"...Town Management is a cute change of pace for those of us who appreciate a short break from the mass murdering of crabs and spiders....."
PC | PS5 | XBOX SERIES
HOW I PLAYED: This review is from the perspective of a gamer who has never played Path of Exile before and I played without googling any information for help. So I could do this review for people who were considering trying PoE for the first time but were unsure how much googling needed to be done to get enjoyment out of the game. As Path of Exile is known for being quite complex. I played on PS5 and PS Portal with about 60% of my time being spent on the PS Portal, Connected via Wi-Fi to my ASUS Modem Router with 100/40mbps Internet connection.
STORY - 12/15
INTRO
Path of Exile is a "gamers game". Load up game, pick character, name character, awaken on a beach and immediately just PLAY. It's not trying to sell you on flashy cinematics or force you to care about an NPCs death. However, this game is not for the faint of heart when it comes to reading item descriptions and basically having to unravel a puzzle when it comes to the skills/abilities and how certain things interact mechanically.
CUTSCENES
This game is an action game, and as such it delivers said action and the cutscenes are few and far between and are extremely short. When they were put on the screen they almost felt pointless, like it was better to just have left the game with no cutscene at all.
WORLD BUILDING
There is a massive amount of lore and world building in Path of Exile. It has many, many lines of text to absorb from the various NPCs around too; should you choose to immerse yourself this way.
GRAPHICS - 11/15
CHARACTER MODELS
PoE is old. It has no PS5/Current gen versions. The models are quite poor and blocky. As such, I am rating this against similar PS4 titles visuals, not PS5 titles.
ENVIRONMENTS
While the visual fidelity is low, there is a good amount of effort to diversify the environments and they are visually impressive. There is a lot of blood, death and destruction around as you play. But there is also places of natural beauty, in the jungle areas for example, but also some manmade stunning areas such as some of the cathedrals.
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| *Photo captured on PC |
SPECIAL FX
There is almost too much flashing going on at times during combat. But when only a few effects are flashing on the screen they look great.
PERFORMANCE - 11/15
FRAME RATE
With a PS4 version running on a PS5 this really isn't up to scratch. Not being able to hold above 45fps in a lot of cases really is not enough.
STABILITY
During my playtime there were no crashes. But there were times of bad frame pacing, but these were generally within 10 seconds of changing zones.
NETWORK STABILITY
I not have any issues with network during my playtime. No lag outs or kicks. But I did see that when I logged out of one character I would get an error message about not being about to re-log in. It required me to close the game and reopen to resolve.
AUDIO - 9/10
ADJUSTABLE OPTIONS
Plenty of options to turn certain sounds down like music, if you so choose. There seems to be an issue with some settings being saved though. Each time the game loads the audio settings would be back to default.
SOUND DESIGN
The first time you hear the sound of a Unique Item drop, you're hooked. From the music to the sounds of lightning attacks, PoE developers have poured love into the audio.
REPLAYABILITY - 20/20
POPULATION
There was always people available to play with and talking in the world chat. It must be said that PoE is a major outlier with player count. That is, the player count is steadily growing over time. This is extremely rare. So, should you choose to get into PoE late, like me, you will be doing so along with so many others that are also jumping on board the train!
INCENTIVES
There is just so much side content to go into in PoE. I will admit it is quite overwhelming if you try to get involved in it all. There is a mine cart side content that traverses down into mine with a location you select on a map and your mission is to follow the cart and protect it until you get to the destination and then you can plunder the riches! Photos below to visualise this adventure. But, as with other side content in PoE, this is just one thing that can be left be if it's not your jam.
NEW CONTENT
The big update for this new League, Settlers of Kalguur, has one major addition. That is a whole Town to manage and upgrade. The game allows you to just leave this area alone completely if you do not enjoy or care for it. Games giving the player a choice to avoid content like this is always a positive, as not everyone wants to micromanage a town while playing an action game. But as an addition, Town Management is a cute change of pace for those of us who appreciate a short break from the mass murdering of crabs and spiders. The town gets ore to mine from you doing world events while playing through the main story/side quests, but these are also avoidable/skippable, and then you mine the ore with hired staff and then you can ship off those resources off to another port and in return get gear. It's really a good setup. It is partially time gated, so you periodically have things to do in the town, should you choose to do so. It was great seeing my Town grow over time as I upgraded it.
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| *Photo captured on PC |
PROGRESSION
This game is weird with how you get abilities. Spells/Abilities are in gems. To cast a spell in a gem you need to socket it to a piece of armor or weapon you have equipped. This begins the balance of good stats to sockets. While you can reroll the amount of sockets, and their colour, for each item, those items are finite and you would not want to keep rerolling items all the time, early on at least. But there is a lot of things to work towards.
GAMEPLAY - 23/25
CONTROLS
First off, this game would be better on keyboard and mouse. Being able to target an area directly with a mouse would be better. Plus going though the menus is better with a mouse. Having said that, the gameplay is great on controller overall. But, the one major annoyance is using potions on controller is not good. Usually, you are using them when under heavy fire and it is very likely you will be moving the left stick at this time. With 3 out of 5 of the potions being on the D-Pad, this is clunky; to put it lightly. While it was never a cause for me to die, all deaths were on me, it was frustrating.
MECHANICS
Path of Exile is an extremely in-depth game, mechanically. But at face value everything is clear as day to you. As you level up you get points to assign to your classes board of unlockable nodes to power up your character. But none of these (that I saw?) granted any abilities... Abilities are granted by socketing an ability gem on to a piece of equipment that you have on. The game leaves you practically entirely to your own devices to craft a build to your liking, by dropping endless amounts of loot as well as having a gem leveling system that makes what you use more powerful. So during my playthrough of all 10 Acts in the main campaign I could happily use whatever I liked and enjoyed myself a lot. The game gives you so much freedom to also make gear you find better or add gem sockets it it, all socket links, or change the colour of sockets... The socket links allow for adding "support" gems to an ability gem to change it. As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of player choice in Path of Exile. This can be seen as a downside, but the community does seem helpful in game, and I know there is a plethora of online help for PoE, should you request it.
UI/UE
There was one thing that bothered me from the second I started and it never was resolved: Changing the screen bounds. This, from what I could tell, was not adjustable, yet on two different screens that I tested I could see the bottom of the potions button symbols was slightly cut off... This was not a big deal, it just triggered me slightly. Overall the UI is clear and the menus are fine to navigate. However, assigning abilities in the menu was annoying. This I feel was another controller issue. But either way, it was there and felt terrible.
SEASONAL MECHANICS
The main part of the seasonal content was addressed in the New Content section but the town has so many things to do that I could just go on and on. As you upgrade your town you gain the ability to rework gear and craft things, as well as grow and harvest crops and mine ore and smelt bars to send off in your ship to get you more gear. This being a completely free expansion is amazing.
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| *Photo captured on PC |
BALANCING
There doesn't seem to be a major push to be any set class or build. There is a massive benefit to games when they go with the "use it to level it" system, like PoE uses for gems (that level up as you use them) and allowing a player to really push the playstyle that they enjoy and not feel "railroaded" into setting up how the internet tells them to.
BONUS - 2/2
MTX PRICING
There is something to be said about a game that is completely F2P with no Battle Pass to request money and the MTX options include no options for any progression in the game. The one thing that "felt" like it was a little bit "iffy" was the ability to buy more storage space. But there was quite a bit of space from the get go, so it isn't something the game is really railroading you in to buying.
IN-GAME CURRENCIES
Only one currency. No confusing players with multiple currencies.
TOTAL - 88/100
GREAT
Path of Exile is one of the very few games with a consistently growing player base. I have been meaning to try this game for a long time but always been hesitant to do so because of the "you need to be a mathematician to play" mantra surrounding it. After playing it I now wish I had played earlier and I feel like that notion about the math side is a lot more about the end game that I felt my toes dip into towards the end of my playthrough. It should be noted that PoE uses a "League" system similar to Diablo 4, if you are familiar, that is after the "League" ends, all characters (and gear) will be moved back to the Standard League (like Diablo 4's eternal realm) and then a new League starts and if you want to play in that new League you must make a new character.
TL;DR 88/100 (GREAT) - If you love games like Diablo, but want more freedom of build and abilities and you don't care about graphics as much then PoE is likely your cup of tea.
Path of Exile is free to play on PC, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series Consoles.
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