Path of Exile, a free 2 play action RPG game, has been released back in 2013. Well, the first part of it was. You see, it’s an always-online game, fully free to play with all microtransactions being essentially solely cosmetic, that had several rather big changes since that 2013 release. For example, back then it had 3 story Acts. Now it has 10 (and that’s supposed to be the end of the main story). It also has “leagues” – special events, that require a newly created character that last a finite amount of time and do not repeat. Yet, at it’s core, it’s still a “Diablo-like game” that can be enjoyed very much singleplayer. As long as you are connected to the internet, that is.
I also haven’t finished it, but played 15 hours of it and wanted to share my thoughts on it.
If I had to quickly describe the game, I’d call it “highly inventive, yet incredibly familiar”. It follows in the tone and style of Diablo 2… Actually, I’d say that mood-wise it’s even closer to the horror bleakness of the original Diablo. It plays exactly as you’d expect a modern action RPG to play. It has familiar classes, even if they are called differently, and familiar concepts. Yet, there are several really simple changes, that make the whole game play very differently… yet exactly same.
Let me try to explain what I mean. You see, there are no “active skills” to level up in a conventional sense – no magic spells, special hits, hexes or whatever else that your character class inherits and has tied to them. Instead, all of that stuff is tied to special “gems” (kind of like “materia” in Final Fantasy 7), that allows any class to use any active skill. Which do level up (as gems), and do have their own requirements in level and main character attributes. So you might get restricted in how far you can upgrade your fireball throwing ability if you have low Int, but you might still be able to use it up until that level. There’s still a skill tree, a gigantic one, but that one as well (also reminiscent of several Final Fantasy titles) is extremely freeform and focusing on passive upgrades – upping attributes, your resistances and damage output abilities, health levels and such. And your starting class just means a starting point on that passive skills board, but you can develop it in any direction you want.
All of the above is also paired with a complete lack of “money”, which is a usual concept for action RPGs. Instead, purchasing and selling works on a more barter-like concept, mixed with an idea of crafting where if you “sell” certain combinations of items, you get a special item. You also still have several slots for the potions, yet all the potion bottles refill a certain amount per enemy kill and are, thus, reusable, and can also have special additional benefits. All of this leads to an interesting situation, completely unique for action RPG titles, where you don’t really run around filled with junk and instead only usually care about loot that can work for the character build you’re working towards, more universal items, item modifiers, active skill gems and some rare and unique loot to sell, craft or modify. This makes the game so much more smartly streamlined, motivating you to focus on killing enemies for experience and permanent upgrades on your characters, instead of junk you usually just leave lying around anyway.
This mix of truly amazing horror atmosphere and actually interesting world, extremely satisfying gameplay and genuinely amazing stylish visuals and music (it looks like what Infinity Engine games did pre-rendered, except real time rendered) is a joy to play. And 15 hours, that got me almost to the very end of Act 3, that originally closed the game, were spent without a boring moment almost up until the end. And then there was a day when servers went down and I couldn’t play, despite having played for 15 hours solo and completely ignoring any MMO elements. And after attempting to go to an area and finish it, only to be booted out of the game and all the area progress erased several times, just got me completely disinterested in continuing to play for now. It was such a strange experience – such a rude sudden reminder that this is an always-online game, even if you can play and enjoy it solo, and that fact can ruin your solo experience.
I fully understand why the game went for the always online and get their F2P practices. Sure, personally I’d love to have the option to just pay for a single-player only version of the game, instead of having this free access to the game that can just stop working at some random point. But I’m probably not the intended audience, especially since there’s zero motivation for me to pay or care about any of the “end game stuff” or whatever else MMO concepts. And I didn’t drop the game for now because I don’t want to play it at all in the future – I got burned out on aRPGs with playing a bit too many recently (and even with the cool gameplay innovations like here they do get boring). And I also read that future Acts were essentially returns to the ones that I’ve seen, just with newer areas and some more story, but sadly, despite the interesting world, the story in Path of Exile is very lacking. Maybe it gets better than just some background filler at some point, but come on – I played for 15 hours and it didn’t get there. That should’ve been plenty.
Path of Exile is free. It can be highly enjoyed as a solo game and allows you to coop pretty easily. It’s extremely fun to play and has truly amazing sense of tone. I sure wish there was an offline version of it, but you know what – get it and play it for a while. These games are probably meant to be played once in a while anyway. You’ll probably love the game too.