The crowd sourced decision was "yes" and I downloaded and installed Path of Exile yesterday. I scanned through my options and picked the Templar and was off smashing the living dead on another starter beach.
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| Starter beach; literally. |
Starting out the first thing I noticed was how "slow" the combat felt. I mostly arrived at Path of Exile's doorstep following the very complicated postings of Belghast on his blog Tales of the Aggronaut. It was fascinating to me the level of complexity building a character in the game offered. Along with the complex web of the game's skill tree were videos of action packed combat so I expected that to be the experience on starter beach. Yet it wasn't!
I don't want to sound like I am knocking the combat but when your head is filled with the idea you are going to be a bowling ball of destruction rolling across the screen it's a little off putting when it feels like an eternity for your avatar to swing their weapon. With that said I get that game's have to start off slow so player's can feel progress.
I made it off starter beach and into a shared hub of some sort where ! points lead me to my next quest objectives. I turned in the starter quests and picked up some new ones. As is my tradition I clicked through the conversations to get to the "just put it in the quest list on screen" step.
Some tutorial prompts directed me to look in my inventory so I got my first look at loot and gear in the game. I immediately saw why folks call Path of Exile complex. Even the starter gear I had collected was full of stats and effects. I was then walked through adding gems to the gear. These are not your "+1 damage" gems; these are "%4 mana gained when a specific attack is taken while an enemy is in Z state" levels of gems.
Lastly I leveled up to the point in order to unlock a skill point and I dared myself to open the infamous skill tree. Like gear, the skill tree is very complex. It is a lot to look at, even more to grok, and even more to master. This is the heart of the statement "Path of Exile is not for the feint of heart". Complexity aside, I only had one skill point to spend and so I spent it on the first node that does more damage.
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| I've got a plan... |
So what is my assessment after one day? I don't think the game necessarily hooked me. The complexity does intrigue me, but it also pushes me away. Do I really want to become invested in another game right now? We'll see. I'm glad I've given POE a try finally.
