A somewhat new player's review of Path of VexOhmIstDol

So I finally bit the bullet and picked up PoE around a month-ish ago and am now rolling my first toon. So, I'm finally at maps, and I suppose now is as good as any a time to give my opinion about the game.

First and foremost, for any of the "Stop Having Fun Guys", remember this is my opinion, so if you feel like replying with anything hostile, please exit stage left.

About me: I work at a Silicon Valley asset manager (a tiny one) and have a master's in statistics (and a bachelor's in optimization), so I'm no newbie to the idea of min-maxing. In fact, looking at different ways of min-maxing financial assets is what I do for a living.

Now, onto the review:

In my opinion, PoE is a decent standalone ARPG, created, seemingly as a send-up of games such as Diablo 2, FFVII, and FFX, as elements from all three are clearly present. However, even after more than a decade since those games' release, PoE still does not hold up to those games, and I hope my review will shed light as to why.

First, the good:

The amount of different builds that are possible between the vast passive tree and the different ways to customize gems is truly astounding. The skill tree has me constantly nerd-sniped to see different builds, as well as the different gem combinations. Furthermore, for those who are veterans of Diablo 2, this game delivers a very similar atmosphere, so a kudos for keeping with the dark fantasy theme that got people liking D2.

Also, for a F2P game, it has miraculously stayed away from directly selling power (so far--but the pay-for-stash-tabs is definitely toeing the line).

Now, for everything else:

Where to even begin?

I suppose I'll start off somewhere--and on an overarching theme, it can be summarized thus: this game sacrifices the "casual" (note the quotations--if you're going to play a loot-finder ARPG, especially PoE, which is the "hardest" of the current three, the other two being TL and D3, then you're not just some random schlub) on the altar of the hardcore grinder.

Before anything else, let's establish something:

The point of a GAME is to be FUN.

So let's start off with one case of anti-fun in this game--the variance in difficulty, both on a macro and on a micro scale.

On a macro scale, the pace of the original content is all well and good--but then act 3x is just obnoxiously overtuned, to the point that the game in the next difficulty is a hell of a lot easier until you get to Vaal Oversoul (or if you'd like, the giant spider boss--damned chaos damage).

On a micro level, most of the difficulty isn't from good AI, different clumps of monsters with differing abilities to challenge any build equally, but from edge-case types of damage that screw you over differently depending on your build--which while not present always, are present enough to make the game go from an enjoyable mob-blaster to table-flipping frustrating. That is, lightning thorns/reflects/chaos damage/physical spells (this is the biggest drawback of evasion, not necessarily variance in damage taken)/absurdly high damage/and I'm sure I'm missing a few.

I don't think anybody is averse to a challenge. However, I think a lot more people would have a better experience if every time they died, they could say "I died because I screwed up", rather than "sigh, edge case death".

Basically, for the D2 veterans here, remember gloams and their bugged damage?

Well, now there's a different type of gloam for everyone! What fun...


Next criticism:

For a game that's (in theory) a loving send up to the most famous loot finder in the history of ARPGs, PoE's loot system is flat out horrible.

Most items are basically worth less than the cost of the town portal it takes to even carry them back and sell them to NPCs. Unless you find a 5L or a 6L white, it's worthless already. Just about all magic items are inherently worthless. Most rares are next to worthless but can at least be pawned for alteration shards or saved for the chaos recipes. And even with the chaos recipes, the ratio of weapons and armor to accessories is obscene. Essentially, if you find 2 rare rings and a rare amulet, congratulations, you have 1-2 chaos, depending on if you chose to identify the items or not.

And if an item is actually good? Good luck affording it.

Here are my questions:

1) Where are the sets? In Diablo 2, the high-end sets weren't as strong as being fully-geared out in runewords and uniques (i.e. a Barbarian with Immortal King's set wasn't as strong as one dual-wielding Beast and Ebotdz with an arreat's face, a fortitude/chains of honor/enigma, gore riders, etc...), but nevertheless, sets gave a lot of players an affordable way to explore the vast majority of the content in the game without frustration. For instance, a Tal Rasha's sorceress could clear just about all of hell with her merc.

2) Where are the cost-effective options to welcome players new to PoE? That is to say, where are PoE's equivalents to Insight, Spirit, Honor, Leaf, Harmony, Wealth, and Rhyme runewords? Some of those may have been "best in slot" items (spirit, insight), but many weren't. But for those that could get the better stuff, did these items make their experience in any way *worse*?

3) Where are the safely-farmable zones for a player on his first character to actually find gear? Once again, going back to Diablo 2, what is this game's equivalent of Hell Mausoleum/Crypt? Yes, those two houses by Blood Raven in hell--equip a 4 perfect topaz plate and a 3 perfect topaz helmet with a goldwrap and chanceguards, have merc tank the few skeletons there, blow things up, collect loot. Other similar locations (but better known, I suppose) include the ancient tunnels (especially for pure ice sorceresses), the pit (not safe per se, but a stimulating clear for any dual-source-of-damage character), and so on. And of course, let's not forget the moat trick at Mephisto. Did these elements make Diablo 2 a *worse* game, because newer players could actually find decent loot? I very much don't think so. After all, a new player finding loot didn't affect a veteran's ability to go solo uber tristram.

4) Why is there no good, steady progression in itemization? Diablo 2 had cheap-but-effective-for-their-cost runewords at the beginning, a whole panoply of mid-range uniques and runewords, and once you got to the later stages, you could trade for some very solid gear with just pgems, such as the character-specific sets. Contrast that in PoE, in which everything is junk unless it's worth multiple chaos orbs or even exalts.

5) Where is the crafting system? And no, I don't mean the "use material on item and pray" system that is PoE's sad excuse for a "crafting" system. I mean the "take this piece of junk, that piece of junk, and that piece of junk, and out comes something beautiful and useful". For instance, say you were rolling an amazon and needed gloves that gave you knockback. There was a recipe that gave you that guaranteed knockback. And if you were particularly lucky, you also got +2 to bow skills along with 20% increased attack speed. And once again, while the elite players had no need of these lowbie crafting recipes, for those just rolling their first character, these methods were a godsend.

In short, while there's a whole heck of a lot devoted to making sure the hardest of core players are happy with map-only drops, the Voltaxics, the Kaoms Hearts, the Shavronnes, etc... of the world, where is the pacing for anyone else to get *to* those items?

Trading?

Ah yes, trading. Balancing the drops around the "economy"...except that the trading system...doesn't work! I mean, isn't it sort of stupid that in order to actually get decent trades, that one has to go outside the game, because the trade channel is so full of spam?

Furthermore, while I haven't played the travesty that is Diablo 3, I believe Blizzard stated that they're shutting down the auction houses because they took away from the spirit of the game in terms of farming loot by killing mobs. Shouldn't an action RPG be about finding your loot, not grinding forever to get currency to trade for it? Even though there's no explicit auction house in PoE, what exactly is poe.xyz.is and the trading forums? Oh yes, basically an auction house. Granted, one with no streamlining whatsoever (i.e. if I'm looking for a bow, but looking to pay no more than 20 chaos, why can't I filter by that?). As of the moment, there is no trading system in PoE itself. If you have an item, you can link to it in chat and pray that someone sees it.

In short, the trading system is a travesty in PoE, and for the game's drops to be balanced not around a character's kill speed, but around other characters' kill speeds is a much larger one.


Next:

Where is the basic math in this game?

That is--if 2 fusings is a chaos, and 25 chaos is an exalt, and it takes 100 fusings (on average) to get a 5-L, well, basic math says that just to use and sustain a basic freaking lightning arrow and an aura, you'd need to throw 2 exalts worth of fusings just so you can run lightning arrow-lmp-pierce/chain-blood magic-LGoH/lifeleech.


Next:

The damned desync. When you're running for your life because even following a guide, you still can die in ten seconds to normal mobs and desync is either a loss of character (hardcore types) or a loss of half an hour's worth of experience, desync is just a sign of a second-rate game development company. And this isn't just an "oh every RPG has these issues". Somehow, blizzard's forums aren't full of "FIX THE DAMN DESYNC!", and weren't even in the days of 56-freaking-k modems. In short, this seems to have been a problem that was solved long ago, maybe through some compromises that allowed some injections to get through, but it created a more enjoyable experience for most.

And now in the days of "ping a compute once to see if it has an injection going, if so, delete and ban", this is either A) a severe case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater or B) a severe case of incompetence in terms of the quality of programmers that GGG employs. And, considering that this game is already spambot infested as D2 was in its waning years (spambot entries are as different as night from day compared to regular human chat), well, what's there to say, besides "grow up"?

Continuing:

The stuff not related to the core ARPG gameplay--that is, the fluff that makes a game, well, a game rather than a skinner box--the plot and music.

IMO, both suck. Period.

Now some might say "ARPGs generally don't have good plots", and while I agree, the Diablo series did have a plot. And it was a cohesive one. With PoE, the plot is exactly the opposite. While I can buy Act 1's plot (you're an exile, so you decide to start your attempt at scraping by through helping a few good-natured folks), act 2 basically has no plot to speak of (oh hey go on some fetch quests for us. Why? No particular reason.), and act 3 is more a disjoint and incomplete history lesson aside from the "those guys are obviously evil, go kill them please" parts. Also, why exactly were Dominus, Piety, and Gravicius in Wraeclast? Why exactly was Piety trying to replicate Shavronne's work? (For that matter, what ever the fuck happened with Shavronne? Did Brutus bop her while she was writing her that journal, which is why it cuts off?) Will we ever see some sort of possessed immortal Kaom? Why were we given this giant history lesson of the place when whether we know said history or not has absolutely no impact, one way or another, on the current events at hand?

Onto the music:

It's epic elevator music. The whole excuse of "it's supposed to be atmosphere-setting music" is a cop-out to me. Years after I've last played The Last Remnant, I can still distinctly remember its opening theme, the epic music of Nagapur, some of the kicking battle themes, the theme of Athlum and Melphina, the music of Elysion, and some of the boss battles (press to victory is an aural orgasm waiting to happen).

Or, if you want to go even further back in time, Seiken Densetsu 3. There are some very distinct, memorable, and atmosphere setting themes. Meridian Child. Walls and Steels. Powell. Left-handed wolf. Female Turbulence. Another Winter. Sacrifice Part 3.

Or, even if you want to say "fine, we're not on square-enix's level", how about the soundtrack of a game produced by two people? That is, epic battle fantasy 4--which is basically a complete parody of all things single player RPG, yet will remain in my mind a massively memorable game, particularly because of its music.

Or if you'd like, I still remember parts of the Tristram theme, the rogue encampment, the act 1 wilderness, the act 5 outdoor music, the WSK music (mainly because that track was the game startup track =P), and Harrogath.

For PoE's music, I can't remember the melody of a track even half an hour after I stop playing.

The idea that music can only be atmosphere-setting or memorable is a major cop-out. Because that's patently false, considering that I've forgotten the particular names of some of the music tracks I listed above, but haven't forgotten the actual music, because I associate it with a certain place.

In other words: what gives, GGG? Why the lazy writing and the skimping on the music, when single independent indie artists are doing better?


Lastly:

Certain parts of the community. While there are indeed some helpful people out there, there are also those that are textbook examples of the "Stop Having Fun Guys", who seem to be so paranoid that any compromise in addressing the above problems would suddenly rip the heart and soul out of Path of Exile, and who think that there exists absolutely no happy medium between this and the idea of having everything instantly handed to every player who decides to create a character, even if such happy mediums have been successfully implemented in the past to greater success!


So in conclusion:

PoE is a game with a hell of a lot of depth--perhaps the most for any game with the three letters "RPG" anywhere in the description. That depth is a masterfully-innovated merciless nerd-sniper that should be seen as what can happen when someone decides to combine a labor of love with innovation of that which was already established.

Unfortunately, most of that depth is locked away behind blatant and far more sadistic than necessary Skinner Box elements, poor difficulty pacing, spikes of frustrating gameplay, and an item acquisition system that's a massive regression from what existed a decade ago, and is only less frustrating than the by-design pay-for-power systems of eastern skinner-box F2P MMO RPGs (and not by much, either). And a particularly troubling fact is that a small but vocal minority actually supports keeping these aspects of the game out of a misguided paranoia that addressing these issues would be worse than the current state of affairs.

The game is also plagued by poor software implementations which manifest themselves far more viciously in this particular game than any other of the genre, including those which existed many years ago that were constrained by vastly inferior network hardware as compared to that of today.

Furthermore, the non-gameplay aspects of the game show a clear lack of effort compared to even some of the better indie flash games produced by an independent developer and one dedicated music composer. (And those two games would be RPG Shooter Starwish and Epic Battle Fantasy 4. For any of you hardcore grinders, play them both. You may do a few less map runs, but you'll have lasting memories). They are especially inferior to games developed in the Super Nintendo era (then again, so are most).

In its current state, it is this reviewer's opinion that PoE is not even as good as Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction at the height of its content (which, I suppose is not saying much--no current generation ARPG is), and still feels very much like an incomplete labor-of-love rather than a professional AAA production that should be mentioned in the same breath as the productions of other more well-known game studios.

The sliver of hope, however, is that PoE is relatively new, and nothing is yet set in stone. All of these issues can be addressed. Of course, the big question as to when they will be properly addressed, is of course, very much non-trivial.

really well written and covers pretty much all the critics i have with this game. the question is how many of theses flaws can be ironed out over time?

Its funny how everyone seems to forget the insane lag and black walls of death from D2 also everything you compared PoE to D2 was D2:LoD after roughly ten years of patching.

Go back and play vanilla D2 and really see which is the better game (I'll give you a hint its PoE)

Also I played D2 for over ten years and never even had a SoJ drop or a high rune, so drop rates were just as abysmal in D2

Take off the nostalgia glasses man, it really skews your perspective, but this topic has been beaten to death several times on these forums.


People act like D2 had no desync but its the only game I remember playing as a kid that had that terrible of lag and desync (called rubber-banding back then, seriously same thing)


Anyway I'll take PoE over D2:LoD anyday. Last time I booted up D2 I played for ten minutes and got pissed off at potions because I wanted my flasks back, got annoyed my equipment broke, got annoyed I'd run out of stamina and start walking, just overall got annoyed by about everything in the game.

I remember my etheral vexohmistdols

Much fun was had

"

ampdecay wrote:

Its funny how everyone seems to forget the insane lag and black walls of death from D2 also everything you compared PoE to D2 was D2:LoD after roughly ten years of patching.

Go back and play vanilla D2 and really see which is the better game (I'll give you a hint its PoE)

Also I played D2 for over ten years and never even had a SoJ drop or a high rune, so drop rates were just as abysmal in D2

Take off the nostalgia glasses man, it really skews your perspective, but this topic has been beaten to death several times on these forums.


People act like D2 had no desync but its the only game I remember playing as a kid that had that terrible of lag and desync (called rubber-banding back then, seriously same thing)


Anyway I'll take PoE over D2:LoD anyday. Last time I booted up D2 I played for ten minutes and got pissed off at potions because I wanted my flasks back, got annoyed my equipment broke, got annoyed I'd run out of stamina and start walking, just overall got annoyed by about everything in the game.

On Stamina: annoying for like the first...ten levels? It quickly becomes a non-issue.

On flasks vs. potions: this is an interesting PoE innovation IMO, so credit to them in this case. That said, nothing in PoE compares to the outright usefulness of a belt full of full rejuvenation potions.

SoJs/high runes: I had one SoJ drop for me. And also, they were somewhat overrated, and other amazing rings existed (ravenfrost, WISP PROJECTOR). As for high runes, I think I saw an Ohm and a Ber throughout my entire playtime not from the hellforge. But from hellforge, I saw my fair share of guls, vexs and ists. Generally, though, I feel all of those high-end runewords were created to try and contain the duping to begin with, and I still find it difficult to understand where all the enigmas, ebotdz, and so on came from.

And the black sheep wall/rubber banding: yes, that occurred. But when it did, you logged out and did something else. It wasn't some sort of sporadic event that happened infrequently enough to encourage you to continue playing, but regularly enough to frustrate you consistently. Rubberbanding was more of an issue, though once again, outdated technology and all that.

Essentially what I suppose I'm trying to say is the same thing a lot of people are saying about Final fantasy VII these days--if the game got a reskin and a remake for newer architecture and software, it would be a massive improvement over what we have in PoE.

And also, one other thing, and I think this is a massively salient point:

It's been years since the final update to D2 LoD. Therefore, shouldn't things such as guaranteed-property crafting, sets, useful magic items, and the idea of turning trash into treasure (low runes, junk jewels, crap magic items) be a prerequisite for any ARPG hoping to be prime-time?

Don't get me wrong--there were things that PoE improved on from LoD--i.e. the skill system is slightly better (for all of the depth present in so many support permutations, there are some very popular and more efficient goto builds i.e. the 5 gem lightning arrow sequence (LA->LMP->chain/pierce->Blood Magic->LGoH/lifeleech)), the potion system has a lot more variety (though I question the usefulness of all of the nonhealth potions that last for five seconds in a fight that lasts several minutes), but there are a lot of ways in which this game simply regressed from what was already there.

Simply, there would be nothing wrong if PoE simply copied a lot of the item system mechanics in Diablo 2 LoD outright, and I think everyone would be happier for it aside from the "OMFG GAEM WILL BE OVER IN TEN HOURZ OH NOEZ" tin-foil hatters.

Also, riddle me this:

How is GGG supposed to make any money when by design this game discourages everyone but the hardest of core players from even picking the game up? If you're going to sell vanity items, don't you want to get as many people as possible to play? So then why design a system that greatly punishes most players, adds no depth to the game, and only seeks to slow down the pace of progression and frustrate most people?

OP,+100+
totally agree with you

As a new player,with very low income in terms of mats and orbs, i am stuck on farming low level areas , for xp.

But even for that i am penalized, i am forced to go higher, even if my gear dont allow me, yes,2 negative resistances in Merciless and no possibility for upgrades due to inflated prices, or no drops whatsoever

FRUSTRATING GRINDING GEAR should be the name of this game

Also, let me just reiterate--I don't think that "Path of Exile" should suddenly become "Fields of Wealth". However, I think this is a salient point:

"

Blizzard wrote:

When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But as we've mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo's core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot. With that in mind, we want to let everyone know that we've decided to remove the gold and real-money auction house system from Diablo III.

Emphasis mine.

Right now, the current system is exactly a gummed up auction house.

1) Find random rares and currency.

2) Convert rares to more currency.

3) Use forums/poe.xyz.is to locate item you want to buy.

4) Pay for item in currency.

5) Sell any rares too good to vendor for currency through forums.

And in this way, the forums are an auction house, with the currency being the agreed-upon community currency. In this case, substitute "gold" for "chaos", put poe.xyz.is into the game itself, and what you have is EXACTLY a gold auction house.

Now, if someone decides to come along and make a d2jsp v. PoE, with PoE "forum gold", and a way to purchase forum gold with real money, well, congratulations, you now just created a PoE RMAH. And it isn't as though GGG can go around and police the internet for this, since an RMAH is simply a way to convert money into time as agreed upon by an independent community of players.

Simply, the way to fix this is to balance drops around individual kill rates, so that it's viable to "kill monsters to get cool loot" rather than "trade, flip, and grind for currency".

I generally agree with ampdecay here, but OP makes many valid points. I won't touch on everything--it's a lot--but will comment that a lot of your concerns boil down to a little bit of l2p vs forgot to take off your nostalgia glasses. Not intended as a direct rebuttal to your concerns, OP, but the truth lie in a shade of gray somewhere in between; I feel your feedback is too far skewed to be entirely accurate.

First of all, it seems that PoE's inspirations are much more action-roguelike (think Diablo I) than they are action-rpg (as you would parallel to Diablo II). It is an important distinction to be made, because the game is designed to challenge the player statistically, not skillfully. To give the player so many choices in ways to defend from and dish out damage, of differing sources and natures, that their challenge becomes managing the opportunity cost associated with making one choice over the other. Core builds (note: emphasis on core) in Path of Exile are much more fluid than "I'm a hammerdin" or "I like swords." They are a desired method of categorically minimizing certain opportunity costs at the expense of others, such that they can sufficiently sustain the use of a particular set of skills or play style.

With that said, I do believe trading vastly undermines this principle. I've come to believe that the game is meant to be played by constantly being challenged to find a way to juggle your resources between different items while still maintaining the bare minimum necessary to progress. Most of those items you find and say "not worth anything" are actually quite useful. Or would be, were it not for trading, which directly undermines the above process by providing immediate access to exactly what you need.

The games difficulty and progression are a beautiful challenge to the under-geared, and provide a lot of enjoyment when one solves the puzzle and manages to scrape by again and again. You know, like an exile, stranded ashore an alien land with nothing but his name and the weapon his dead exile comrade left behind. I think the biggest issue, progression-wise, is that this vision of the game was lost somewhere along the way, both by compromises made in GGG's development agenda, and by community perspective and expectations established by trading.

Fake edit: Battery is dying, so rush rush rush the rest. Was going to tie this part in with trading. Something about a vacuum left by the absence of any real benefit from the following system, and it being filled by yet more trading instead. Use your imaginations.
Ahem. We also have crafting, through a system coined as "vendor craft." PoE's vendors are essentially your horadric cube of olde. But the system is kind of half baked, providing little real benefit to progress, and being mostly useful for "if I grind for ten hours today, I can make these really obscure recipes that generate money.. err.. orbs.. that I can trade with." One of my biggest criticisms is that there is a lot of missing potential with the vendor craft system, but maybe that is changing? We recently got a new recipe (white item + augmentation orb + granit/elemental flask = magic item with damage mod according to flask). I hope we get more recipes like this. For basically anything and everything from base white items of all types, to various flasks, various common skill and support gems, etc.. Basically such that anything and everything that can be turned into some component to some recipe, that makes some other component to some other recipe.. that eventually enables you to find the materials to craft any 2-mod magic item you want, and perhaps a costlier third mod after that.

Thanks for the reply, CHP. I really like the tone of your post, and about the intentions of the game. However, I think it's not very-well executed. For instance, I play *mostly* self-found (traded for two bows, some elemental resist quivers, aurseize (found another pair later, can I have my 5c back please?), and blood dance). However, the way the passive tree works is that if you roll a pure class (mara/ranger/witch), then you're not going to be mix-and-matching defenses, so much as going balls to the wall with one of them (armor/eva/es, respectively), and trying to do whatever to shore up EVERYTHING else either through max life (mara/ranger), or, well, I'm not sure how ES builds go through the content. Do they just facetank the full damage with an absurd amount of ES? (My ranger is my first toon).

Also, the issue I think is that the game is balanced not on scraping by, but on mini-maxing everything. That is, I have around 2200 life on my ranger currently (another 25% of which is reserved by my carnage heart, but I don't have 5L armor and bow for my LA/frenzy to use BM gem+sustain gem), and even with maxed resists, Piety's Lightning Storm has killed me when I stood and facetanked it. Now maybe I have nostalgia glasses on, but if you had capped resists in hell, you were able to facetank Mephisto/Diablo/Baal, especially where full rejuvies were involved (greatest potion in the history of ever).

So, going with the mini-maxing issues, here's the issue--the defense systems in this game are exponentially effective. That is, if you have, say, 5000 armor and 5000 evasion, you might get, say, 50% damage reduction and 50% chance to evade. But if you have 10000 armor, instead you get 95% damage reduction, but get completely clobbered by the BIG FREAKING HIT as well as the vulnerability from tentacled miscreations (more colloquially known as "titty monsters"), whereas with evasion, you might go "big hits? lulz", but get completely bent over by physical spells (hello, Vaal rocks and shield aoe physical spellcasters in scepter of god! Kole smash too...).

And also, here's another thing--the keystones in this game basically encourage you to go all-in on one type of mitigation (eva/dodge or armor+CWDT/molten shell/enduring cry/increased duration) or the other, but if you try to mix and match among both, you'll just suck at both at the same time and get splattered on the walls.

Furthermore, the game isn't balanced around "I can barely hold three resists above 50% with my life at 2500 and 500 DPS and barely scrape by". In merciless, instead, I feel like the conversation went like this:

"Assume everyone has capped resists and 3000 life. How much damage do we want our mobs to do in order to be a challenge to these well-geared players with 50% evasion/defense? Alright, multiply every elemental damage by 4 and all physical damage by 2."

When what *should* be the case is that the content is challenging on having mediocre gear, and easier if you managed to somehow get amazing gear. But instead, you have people such as Kripparian saying how great PoE is because you can die even if you're fully geared-out and have a tank build.

Well, if those builds can get wrecked, what about the rest of us whose jobs aren't to play video games all day?

As I said in another post, a thought that hit me is this:

PoE is an amazing game up until Cruel scepter of god (normal scepter of god somewhat being a pacing issue as well, but minor in comparison to the other issues). Why? Here's a good way to think about it:

At level 1, you have no build, and you have no equipment. All you have are your ARPG tactics--that is, how well do you pay attention to health/mana, do you not go Leeroy Jenkinsing into a mass of high damage mobs, etc...--thus, the fate of your character is entirely in your hands.

As you get to the end of normal and through most of cruel, the game can justifiably expect a certain competence in your character's build. Is your build focused on one type of damage, one type of mitigation, while not skimping on life/ES, or are you mindlessly wandering around the tree with poor optimization? At this point, if you're obliviously making your first toon, you're going to start to suffer mightily and may want to reroll another one before you sink too many hours into it.

But at cruel scepter of god and beyond, that's when the last aspect of the game comes into play, which is the gear check. You can have a good understanding of ARPGs. You can have a good understanding of the fundamentals of this game and have a carefully-planned build. Both of those are completely in your control, and so is the fate of your character.

But come the later parts of the game, the fate of your character depends on a sadistic loot system that slows the pace of the game down to a crawl while you attempt to get better loot. It's not like the content is any different, either--you already saw it twice before (or once for scepter of god)--it's just more tedious due to the game's loot drops not keeping up with the pace of gear checks.

This causes the fun to quickly leave the game.

While I mostly agree with your comments... plot? In D2? Sure, it HAD a plot. There was definitely a plot. A terrible, ridiculous, derivative plot... pretty much exactly like POE's. I feel like you overplayed your hand a bit with that one :-)

The music, though - you know, I never really thought about it, but the fact that I remember that game's music so well certainly says a lot.