A very difficult game to evaluate. An easy target for the "it gets good after 1000 hours" joke, but I don't think it really deserves that. You can just play through the main campaign and it's pretty fun! I'm not too familiar with this genre so my opinion on it all might not be very nuanced in comparison to others, but I really enjoyed everything it had to offer. It's fun to play, has an engaging world and story, and a nice dark fantasy aesthetic. Taken on its own I'd probably rate it around a 3.5/5? It's not without problems but it has a lot of cool things to offer.
With that all out of the way, we can get to the rest. Most people approaching this game aren't doing it for the "campaign", but for everything that comes after. The reality of Path of Exile is the result of a decade of mutation as a "games as a service" product. I can't even say that the story portion is separate from that, considering how it has expanded over the years and changes constantly with each new expansion.
The constant drive to expand and grow comes at the cost of the casual experience of this game, and the knowledge of the post-game content that is designed to drive constant engagement sours the preceding experience. This game is one of the worst examples of complexity creep in a video game ever, and it poisons every step of your experience with it.
If you want to just experience the campaign like I suggested at the beginning of my review, you're still inevitably burdened with trying to understand all the systems designed to support the late game. Leveling up for the first time and looking at the skill tree makes you feel like the protagonist of a Lovecraftian horror story, viewing unknowable geometries and going insane on the spot.
That all being said, the complexity is not an accident, it's a core part of the forces driving this game's success. If you buy into it, the mechanical absurdity is practically the point.It all comes together to support the true nature of Path of Exile, a game designed to be endlessly playable. Grind to progress the late game, grind to level up, grind to buy or craft new gear, grind to simply get richer and richer. No matter what it is you want, there's always at least 3 or more ways to do it so that you never have to get bored of any one mechanic. It reminds me of a casino, all lights, noise, and promise of rewards.
As a side note, a strange aspect of Path of Exile compared to other games that fill a similar niche is that it does seem to be a little self aware of its nature. The post game story continues to explore the destruction the player character brings about in their perpetual pursuit of wealth and power. The characters that join to help you all inevitably end up worse off for it. There's no true consequences or payoff to it all, but I could be convinced it all stands as a metaphor for the game's constant expansion or the player's own descent into eternal pointless scaling. I don't think it excuses the game but I do find it interesting.
I got really pulled into this loop around when I started college, and while I "enjoyed" it in the moment but after the smoke cleared I didn't really get anything from it other than a lingering feeling that I had been taken advantage of. Then again, I'm a much different person than I was in those days, and my perspective on gaming as a hobby has changed immensely. I'm a pretentious asshole that likes art games, instead of the repressed and awkward Gamer looking for empty distractions. For that purpose I'd rate it higher than other alternatives like competitive shooters or hard drugs. I still appreciate it for its over the top complexity and depth, even though I now resent it for what those systems support.
With that all out of the way, we can get to the rest. Most people approaching this game aren't doing it for the "campaign", but for everything that comes after. The reality of Path of Exile is the result of a decade of mutation as a "games as a service" product. I can't even say that the story portion is separate from that, considering how it has expanded over the years and changes constantly with each new expansion.
The constant drive to expand and grow comes at the cost of the casual experience of this game, and the knowledge of the post-game content that is designed to drive constant engagement sours the preceding experience. This game is one of the worst examples of complexity creep in a video game ever, and it poisons every step of your experience with it.
If you want to just experience the campaign like I suggested at the beginning of my review, you're still inevitably burdened with trying to understand all the systems designed to support the late game. Leveling up for the first time and looking at the skill tree makes you feel like the protagonist of a Lovecraftian horror story, viewing unknowable geometries and going insane on the spot.
That all being said, the complexity is not an accident, it's a core part of the forces driving this game's success. If you buy into it, the mechanical absurdity is practically the point.It all comes together to support the true nature of Path of Exile, a game designed to be endlessly playable. Grind to progress the late game, grind to level up, grind to buy or craft new gear, grind to simply get richer and richer. No matter what it is you want, there's always at least 3 or more ways to do it so that you never have to get bored of any one mechanic. It reminds me of a casino, all lights, noise, and promise of rewards.
As a side note, a strange aspect of Path of Exile compared to other games that fill a similar niche is that it does seem to be a little self aware of its nature. The post game story continues to explore the destruction the player character brings about in their perpetual pursuit of wealth and power. The characters that join to help you all inevitably end up worse off for it. There's no true consequences or payoff to it all, but I could be convinced it all stands as a metaphor for the game's constant expansion or the player's own descent into eternal pointless scaling. I don't think it excuses the game but I do find it interesting.
I got really pulled into this loop around when I started college, and while I "enjoyed" it in the moment but after the smoke cleared I didn't really get anything from it other than a lingering feeling that I had been taken advantage of. Then again, I'm a much different person than I was in those days, and my perspective on gaming as a hobby has changed immensely. I'm a pretentious asshole that likes art games, instead of the repressed and awkward Gamer looking for empty distractions. For that purpose I'd rate it higher than other alternatives like competitive shooters or hard drugs. I still appreciate it for its over the top complexity and depth, even though I now resent it for what those systems support.