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

This is my first impression too. It feels like darks souls meets D2, neither of which I particularly enjoy. Also GGG seems to have doubled down on one shots and off-screening, like back in the early days of PoE1.

I have found that if I am patient, prioritise rolling as the main skill for any boss fight and occasionally attack in the rare "safe" windows, they aren't difficult fights, just long and tedious. The problem is my attention wanders and I make mistakes because it is so uninteresting to play this way, every build is mostly a rolling build.

I feel very underwhelmed by my first few levels, better than D4, not as good as PoE1, Last Epoch or Grim Dawn.

tedious is not the same as difficult, even though tedium can be used to make a game difficult.

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Shyanmar#4875 wrote:

I was fully expecting some people to try and play this game the same way they played PoE1 instead of engaging with it on its own terms, accepting the fact that it's different and learning to play it all over again. Seems I was right.

I mean, I've seen a steam reviewer complain that he couldn't facetank bosses half an hour in and refund the game.

The game feels just right. It's not too hard in any way, and thus far, every time I have died it was on me, not some bullshit I could do nothing about like in PoE1. If I died - skill issue. As it should be. PoE1 wasn't ANY easier in beta btw, people will eventually find more optimal builds and approaches here too. Which will take time. Despite similarities to its predecessor, this is a new game. Maybe you should treat it as such if you feel like you can't zoom through it as easily as you can in poE1.

100% true.

Its perfect and I hope that GGG is not going to change POE2.

Just craft some better gear and go again, use your resources liberally. Upgrading your weapon for 10 damage more completely changes a boss fight.

A bit of perspective for folks who think that the game being mechanically harder than POE1 is a bad thing for user-retention....

On steam alone.... POE2 peaked at 459k players, and has held over 300k since launch. POE1 all-time peak was 228k on steam. POE2 is *more* popular already. It's going to be a smash hit financial blow out.

Dark Souls sold 27 million copies. Elden Ring sold 25 million copies. Harder games are *more* popular then POE1, not less.

My biggest gripe with POE1 is a game with builds where you can walk up to a boss and face tank him is not a game to me. (especially when that build is copied from someone else because of punishing respec costs and inability to evolve a character)

POE2 fixes all of this and more...

For sure, it's a different game, and it was brilliant for GGG to separate them and keep POE1 alive, for the obviously excellent dedicated fans who like that experience.

I predict POE2 will have stably 2-5x the playerbase of POE1 before EA is even done.

And also, GGG has already seen that the players who have the *most* trouble with POE2 are POE1 players, because there is enough similarity that players assume they know how to play POE2. I felt it was very hard for the first two hours, but I've already got over much of the learning curve, found the timings and gooves, and it's nowhere near as hard as I expected it to be. Once there are build guides and mechanics guides helping players who don't want to learn through death and experience, people will see it's not as hard as it seems.

I also don't enjoy the tedious combat mechanics, exactly matching my expectations from what I had seen before EA opened up.

It took me some tries, but since I have found a class and build that allows me to do the POE1 run-around-boss-in-circles I am actually having a good time.

Looks like you just have to find what works for you.

I really can't understand what they were thinking when some small fire bug in first zone when you go outside of the city literally 1 shot you with little fire ball... I mean for real? I understand POE have to be hard and complicated, but this? [Removed by Support]

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Shyanmar#4875 wrote:

I was fully expecting some people to try and play this game the same way they played PoE1 instead of engaging with it on its own terms, accepting the fact that it's different and learning to play it all over again. Seems I was right.

I mean, I've seen a steam reviewer complain that he couldn't facetank bosses half an hour in and refund the game.

The game feels just right. It's not too hard in any way, and thus far, every time I have died it was on me, not some bullshit I could do nothing about like in PoE1. If I died - skill issue. As it should be. PoE1 wasn't ANY easier in beta btw, people will eventually find more optimal builds and approaches here too. Which will take time. Despite similarities to its predecessor, this is a new game. Maybe you should treat it as such if you feel like you can't zoom through it as easily as you can in poE1.

PoE 1 beta was much easier than this.

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Shyanmar#4875 wrote:

The game feels just right. It's not too hard in any way, and thus far, every time I have died it was on me, not some bullshit I could do nothing about like in PoE1.

The problem with your point is that you now have alot of players that try different ways and many of these ways dont work at all. Since the sourcing of gems has also changed going back and forth is also not realy getting you anywhere and many ppl get stuck right in the beginning. Its not like they are at some end game boss. So its clear that the learning curve is just way to steep to make sense.

Just to give you an example:
I play as Necro. My minions die alot. Depending on the zone there are some serious AoEs going on easily wiping them out. Not to count in the Bosses with their huge one hit AoEs that simply kill of the minions that just respawn without them even becomming visible. Iam now at LVL17 and the end of Act1 and i spend alot of my time running around around and kiting bosses while i wait for the minions to respawn that simply get wiped within 1-2s.

Now speaking of Bosses i see several Bosses having AoEs centered around players that exceed the dodge distance, which means you have to dodge twice to get out and you often have to do so very quickly to not get hit. on top of that some skills are completely unusable in boss fights. I have Unearth and Raise Zombies which create temporary minions lasting 12 and 20s, but require a corpse. Most bosses i fought through the act dont spawn anything killable so there are no corpses, even worse the Act1 end boss seems to despawn the corpses on the ground once the minion spawn phases end and the time between these phases exceeds the maximum duration.

Things simply dont fall together well and iam pretty sure that there are some builds and approaches that simply dont work out.

+1 Absolutely disapointed, poe2 isn't poe2, its Elden ring on hard difficulty mashed with poe-like clones i.e. Undecember.
Equipment doesn't matter, entire upgrade in act1 was going from 5-7 damage to 10-15 damage, with dps increase by 1%, wtf is this?
Poe1 was fun to play killing monsters left and right - or fixing your build so you can do it anyway, while poe2 is ENDLESS suffering/struggle to survive, excuse me but im not in autistic spectrum of Elden ring loving masochists who enjoy constant suffering

I can't agree more, this game feels so bad, especially if you play as melee. Holy shit they dropped the ball trying to cater to the HARDCORE NO LIFERS, I foresee a repeat of Cataclysm WoW. I've stopped playing the EA after making 2 characters LOL