An honest review of a somewhat new player's experience to POE2

I was lurking on reddit and POE forums for some time now and decided to create a Reddit account to provide feedback to the team at GGG on how POE2 has been so far, from the perspective of a somewhat new player but with a lot of ARPG experience over the years (Grim Dawn, Diablo franchise, Last Epoch, and so forth)...

I have played patches 0.3, 0.4 and now 0.5. I am currently in t15 maps and have managed to kill the final new boss (barely, but I managed in the end as my damage isn´t what it could or should be).

1. Character movement

Characters feel like they are 70 years old. Movement is not fluid enough nor designed for the "get out of the shit now or die" design the enemies have. The Arbiter fight with his many one-shots is a prime example of this. You need to position your character with surgical position between beams or safe spots or safe spots but with beams to not die. Yet your character movement is so janky with the dodge roll to sprint you more often than not miss the position.

Other than that there is this thing of tripping over your feet when sprinting, which usually ends up in a character death, because getting up takes longer than the time enemies need to kill you. Who designed this?

You also slow down because you use an attack skill?? Like what? I'm currently playing a witchhunter with grenades and every attack slows down my character movement. This makes playing my character feel really annoying and, like stated before, like he is 70 years old and not the God Slayer this game wants me to believe I am.

2. Crafting

This game seems to have great crafting system but it is clearly made for the top tier players. Besides just slamming some orbs during levelling and early maps, all other forms of crafting are out of reach for normal players. Without being able to blast the top tier content, you are not getting any of the currency required in the amounts it is needed to even attempt crafting in the later game.

Crafting is not balanced towards the average player. This is clearly visible from looking at the prices on the currency market for a lot of the materials required to craft decent items. I would absolutely love to interact with the crafting systems but they are way out of reach.

3. Progression

It's a massive slog. Every step of the way this game is fighting against the player. 100% friction 100% of the time. I wish this game would ease on up already so this game can be enjoyed without feeling like you are constantly on a knife's edge.

Why are not all maps in the atlas connected to each other and I can path however I want for example? It seems a lot of pathing has been done deliberate to just slow you down for the sake of artificial grind? Why do I need to go through so many unneeded travel nodes or can't I port directly to major landmarks (like Well of Souls) to start the questline there? By the time I reach it, I kinda don't want to anymore lol.

Why can't I progress multiple atlas trees? The sheer volume of maps needed to run for all the points combinded is just way to much. I can't see myself doing this every few months. This game seems designed around insane long grind like it's a non-seasonal game. Bro, we have like 3 months and are not streamers who blast 12+ hours a day.

Why aren't my skills gaining experience like my character is? Why am I at the mercy of 100% RNG drop rate for level 19 or level 20 skills? This is not natural character skill power progression but artificial slowing down of your potential power, locked behind something outside of your control.

Why am I punished so hard for dying to a boss? The entire map despawns of all mechanics. Why? Why am I not allowed to learn? Why do I have less portals the more modifiers I get on a map? Am I again not allowed to learn what my character can do by pushing more? Why does everything despawn, on top of loosing the map on top of loosing 10% XP? I didn't realise this game was called Dark Souls. This seems overly aggressive imo.

I have never felt more powerful and yet so weak at the same time.

3. Currency drops

Or better said, the complete lack of. Of all ARPGs I have played this game has the worst feeling of drop rates to make you feel like you are a poor homeless beggar, even though you can clear the highest level of maps.

4. Boss fights

FUCKING EPIC! The design of these bosses is like nothing else. Certain one-shots however.

5. Art, sound and world building

AGAIN FUCKING EPIC! This is truly some next level work done by the devs.

6. Ascendancy Trials

If the point of character movement gets addressed, this will probably be more well recieved by players. Regardless of character movement, there are a few things I don't like.

• Sekhemas
  • Why do enemies and such persist after I have won the round or I can still get damage? Way to kick me in the balls after a win because I got damage from something after clearing the room. Why the fuck would you do this?
  • No armour, no evasion and no energy shield feel more like major downsides compared to the minor they are now
  • the pop-up worm(?) monsters on the 3rd floor can fuck off completely, I hate them
• Chaos
  • 1.30mins for the ritual alter is too long, it's boring
  • follow the statue ==> speed it up, it´s so sloooow
  • I need to clear it 3 times before a final fight and the order of bosses is random? Lol, yeah no. This is again tied to artificial slowing down of progression as mentioned in point 3
  • final boss fight is pretty cool, I like his character

This is just some of the stuff I could come up with in terms of feedback. If some of this could get addressed, this game would be the one I spend most of my free time on (and money but as it currently stands, it probably won't which seems weird from a business perspective if a lot of people feel the way like I do about this game).

Anyways, have a great day and enjoy playing and thank you for reading this long (and first reddit) postt.