Honest review after going through endgame on two characters
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It's fine for a play through of the campaign or two. Endgame is honestly such a downgrade and left me feeling like not playing anymore. The skill tree doesn't have enough of an impact to want to keep leveling. Most of the notables comes with downsides now because they are scared of any power creep. Want some attack damage? You gotta give up attack speed for it. Want some mana regen cuz every skill in the game is incredibly mana hungry? Sorry it only works when you aren't on low mana.
Defenses and stats are incredibly unbalanced at the moment. ES is king, with tons of nodes on the tree to increase %, recovery rate, start of recovery, you name it. Life gets strength, which is a huge opportunity cost to many builds that can't afford to not pump it. If you are life, strength is so mandatory that even dex builds just build the bare minimum dex they can and pump the rest into strength. For int builds it basically forces you into ES. This leaves the aforementioned dex builds the odd men out, making dex feel like it's only use is for skill gem requirements. Forget being able to build int for mana for the previously mentioned skills that drain your mana in two uses. Evasion is incredibly useless, as it leaves you completely open to one shots, and armor is only good vs small hits. Defense is also incredibly important now because of one portal game play. As for builds, they have already swung the nerf bat at several of the only viable builds out there. Most builds feel absolutely useless, with only a handful coming through as fun to play. Likewise for ascendancies, the gaps between them are huge. Even though they say they want to focus on combos, most of the good builds focus on one skill or interaction. This can be forgiven, as it is early access and much will change, but it isn't looking good so far. "Crafting" should really just be called what it is now, gambling. It's pushing a gotcha game button. Crafting is now get a million of your desired base and just keep spamming currency on them until one isn't completely useless. This makes trade mandatory for builds now. I can't see SSF being viable in it's current state unless you hit that lucky roll. As a minor side gripe, group play is once again king. If you aren't in a group you are playing a completely different game and at a severe disadvantage. The major groups out there are so far ahead of you that you will never keep up, and they set the foundation for the trade economy that only benefits them. Items are already going for thousands of exalts. The endgame atlas seemed cool, but in playing it removes all autonomy for avoiding bad layouts while removing most goals for your atlas because it is endless. Also, all the layouts are bad. It's like they took everything they learned from making maps and threw it out the window in an effort to pad play time. The campaign story is highly suspect. In the 2nd act you team up with straight up slavers. You notice the slaves the first time and your character legit says, "Oh, these people are brutal! Let's go keep doing quests for them." You work for the head of their culture, who openly decries peopled deemed lesser than as sub human. These are people that their culture left as babies to die out in the desert. One of these people deemed sub human joins with you and gives you invaluable information to save the day from the big bad and the leader talks about her like she's scum. You end up fighting with this piece of trash leader in the last segment of the act like best buds. It can't get worse, right? Well, buckle in. You spend the entire next act killing almost 1:1 copies of racist Mayan/Incan stereotypes, people native to the land you are invading. You literally go back in time to kill their ancestors. Then you team up with the worst of them, the ones in power committing blood ritual sacrifices all day. He becomes your best bud and vendor for endgame. All of this coming from a bunch of white dudes from New Zealand, a country with historical and concurrent racist systems of oppression to it's native people. Really makes me worry what they got cooked up for acts 4-6. What are we gonna do? Enslave races ourselves? Kill children by the hundreds? I don't even know how it could get worse from here story wise. In PoE 1 you fight the oppressors and then worry that maybe you are becoming them now that you are in power. There is a mature grace to it that questions itself. There is absolutely none of that going on here. Here we team up with the oppressors and kill everyone else without questioning it. All and all a huge disappointment so far in story and a let down in the game play department. Last bumped on Dec 20, 2024, 4:14:46 PM
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"Every fictional story must represent american morals and nothing is allowed to differ".
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" This is an incredibly dishonest response. Being a fictional story doesn't mean you should be cool with blatant racism and slavery being present and even excused. This is an artform and and decisions like this will be interpreted. If they were incorporating these elements to make commentary on something it could be considered worthwhile to include it. Currently it does nothing but bring into question their viewpoints. The current takeaway from the story is that you shouldn't judge people for being pro slavery because it's a part of their culture??? Where and when is that a take that should be not derided? Then the next takeaway is that they are super cool with genociding native people's in their lands and to take what is theirs to serve our purposes. Being anti-slavery and not condoning genocide, and not supporting media from people promoting/defending both is not a bad thing. |
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" Also, being anti-slavery and colonialism is not "american morals", it's just being moral. |
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re: story beats and representation. I would try to keep more of an open mind, but I respect your view. To offer a different perspective:
The campaign felt consistent with the original in its dark fantasy themes, tone, and graphic violence. All of it is inspired or builds on historical, cultural points of reference. This is a deeply grim setting and always has been; moral relativism is an important concept when considering the morality of the protagonist, Vaal, and real world cultures that differ from your own. While fictional, they come from different life ways and worldviews and people do terrible things under the right pressures irrespective of where they were born. I have an anthropology background, so I understand the urge to be protective of culture but also acknowledge the importance of diffusion of cultures in our societies and shared myths. Modern fiction is just that: myth making, and that is a thing that crosses traditional ethnic and cultural boundaries and exposes us to things outside of our typical experiences. For example: personally I felt that the Karui were handled with a lot of respect in the series and made me aware of Maori myths and traditions through those inspirations. Really cool stuff that had otherwise not penetrated western popular culture in any appreciable way. I was pumped to learn more about it and didn't once think that Kaom or rage-crazed island people was reflective of the real world cultures that inspired them. The Eternals did not make me think ancient Rome was any worse than it was, or that the Ezomyte portrayal of power-mad, murderous, and corrupted anglo-saxon rune-wielders was particularly problematic. It didn't seem to give you pause to cut your way through them in the same way; a lot of them weren't even monsters in Act 1, just a ton of people ruled by a madman and led to do terrible things to eachother. The Vaal are my favorite instance of this in maybe any fantasy setting. I've just never seen that cultural perspective represented in the way POE does. It doesn't lean on old stereotypes but rather just core touchstones of real world societies as points of inspiration (human sacrifice, architecture, ritualistic regalia, aesthetic motifs taken in new directions, etc.) To portray them as the societal and technological pinnacle of Wraeclast's known history and make them very human in their motivations, achievements, evils, etc. speaks to a more considered crafting than you're giving GG credit for. The atrocities are at an unimaginable scale but in that culture it was accepted, embraced, and the cornerstone of their existence. Horrifying, fascinating, and (what I interpret as) a cautionary tale about the ethics of progress and the value of a human life. To judge it by your own societal moral standards, however, is something to be avoided in the real world as that is its own flavor of prejudice. The core theme permeating all of this is that in this setting capital C Corruption corrupts. In big ways and small ones: entire cultures and individuals, villains and heroes. If the threat were truly existential for the entire world and you were in a position to stop it, what lengths would you go to stop it? How would society that comes after judge you? The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. There's a lot of nuance to all of it and the team is comprised of many different cultural backgrounds from all over the world. It's been something they've talked about in the past and highlighted in their engagement with the community. To claim it's a bunch of white dudes at this point is disingenuous. You guide and directly control a character that murders practically everything it encounters save for a handful of people in camp. With that in mind, what moral ground is there to stand on to judge these other fictional cultures that also drew from history? Anyway, have a nice day. |
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Imagine if slavery, racism and colonialism existed outside of occidental culture ... oh wait ...
Don't bring politics and IRL world views into this, it's a game. Last edited by KlamEhDia_#4598 on Dec 20, 2024, 3:23:19 PM
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There's a story? I honestly dont know anything about the slavery or racial tropes you're talking about, as I just kill stuff and move on. But, I imagine that (and this IS purely assumption) that if those elements exist, POE2 is probably uplifting these ideals much like Breaking Bad supported Drug Manufacturing and Dealing.
on to actual game gripes: I am only in T9 maps, but my last real issue with the game (aside from constant DCs) are the Boss one shot mechanics. |
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"All of this coming from a bunch of white dudes from New Zealand, a country with historical and concurrent racist systems of oppression"
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" I'm not stating it doesn't happen or isn't currently happening, I'm questioning the point of including it and then excusing it or teaming up with it. As for not bringing politics into a game, this is an artform and art will be interpreted. If they didn't want people talking about this they shouldn't have included it. |
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" Did I stutter? |
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