Path of Exile 2 is back with beta 0.3.0 -- and it feels like Christmas Eve for a Casual Gamer Dad. We who grew up with gaming but now juggle diapers, coffee and baby screams are finally getting a game where the pause button is as important as the loot. The game is massive, endless -- and perfect for dads who are gaming on borrowed time.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
Path of Exile 2 is a game that you return to as a ritual. Not necessarily daily -- but in the way you return to a favorite bar, where the bartender never quite remembers your name, but always pours up a beer as if you did. And with 0.3.0, it's like Grinding Gear Games has remodeled the entire bar, thrown out the dart board, put new lamps on the ceiling, and finally made it a place you want to linger.
PoE2 has always had a reputation for being the Excel sheet of ARPGs -- a game where every single build feels like an assignment in linear algebra. It's a game in which people with serious YouTube channels spend hours explaining one change to the atlas tree as if it were a political intervention in the fiscal code. I've never been that type of player. I'm CDG. I push the buttons, smash some monsters, and hope for the loot I pick up not to be completely useless.
But 0.3.0 changes something fundamentally. It feels for the first time like a beta that is close to being a game. Act 4 -- “The Third Edict” -- sends you to the Karui Islands, and it's surprisingly ambitious. For the first time, you can choose the order of the islands yourself, and this gives a freedom not usually associated with Poe's almost sadistic structure. Suddenly it feels more open, more organic. As if the developers have actually thought, “What if we let people have a little fun?”
And fun is the password. For the support-save system has been blown wide open. Where before you were limited to one of each support save, now you can stack loose as if you were sitting in an all-you-can-eat buffet thinking, “Yeah, I'll take a little more of this too, and screw it, give me an extra round of crit-chance on top.” The result? Build-chaos. Balance problems. And exactly the kind of anarchy that makes an ARPG worth playing. I don't know if it's optimal, but I feel like a god when my abilities suddenly explode in all directions. Diablo looks like a kid's game next door.
The new league -- “Rise of the Abyssals” -- is a chapter unto itself. Abyssal enemies show up as unwelcome guests at a private party and drop loot on the floor before disappearing. Well of Souls and Abyssal Troves introduce even more layers to crafting and gear. It is at once alluring and utterly incomprehensible. I know there exist people on Reddit who can write entire essays about why an abyssal modifier is “S-tier” -- I myself just see a new color on the screen and think, “That must be good.” And that's enough.
The balance changes are extensive: character classes are tweaked, bosses' lives are trimmed, the passive tree is tweaked, and even the item system feels more dynamic. There's no doubt Jonathan Rogers and co. have seen the criticism from 0.2.0 and said, “Okay, we screwed up a bit -- let's redo it.” The result is a patch that feels like a giant confession and a huge boost all at once.
But let's talk about the real thing: How does it feel to play? It feels like sitting in an old armchair you had no idea you'd missed. I start a new run, wallow into hordes of enemies, spam my abilities and watch the screen explode into colors that would give the epilepsy committee a long day at the office. I don't always know what I'm doing, but I know I'm doing it in style.
That's the beauty of PoE2: it speaks both to the hardcore and to the CDGs. If you want to spend 40 hours optimizing a build guide, there's room for you. If you want to jump in for an hour, neck some monsters, get a new sword, and log back out -- there's room for you, too. The game doesn't judge you. And in a genre that otherwise has it with whipping people into meta-compulsion, it's liberating.
YouTube is still filled with people talking about “gemcutting” and “essence rework” in a language I'm never going to understand. I'll let them do it. For me, PoE2 is about the sense of progression. About turning on the game, killing something, and thinking, “It was worth it.” It's simple. And with 0.3.0, it's finally fun again.
The comparison to Diablo is inescapable. I've grown up with Diablo, and that's where I learned to love the ARPG genre. But PoE2 takes everything that Diablo was and says, 'Why settle? ' It's bigger, darker, more complex -- and frankly, far more satisfying. Diablo is popcorn; PoE2 is a five-course menu where you don't quite understand what you're eating, but where the flavour explodes in your mouth anyway.
Let's just put it like this...
Path of Exile 2 is still outrageously complex. It's still interspersed with systems I'm never going to master. But it's also crazy fun. 0.3.0 shows that developers are listening and that they dare to take big steps in a direction where the game can be everything for everyone. It's still nerdy enough for the hardcore -- but now open enough that even a CDG can feel like a legend in Wraeclast. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is no small feat.
