Over the years, Path of Exile has become the action role-playing game to play for those looking for a truly hardcore experience. The game by Grinding Gear Games grants players almost complete control over characters, providing players with tons of customization options and almost complete freedom to create their builds. As such, it wasn't surprising to see the ARPG community getting really excited about the announcement of Path of Exile 2, as right from the get-go, it looked like it would address some of the issues of its predecessor while ramping up everything that makes it such a hardcore and engaging experience.
A few months back, I had the chance to check out Path of Exile 2 during Gamescom 2024, and I was thoroughly impressed by its gigantic passive skill tree, the new Mercenary class, which almost turns the experience into a top-down twin-stick shooter, the customization options that involve both the character and skills, and most of all, the versatility of these options. My demo playthrough was rather short, essentially covering the first 40 minutes or so of the first act, but it definitely left me hungering for more.
All my positive impressions of Path of Exile 2 were pretty much confirmed in my time, with the Early Access version now available on PC and consoles after a three-week delay. While the game is sure to change a lot until the 1.0 version release, the experience already delivers the promise of a modernized take on the original's formula.
Right after selecting your character's class among Warrior, Ranger, Mercenary, Sorceress, Monk, and Witch, all featuring two Ascendancy Classes for further customization, players are thrown straight back into Wraeclast, 20 years after the events of the original campaign where the main characters went on a god-killing spree, leaving humanity alone to clean up the consequences and begin life anew. Needless to say, things haven't been going too well for humanity, as the world is far from being right. Among those who have suffered from the evil that is still being done in Wraeclast is the player-controlled exile, who was sentenced to death for an unknown reason by the Count of Ogham. After narrowly escaping their death sentence, this exile eventually travels back to their village to confront the Count, all the while meeting a variety of individuals who also suffered at his hands and at the monstrosities he had unleashed on the land in his bid for power.
After confronting the Count, the exile will get to learn more about the mysteries surrounding him, embarking on an adventure that, sadly, cannot yet be experienced in full as the Early Access release only features the first three of the six acts of the complete campaign. From this small portion of the entire adventure, however, it is clear how the developer is doing an excellent job expanding the lore of and history of Wraeclast, convincingly creating a dark and haunting atmosphere that permeates the world, with narration and visuals, powered by a new graphics engine which also allows the gameplay to reach new heights.
This new graphics engine made it possible for Grinding Gear Games to address one of the most common complaints in the original Path of Exile: combat. In Path of Exile 2, fighting both mobs and bosses is extremely satisfying, as players have way more control over their offensive and defensive options, both of them covered by certain skills such as the Warrior's Grand Slam and the Ranger's Escape Shot. Among the defensive options featured in the game is also a simple dodge roll maneuver with no cooldown that allows the exile to roll out of the way and prevent getting damaged. The introduction of this evasive maneuver was pretty much a necessity, given how much enemy design has increased in complexity, especially for bosses.
The battles against these powerful enemies are one of the highlights of the experience, as each boss I have encountered featured complex and varied movesets that required me to always be on my toes to avoid getting defeated and being sent back to the last checkpoint. From huge warriors armed with likewise huge weapons to worms spewing poison to ancient beings slinging elemental spells left and right, Path of Exile 2 truly seems to have it all. Better yet, the challenge level is generally pretty high, forcing players not only to hone their skills and learn to use the new mechanics appropriately but also to take a deeper look at the customization options. The original is somewhat known for being a "problem-solving" game where players must take a good look at every option the game offers to overcome obstacles, and the same can definitely be said about Path of Exile 2, which already offers a massive wealth of options even in its very first release.
The aforementioned six available classes are literally only the beginning of the journey, in terms of buildcrafting. Focusing on either one or two stats, the classes only determine the starting stats, the place where the player begins on the massive skill tree, and the starting equipment and skill found in the tutorial area. Once past this small area, the game opens up in terms of customization options, allowing the exiles to use every weapon, piece of gear, and skill in the game if their stats allow for it. The flexibility of the system is well-represented not only by the ability to increase any of the core stats - Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence - by unlocking specific nodes on the skill tree but also by the overhauling of the Skill system of the original Path of Exile. Instead of requiring slots on weapons, it is now possible to equip skills obtained after carving Skill Gems in dedicated slots that are available regardless of the currently equipped gear.
In addition, each Skill can be further customized with Support Gems that grant different effects, such as elemental buildup, wider ranger, and so on. All these support abilities have a cost in terms of stats, so it is only possible to equip a certain number of them, which varies depending on the stat they require. A mechanic that, in conjunction with the gear system, further deepens character customization. The gear system is essentially the same as in the original, featuring all sorts of items with different rarity levels that can be a little difficult to manage due to the unchanged inventory system that fills up pretty quickly, forcing players to return to their current main base to stash items in excess.
Customizing characters and skills is all well and good, but it would mean nothing if classes weren't fun to play, or skills satisfying to use. Again, being in Early Access, the game balance is going to change a lot over time, but in this initial version, there's no doubt that Path of Exile 2 is a fun game to play, no matter the class, although some may be more fun to use than others, depending on personal preference. Liking to go face-to-face with enemies, I picked the Warrior first, but I wasn't exactly feeling the class at the beginning, as I did not like some of the low-level skills available. Once I learned some additional skills and some effective ways to combine them, the class became more fun to use. Other classes, like the Mercenary and the Monk, on the other hand, felt more fun to use right from the start, especially the Monk with his elemental abilities with very different ranges, which make the class pretty versatile in all sorts of situations. Experimentation will be key in Path of Exile 2 for a very long time to discover some effective builds and skill combos, and thankfully, it shouldn't be too difficult to do so, as it is possible to reset the entire passive skill tree easily a few hours into the first act.
While combat and customization mechanics are already extremely solid, the same cannot exactly be said for maps. While they are rather big, the biggest of them requiring more than 15 minutes to explore fully, they are a little empty as of now, only featuring enemies of the common and rare variety and the occasional treasure chest. More events and quests going beyond the fetch quest type would help the experience a lot, but as of now, there isn't anything else to do on maps other than destroy the hordes of enemies that assail the exile.
As described above, Path of Exile 2 can feel a little daunting, especially for those used to much simpler ARPGs. Thankfully, players looking into getting into the series for the first time won't have to worry too much about min-maxing their characters or going for the meta builds that will surely develop in the future, as the campaign, while definitely challenging, can be completed without delving too deep into the game's customization mechanics, giving them the chance to understand all of its intricacies more before going through the first three acts of the campaign again at increased difficulty and the endgame where the possibilities of the mechanics will be stretched the furthest. The amazing controller implementation also makes the game very easy to get into.
Being in Early Access, every aspect of Path of Exile 2 will inevitably improve over time, but as a starting point, the first public release of the game is solid enough in terms of visuals and performance. Simply put, the game is one of the best-looking ARPGs to date, featuring incredibly diverse locations enhanced by the global illumination system which also improves its dark atmosphere greatly, and very detailed character models. Great attention has been placed on animations as well, and it shows, as all characters are smoothly animated, making using skills or dodging enemy attacks feel way more satisfying than in the original.
Supporting all three major upscalers - NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, Intel XeSS - as well as NIS, Path of Exile 2 provides all the options players need to get the game running decently on their machines. At 4K resolution, NVIDIA DLSS at the Quality setting, Frame Generation, and the settings below, the game generally ran at above 100 FPS even with multiple enemies on screen on the machine used for the test (i7-13700F, RTX 4080 GPU, 32 GB RAM). The framerate can only be capped at up to 120 FPS as of now, so it is not possible to go beyond this target, but still, it should be more than enough for everyone for this type of game.
While there haven't been many technical issues on the client side in my around 20 hours with Path of Exile 2, besides some random crashes at the start of the game that forced me to boot it up a few times before finally going through the log-in process, I have experienced some server-side issues, including some performance hiccups with rubber banding issues, and inability to create a new instance, which prevented me from entering new areas unless I logged out and back in. As the servers are likely going to be hammered by players in the first few days after launch, I would expect these issues to be somewhat common, although Grinding Gear Games has promised to be ready for what is likely to be a very successful launch.
Featuring only the first three acts of the full campaign and only half of the classes that will be available in time for the 1.0 release, it is not possible to say at the time if Path of Exile 2 will indeed deliver all of its promises. The Early Access version, however, made it clear how Grinding Gear Games has a very strong idea of how to evolve the formula of its predecessor to deliver an experience that is, undoubtedly, very fun at all skill levels. Considering how the game manages to be both extremely welcoming and extremely deep at the same time, I have no doubt that Path of Exile 2 will only get better from here on out, having the potential to become one of the best action role-playing games ever released.
Tested on PC. Early Access provided by the publisher.
