Review from an enjoyer :)

Thought I'd finally get around to writing a review. I kinda don't want to because I'd rather just play the game, but with all the negativity I thought it might be helpful for GGG and possibly their critics to see the perspective of an enjoyer. I appreciate that I probably have a different perspective from a lot of people on this forum, this is just my personal feelings about the game.

So there's a few ways in which I think I have a different perspective to most people who don't seem to be having fun. Probably the main thing is that I enjoy a good challenge as a general rule, and I'm more interested in good combat in a game than anything else. I would go so far as to say that if I need loot in order to make a game mechanic feel rewarding, then it's not a good game mechanic. So for instance, wisps don't drop good loot? I don't care, because they add an extra mechanic to rare fights, which makes them more fun. My only issue with them is that sometimes they go through empty space to get to a rare instead of pathing through other monsters.

I also prefer a game where I need a degree of focus the whole time, and any time I'm not feeling that, I'm bored. If I don't want to focus on the game, I'd prefer taking a break to listen to one of Una's songs or watch a youtube video to having a youtube video open while I'm actually playing. I don't think this game is suuuper challenging most of the time, but just having a degree of needing to pay attention to avoid a sudden death is nice.

I'm not an especially fast player, but I really enjoy the game so I kept at it for the entire league during 0.1, with short breaks to play other games that caught my attention (probably going to take a short break for NRftW before coming back). I didn't quite kill all the pinnacle bosses in 0.1, but I'd argue that's my own fault for playing so many different characters rather than focusing on getting one to the end of endgame. I did get a few toons up to t15s though, and killed at least a few of the level 0 pinnacles, as well as all of the citadels. Tbh I'm not really treating 0.2 any different in that sense; I just hope to be a bit more efficient because I know the game better.

I generally don't care about keeping up with everyone else at the start of each league. I don't play ssf, but I'm just as happy to farm for stuff I want as I am to trade for it if the economy is terrible. Though I would say that at the end of 0.1 it was pretty easy to trade for mid gear at a cost of just 10 ex or whatever, which felt nice for the possibility of outfitting new characters as they got to endgame.

Also, I really like a more active style of defense, which is to say, crowd control. It's generally the feeling like you're creating a window in which you can use whatever combo you've set up, and also I like the idea that killing an enemy isn't the only way to neutralize the threat that they pose.

I also really appreciate all the different ideas that are available to play with, and I think because of the point about crowd control I see a lot more possibility here. Perhaps also, I just have a preference for builds that use combinations of skills rather than builds with as few buttons as possible, and that opens up the possibility of weapon swapping as part of builds that I make. Maybe one more thing as well; I don't mind trying a bunch of ideas that suck on my way to finding something great. I suppose that playing a sucky build just adds to the challenge, so I still have fun like that. As such I'm feeling like there's more possible builds for me to experiment with than I will ever get to just in this league, and of course next league they'll be adding more stuff.

Anyway, let's talk a bit more specifically. My first character this league was amazon like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, I wanted parry to be part of my build. I originally wanted to make a bleed build, but with disengage and fangs of frost there's much more reason to go elemental, even though the debuff would indirectly affect bleeds as I understand it. I still want to do a bleed build at some point, but for now I've made a character where the main combo is glacial cascade/elemental sundering, and then I've got parry/fangs of frost for when I'm surrounded, and disengage is a possibility for getting away or for getting frenzy charges. I'm more focused on attacks and elemental damage than cold damage specifically, and so I also have explosive spear and storm lance, primarily for bosses and rares; usually I'm throwing down storm lance for shocked ground, then freezing them so I can elemental sunder both the shock and the freeze.

I really enjoy parry, and I wonder if it's merely the name that turns a lot of people off, because it doesn't work like parry for most games, it's closer to block, but kinda better in some ways because it can interrupt attacks. You know Draven's thing where he does a bunch of attacks and steps towards you as he does them? Interrupt them with parry. Viper boss' attack sequences? Interrupt them with parry. In endgame though, the best feeling for it is when standing toe-to-toe with a boss or rare, and I use whatever ability is appropriate for the moment, then hold parry just at the right moment to catch their attack, then fangs of frost before moving around to avoid the next attack and start the sequence up again. I've had lots of cool fights like this.

There's a lot of cool potential for combining spear abilities with other weapons that I can see, the most obvious and easy combo being lightning rod and storm lance, but then there's also ideas like tornado shot together with any of the spear projectiles, gas arrow or anything you can detonate together with exploding spear or thunderous leap, and anything you can use for bleeding together with blood hunt, bloodhound's mark and herald of blood, and also I want to see how rapid assault works with bonestorm, and there's all the ground effects you can create with spears that could be used with tempest bell... just so many things.

My feeling regarding my criticisms of the game is that a lot of what I might say would probably be fixed by things GGG is planning to do already. I want more options to make more builds, and they're already going to be adding new weapons and skills. I want more ways to craft items, I prefer a high degree of determinism to rng based crafting, and they're already going to be adding new ways to craft with new leagues. I want more cool fights and they've already said that many of the dead ends that we see are intended as places where they were going to put an extra boss or something, and of course they're still yet to complete the campaign.

There's a lot of other people's criticims I've heard where I think this is the vibe as well. I almost agree with the ideas that some people have along the lines of having abilities available for multiple skill types, such as lightning skills from quarterstaff available for maces, but if GGG's idea is to later create lightning skills that are more specific to maces, I think that's actually going to be better in the long run.

Perhaps something they don't already plan on changing though: I think that there might be some more cross-weapon enabling with some abilities. For example, the staggering palm and charged staff abilities only working with quarterstaff, and the inability to build combo with other weapons to be used for either for quarterstaff.

I was a bit worried about them lowering monster health and whatnot, but it doesn't seem to have made things too easy in the campaign. I've leveled a bunch of new characters just a bit into the campaign and I'm not feeling like the challenge is altogether gone.

I've spitballed a few ideas in here about changes to the campaign, but truthfully, many of my suggestions are more about trying to preserve the things I like, while giving other players freedom to play a different way. I think this kind of suggestion is better than ideas where GGG just ignores the complaints to make the game I want, which they're already doing, or vice versa, making the game different at the expense of people like me who enjoy the current game. I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, and I think that a lot of the time, with sufficient creativity, it might be possible for different kinds of players to get what they want at the same time. Dunno if any of my ideas will stick, but maybe they'll inspire other ideas if they get through to anyone at GGG.

Anyway, just generally, my feeling is that this game is a masterpiece, and most of the problems are either down to the fact that it's unfinished, or the fact that it caused delays for PoE 1, or people's personal taste rather than something truly wrong with the game itself.

GG, GGG.