What is Path Of Exile
Path of Exile is a top straight down, action role playing game from Grinding Gears Games, a little independent company in New Zealand, making in secret over the space of three years, players finally obtained their hands on the overall game in early 2011 within the closed beta before a full release in October, the plan was simple at the time.
To discharge a faithful diablo like experience for your modern age, there have been numerous attempts from other companies to try and get this but they ultimately in no way succeeded in re-creating the wonderment of Diablo 2, Grinding Gears took an alternative approach, instead of attempting to copy Diablo, they created their own video game with their own vision in mind whilst sticking to the principles of their hardcore approach.
Therefore instead of just having a course based grinding simulator, they instead dedicated to making a classless ability based system so in-depth people are nevertheless figuring out combinations even today and providing literally thousands of hours worth of content not just in the actual video game but in creating unique and amazing cheap poe items characters from what's offered, recently with the new expansion and areas the classes really feel a little bit more "authentic" however they're still ultimately up to how the player creates it.
On the game play side although the game currently has 10 unique chapters, 6 of which had been added in the incredible Fall Of Oriath expansion, for evaluation, Diablo 3 has only managed five acts in the same amount of time, the game is definitely straight forward, you becoming your journey within the shores of Wraeclast as an exile banned to a prison ship for your supposed criminal offenses, after the ship sinks you wash up on the beach and find the shores to be completely infested using the undead in a forsaken land where there is very little refuge.
From the beginning you'll be asked along with picking your character, while it's correct class doesn't matter that much it will set you up on the right path for the type of character you want, you'll journey into Lionseye Watch, a small shanty town that will provide you with your first missions and introduce you into the world of Path Of Exile all though it's very short as you learn to play by actually playing the game.
The overall game starts off in Normal mode which is quite easy where you trip through the acts, i am not quite caught up within the story so i cannot account for the veracity of the story collection, but i'm informed it has some quite involved lore in it, it's not until the more difficult difficulties, merciless and cruel that the video game really takes off countless mechanics begin to spiral out of your control and even the starting enemies become an barrier.
The game also has no gold, instead several currencies are used to update, trade and improvement as well as a very greatly player invested market with items, this particular game has thousands of items and even the most basic items can be valuable to the right gamers such as 6 socket connected items that can be upgraded and used by specific character specifications, but more upon that later.
Allows take a look at the character advancement and progression.
Progression Driven Characters
The leveling and update system in Route of Exile is actually vast, there are whole sites dedicated to dealing with hundreds of talents, items and progression strats to make their characters the best possible with maximum damage while also being able to survive, while some characters are built to support or soak up damage in the traditional feeling, but again they are only some really individual specs within a sea of hundreds, it's easier if i just show you along with pictures what to expect.
Here we have the talent tree and yes that is for every character, even with that picture that's not even the entirety of the talent woods you'll find in the game for the character, these have numerous different pathways that can completely reword your character and just how you play it, there are numerous different ways to play one specific character and you usually have to decide on it before you even make the character as a badly created character may cost more in order to respec than to develop a new one entirely.
You also have to take into account the actual harder difficulties and acts, resistances perform a huge part upon harder difficulties, so much so that just possessing a lot of damage and health can still result in you being wiped out in one hit and some monsters may be defense to your specific type of attack damage, so understanding that you will need to create your character for later game, rather than just leveling and sometimes leveling becomes the actual hardest part, it's truly strange sometimes.
On the other hand though you have Skill Gems, they're used for all your abilities in game and will be tied in directly to the talent program as they will require a certain level of attribute in order to equip but also to keep leveling up as your skill gems are based entirely on attribute points you may even have to walk out your way to level up a certain jewel that can take you to weird places within your talent tree.
It's also important to note that some gems will not be readily available to your class so you might need to either farm for them or buy them using the currencies which leads me personally into the next component, the overwhelming amount of currencies and how to get them.
Since there's no gold in Route of Exile, every thing is bought and paid for with foreign currencies, there are about 10-15 different currencies you are going to regularly use in the overall game, some small and common others exceedingly rare and hard to obtain that will have to be worked on for prolonged periods or just getting lucky with falls.
The most common upgrades and currencies are tied together, you can market items to the vendor to get parts of the currency then create it or you can go socket shopping, which is essentially just looking for items which have linked sockets in them that market very well to the vendor in terms of currency era.
These currencies perform most of the things hanging around, changing sockets, including different attributes, changing socket colours, completely changing it right into a new item, corrupting it or cleansing them, there's a currency for basically everything you need and there's always a way to obtain it that isn't too time consuming unless of course you're looking for extremely later game currencies to maximize your gear.
As with Diablo, PoE is actually loot based, your character can provide numerous items along with almost no restrictions from classes, as with every thing the gear is based largely on attributes which means you can be a caster playing around in full plate shield if you have enough in strength to provide the pieces, however that very seldom happens as taking points away from your main build is a great method to fall short at later game.
Path Of Exile has several inter-connected systems that only grow the actual longer you perform it, the more difficult the game becomes the more critical your itemization and build become as some things at the end game can be down right absurd to try and complete which can be do everything correctly but it also pays handsomely to explore when you first enter into the game, since there is numerous different works and a vast large number of classes/talents to create you never know what the right assortment of gear or skills might be right for your play style.
I will state though, get mayhem damage resistance asap(trust me on that).
Destroying the Leader
Route of Exile is actually, by many objective view points a vastly superior video game to Diablo three, given the sources GGG had to focus on Path of Exile and the resources Blizzard had to work on Diablo 3 it's not a good close call, you might ask why I am comparing the two video games though, well it is because it serves a purpose in the review of the overall game and it's scope within the ARPG genre.
This game has been called the spiritual successor to Diablo two, even though Diablo three exists it never truly came close to Diablo 2, Path of Exile feels and plays like the next logical step from Diablo 2 that sadly D3 in no way was, it's also the actual developers unending dedication to the game which makes it the best in the industry right now, even 6 many years after release they're consistently adding new content each month and releasing massive expansion packs and individual content.
It's also their own Free2Play model that is done so great, the actual genesis of the video game was from hardcore PvE experience and also the cash shop doesn't interfere with that in any way, you can pay to get some quality of life things or to catch up on certain things but the best.... well every thing is still only obtainable in the game, it's much more there so that the gamers can support the actual developers to continue Path Of Exile items for sale creating the game that they really like.
It's also important to note that degree of detail that has gone into Path of Exile, now standing at a staggering ten acts long the overall game is that perfect stability of procedural era and static atmosphere so that the game in no way gets boring, every patch they release they figure out new ways to let the gamers play and evolve with the game, like I said above there's numerous sites dedicated to PoE develops and guides and that gets increased along with every patch as they continually balance the actual classes and offerup more ways to perform.
All of this is a stark contrast to Diablo 3 which required 3 years to release a followup act along with one new act and one new character and has been regularly dumbed down the actual longer the game is out whereas PoE has been doing the exact opposite and became harder the actual longer the game is out all of this combined with GGG's commitment to the video game is what makes it the marketplace leader in the (western) ARPG front.
Absolutely no signs of slowing down
Last month noticed the release of the Fall Of Oriath expansion that was also free, that added six whole chapters towards the game, most companies would possibly do 3 in a maximum but GGG are on a roll, the one thing that stings the most about a excellent game is whenever companies either give up the project or even move at a snails pace on content and patches, GGG doesn't have that issue and every 2 or 3 a few months Path of Exile feels like a new and refreshed game.
But on the other hand it's the commitment of the team in order to keeping the game relocating at a fast speed, you very seldom see gold farmers in the game selling things because it requires you to actually play the overall game to progress, and you're left with hardly any spare currency if you wish to keep progressing, GGG have done an amazing job at curbing that in the game with their style.
But it also has a built in meta game using the currencies as it's used to control long-term inflation of the market in Path of Exile, anyone who has performed a long standing multi-player game knows simply how much a market can blow up if left stagnate for a few years, a prime example is actually World of Warcraft, when released the tokens sold for around 14k gold, now they're breaking 200k, so it's nice to play a game where you know people cannot out hoard your progress or hold you ransom.
Right after their release of Fall Of Oriath, GGG confirmed they would continue to update the overall game and are working on another expansion that will occur in the future, with no actual talk of Route Of Exile two just yet it seems the actual games life cycle still has a few years ahead of it when it comes to content and a completed game cycle.
All of the aforementioned things really are a reason to give Route Of Exile a go, but in a game as big as Path of Exile, no review is going to truly do it justice and being that it's free the best way to encounter it is just to download it and give a go, it's a game of immense content, fascinating design and has a development team that is solely dedicated to making it the the best they possibly can.
Just one thing to mention, it is a bit of a time sink if you get sucked into it like I did so don't be surprised if you end up spending countless hours on it like I did.
