because when mobs got close I couldn't activate the crystals. Every other mechanic was absolutely EASY in it (the boss was ok).
-The drop rates may be a little too low on orbs and rares, I'd increase it by about 5%.
-Why on controller I have to have every text open to listen to the narration? I wanna listen to it while fighting, like I did in POE1, people told me on mouse/keyboard that works, so fix it for controller?
-Targeting on controller is annoying sometimes. It will focus the closer enemy, when I'm trying to hit the boss, even if I try to
-Give us MTX to change gender/skin/hair/face/tattoos/character models
-Allow us to preset a path to follow through the passive skill tree (we often forget where we were going or through where)
-When hovering a node on the passive skill tree, show the fastest way to it
-Make the compare on passing over nodes on the passive skill tree visible by default, and check if they're all working, I noticed sometimes the node wouldn't show the skills it affected when it clearly should have (the +1 all cold skills node).
-Maybe allow us to select our skills and see a temperature map (as in pobuilding) of what will affect it damage-wise (most people struggle to find what nodes are best for their skills).
-Same as above but for defenses, this REALLY REALLY helps a lot when building in pob and I think it's what could change the game for a lot of people. I know GGG doesn't want to bring the whole of POB into POE and I agree with it. We don't need every single variable from it, but this "heat map" is EXCELLENT for building, it's more of a QOL thing, as the skill tree is huge and not every node is clear from first sight what it will give you and hovering over everything and searching for nodes can be annoying for new players.
-The weapon swapping is kind of awkward, had a situtation where I got locked out of skills because I was swapping weapons and had to go back to the menu and change which skills would only work with one set to then change back, maybe give us a quick way of swapping other than using skills?

I dont like poe2 and already unistalled it. It's boring It's slow It has no loot. I couldnt find any reasons to play in it. Even leveling gems absolutely disgusting. I have no fun. My achievement 50lvl. Thank you for souls like ruthless mode poe but it's not mine.
P.S. But i like some of environment art sliced laser corpse in act 3 and art with all these dried skin cadavers in act2

Fire spell ignite is unplayable. Maybe it's better with fireblast but it's not like I can pass act 3

"

Devil_in_law#4928 wrote:

12 hours of play.
Hardcore fan of Diablo 2, not so much Diablo 3, hated Diablo 4.
PoE1 - spent some hours there too (~100).

Overall, I can say that for a person who is a lot into the ARPG genre, this game hits the spot, especially for mature audiences.

Challenging environment, outstanding boss mechanics, tons of mobility in combat including roll dodging, progression and skill trees, changes to the clunky PoE1 gems system, everything seems to be exactly how the ARPG fans want it.

It is a difficult decision whether to succumb to the crying of the modern audiences and make change to the difficulty or not, but if you do - that will make the game unenjoyable for everything but the endgame, shaping it more like all other modern crappy "ARPG"s.

You have made an excellent product, set a bar to new level in the industry, the crown is yours now, GGG, you define the ARPG genre now, do not screw up like Blizzard did.

I think this is a fair felt review, but I'd like to point out that they have the concept of adding difficulty. The base game itself challenging for those who are not experienced at all in ARPGs, or even FromSoft type games, and can see why it'd be a stopping point for those players. I did not struggle, but I can empathize. They have cruel difficulty, what stops them from adding more? Add more difficulty levels but normalize the standard just a hair I think would be fantastic.