Absolutely disapointed -- This game is hard, and not in a fun way.

Love the difficulty change and pacing. A lot more impactful and rewarding experience.

Just echoing that I come to play PoE when I play PoE, not Dark Souls. It needs adjustment.

This reeks too much of ruthless.

More ability to generate loot with Alts
Or
Lots more loot generated to pick though.

At minimum.

I’m struggling to find many things that are enjoyable about it. It feels like the game has completely lost what made the original PoE great. Here’s what’s been bothering me so far:

The gameplay feels repetitive and monotonous. From level 1 to 30, it’s the same thing over and over. The only progression I notice is the number of buttons I have to press, not in any meaningful evolution of my build or mechanics. The combat feels like it’s turned into a "boss fighter" with small breaks in between for killing white mobs. It doesn’t feel like a hack-and-slash or an ARPG anymore, and honestly, it doesn’t even feel like it should be called PoE2. It’s such a drastic departure from the first game that it feels like a completely different genre.

Build variety and balance are a mess. I started with a minion build, and it was so bad I had to re-roll. Minions spend more time on cooldown than actually fighting, especially with bosses constantly throwing out screen-wide one-shot mechanics. After re-rolling to a lightning build, it felt like I was playing a different game—double the DPS with half the point investment. The imbalance between builds is ridiculous and makes experimenting feel like a waste of time.

The item drops are terrible. There’s no sense of reward, and no noticeable power spikes as I level up. At one point, I had to go back and farm gold just to afford random items to keep progressing. Crafting is minimal, so there’s no way to mitigate bad RNG either. It makes progression feel slow and unrewarding.

The levels themselves are just boring. They’re painfully linear, with no sense of exploration or variety. Add to that the color palette, which is the same dull, dark tones everywhere, and it all feels like one monotonous blur. The lack of environmental variety is a huge letdown. Questing doesn’t help either—it’s as boring as it gets, with nothing engaging or interesting about the objectives.

Movement and combat feel clunky and frustrating. The dodge roll slows down your character, which kills the flow of the game. Why would you intentionally slow down a game like this? Minion body blocking is awful. I can dodge god-tier spells, but I can’t move past a chair or a pebble on the ground? It’s ridiculous. I’ve died so many times because of invisible terrain or random clutter. And getting one-shot by invisible off-screen projectiles like crossbow bolts? That’s just bad design.

Even the performance is disappointing. The game runs terribly on my RTX 3080 and i5-10700K. In towns, the resolution drops, and it barely hits 60 FPS at 2.5K—not even 4K! Optimization is clearly not there yet. And graphically, it’s a mess. The grass and upscaling look terrible, like they were rushed or completely overlooked. How this got through QA is beyond me.

Right now, PoE2 feels like a chore to play. It’s a dull, clunky, and unrewarding experience that’s missing the essence of what made PoE1 great. The potential is there, but unless major changes happen, it’s hard to see how this will appeal to fans of the original. If this is what they’re calling PoE2, I’m not sure I want to keep playing.

#edit

Just following up -

If the game releases and continues in this form, I will not be playing it and this will be my last purchase. If I could refund the supporter pack, I would.

I have been playing MMOs since 1999, ARPGs since D1, POE on and off since open beta.

I find the over-tuned bosses, over powered trash mobs, mindbogglingly sluggish movement, the nonsensical "dodge" mechanic (no, dodge/dodge/dodge/use skill, repeat for 5 minutes is not "skill"), very very odd coming from GGG. Did noone in closed Beta give any feedback? or was closed beta full of people who somehow were all gluttons for punishment?

I am sorry, only level 12 but this feels like an Alpha to me - untuned boss, trash mobs. Meaningless drops (how many flasks does one character need, especially when forced down to one life and one mana flask only?) . I do hope GGG pivots and makes the game play enjoyable and away from this sluggish mess.

I will of course play more - but POE2 seems intent on chasing players AWAY, and not grasping their attention and keeping them like POE1 did - even though it too had challenging bosses in tidal island, trash mobs - voiddogs in docks anyone? - but POE1 was fulfilling. Here, you just move on to the next white mob which will move you around and kill you or a boss who will non-stop telegraph for you to dodge ad-nauseum. Sure this is a challenge which some feel they have overcome, for many this is just tedium.

P.S: For those who have achieved their ultimate bliss now in PoE2 - congrats. Many of us find this gameplay aggravating. The "Action" part of the ARPG seems to be just mashing dodge... And no this is not "getting good" in many of our books either.

"

Suchka_777#4336 wrote:

"

Verdonix#5948 wrote:

Sure variety is good... but this should not have been marketed as POE2.. it should have been a new game. Those of us who have played POE1 for years, deserved a "better version" of POE1... a sequel that gave us what we loved about that game only better... Instead they created a basically whole new game genre and sold (I say sold metaphorically, I understand it is a FREE game) it to us as the sequel we all wanted.

Then it would be just reworked Act 1 for PoE 1 5 years ago, or maybe second campaign for PoE 1. They wanted to evolve the ARPG genre and they did it, instead of just improving minor aspects of PoE 1. I don't see why it shouldn't be named "PoE 2" if it's an evolution of the same genre.

There is nothing in this game that evolves the genre. Nothing that has not been done, is not already available in another game some where else.

IT's pretty .. pretty dark... its clunky, it has almost zero story / lore and not a single game mechanic that has not already been done either in POE1, Diablo series or other games in the genre, and generally, done better.

I'd be a bit shameful delivering this as an early access title. Not sure what kind of braindead peons they had in beta and what feedback they were giving them but either they ignored it or misunderstood.

At this point, if I could get my $$$ back I would, and I wont be spending anymore $$$. Feels super bait and switch if this whole "Bad Souls meets uninspiring ARPG" is what they were advertising.

"

Ironhide75#7617 wrote:

"

Suchka_777#4336 wrote:

"

Verdonix#5948 wrote:

Sure variety is good... but this should not have been marketed as POE2.. it should have been a new game. Those of us who have played POE1 for years, deserved a "better version" of POE1... a sequel that gave us what we loved about that game only better... Instead they created a basically whole new game genre and sold (I say sold metaphorically, I understand it is a FREE game) it to us as the sequel we all wanted.

Then it would be just reworked Act 1 for PoE 1 5 years ago, or maybe second campaign for PoE 1. They wanted to evolve the ARPG genre and they did it, instead of just improving minor aspects of PoE 1. I don't see why it shouldn't be named "PoE 2" if it's an evolution of the same genre.

There is nothing in this game that evolves the genre. Nothing that has not been done, is not already available in another game some where else.

IT's pretty .. pretty dark... its clunky, it has almost zero story / lore and not a single game mechanic that has not already been done either in POE1, Diablo series or other games in the genre, and generally, done better.

I'd be a bit shameful delivering this as an early access title. Not sure what kind of braindead peons they had in beta and what feedback they were giving them but either they ignored it or misunderstood.

At this point, if I could get my $$$ back I would, and I wont be spending anymore $$$. Feels super bait and switch if this whole "Bad Souls meets uninspiring ARPG" is what they were advertising.

It was all "Elites" and Streamers... You know the Asmongold's and the DMT's of the world... They never open those up to "normies" to get real player feedback.

"

diego_garber#0088 wrote:

The "dodge or die" mechanic is boring to me. I do NOT play souls games because they are boring. There are other people that DO like that. It's totally fine, but it's not the gaming i like. PoE2 feels a LOT more like "souls" than PoE1 IMHO.

Thank you for this sentence.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that just got bored of this "roll mechanic".

"

It was all "Elites" and Streamers... You know the Asmongold's and the DMT's of the world... They never open those up to "normies" to get real player feedback.

I truly hate all of them... 'cause they will say anything 'cause hey, money is the most important things for them...

Meanwhile players leaving because of difficulty wall and boring dodge roll:


oh.. wait...

Agreed. It gets old after 15 levels.
The dodge roll is more important than your character build and all items its wearing.