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Grinding Gear Games is on a roll. Despite announcing that the most recent expansion to Path of Exile 2 would be its last update before it leaves early access later this year, the patches keep coming.
Earlier this week, the developer surprised everyone with a whole new box of toys to play with: an entire skill tree for one of its new side activities and a massive upgrade to Unique items that opens the door for tons of new ways to play through its campaign. The final pieces of PoE 2 are starting to fall into place and it’s shaping up to be one of the most ambitious action RPGs I’ve ever played.
I’ve never had the pleasure of watching an early access game come together like this before. A year and a half ago, I played the debut version of PoE 2 and wasn’t entirely sure it would pull me away from Diablo 4. Its stingy loot drops and abrasive complexity didn’t feel worth it. But the last few expansions got their hooks in me, and now I’m thinking of skipping the next Diablo 4 season to keep playing PoE 2 instead.
It’s hard to tear myself away from a game that perfectly blends my two favorite types of action RPG: Weighty soulslikes and loot-heavy hack-and-slashers. PoE 2 doesn’t feel like anything I’ve played before, and watching the developers start to put the final touches on it has me anticipating a generational addition to the genre.
For awhile, I doubted Path of Exile 2 was going to get there.
Secrets galore
Return of the Ancients expansion let me finally understand the vision for PoE 2.
The recently released Return of the Ancients expansion let me finally understand the vision for PoE 2. Like my favorite FromSoftware games, it’s an action RPG that refuses to budge on the core pillars of its design. This isn’t the kind of game where you quickly turn into a god and mow through monsters like they’re nothing. You’re an underdog for most of the campaign, scrounging for any tiny advantages you can find to help you survive. And that tension now continues into the endgame, where the world of Wraeclast unfolds before you and guides you toward its greatest secrets and toughest challenges.
PoE 2 reminds me of the way Elden Ring’s brutal difficulty encouraged me to navigate its byzantine systems so that I could keep exploring a world I was so eager to understand. Both games demand that you learn their language so that you can start to piece together the logic they operate on, like how the different item tiers are the same form of categorization used for monsters and endgame maps.
Deep complexity isn’t a bad thing when nobody expects you to learn everything in one go. I remember when everyone discovered you can land on top of Elden Ring’s fire-breathing chariots for a unique way to take them out in one hit—a neat little trick that gives experienced players a way to deal with an otherwise annoying enemy. PoE 2 has a similarly hidden mechanic that was only discovered several months ago when people realized certain monsters drop valuable crafting materials only when you drag them outside the cloud of darkness they create. Neither of these secrets are necessary to know as a new player, but they make you curious to find what else the tutorials didn’t tell you.
Return of the Ancients is the update that added a room that only exists for a max-level player to sacrifice their character so that everyone else on that version of the game can receive a free skill point. It also introduced one of the best wands in the game by locking it behind a quest that begins with a seemingly useless item that makes the ‘out of mana’ sound when you try to use it. I was too young to experience the allure of Diablo 2 at its peak, but PoE 2 seems to be carrying that spirit forward into the modern era.
Finishing touches
I thought the launch of Return of the Ancients would be the last time PoE 2 would dramatically change before its full release, but the developers have proven me wrong in the weeks since. GGG keeps dropping hefty patches that polish the game’s roughest edges into a shape that actually feels ready to be released soon.
Not only has it fixed tons of bugs, it’s cleaned up late-game mechanics that were either too fussy or way too hard. I don’t normally play early access games consistently enough to appreciate how everything gets refined in the final months before release, so watching PoE 2 come together has been fascinating. GGG has managed to carefully improve things without derailing the current league, or season.
Small but crucial tweaks have been made to keep the game’s endgame activities more intuitive and consistent as you encounter them. Much like Path of Exile 1, you’re intended to pick your favorites and use all the tools at your disposal to specialize in them. An endgame boss that only players trying to unlock the secret Lich ascendancy class once cared about was given guaranteed drops that everyone can use, which means anyone who loves killing gods from the underworld will now have easier access to powerful crafting items.
The recent patch just gave players who fancy strategically laying down explosives to unearth treasure and powerful monsters a skill tree full of cool options. One example: a node that spawns a sentry that strengthens nearby enemies to juice their rewards.
All of this is why I think PoE 2 raises the bar for the entire action RPG genre.
The last few updates have filled in the gaps where PoE 2 felt the most unfinished. I’m impressed by the scope of some of the biggest additions as well as the attention the small things get. I noticed in the first of these patches that there’s now a brief tutorial to teach you how the endgame loop of running maps while exploring the endless world map works, which is knowledge experienced PoE players might take for granted.
Even if PoE 2 is a live service game that will continue to expand for years to come, it’s promising to see how much effort is going into making it approachable for people who haven’t spent decades playing these kinds of games.
All of this is why I think PoE 2 raises the bar for the entire action RPG genre. It isn’t aiming to recreate all the classic action RPGs that came before, nor is it catering to PoE 1 players who hate that it never lets you melt through monsters at the speed of light. GGG has a vision for an action RPG that challenges you just as much as it surprises you and I know that because I’ve seen it evolve slowly over time.
PoE 2 is shaping up to be a one-of-a-kind game that has convinced me the last year and change of early access updates was worth the wait.
