Path of Exile

 PC
User Score
7.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 2202 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,641 out of 2202
  2. Mixed: 258 out of 2202
  3. Negative: 303 out of 2202

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  1. shawnunkempt
    Oct 25, 2013
    6
    Path of Exile is a free to play ARPG. The appeal of the game is the depth and complexity that can go into creating your characters. The passive tree is a large web of skills, and crucial decisions to how your character will be play are made in here. Players are free to navigate the tree any way they want. The tree supports the skill gems that a character uses, which can be linked togetherPath of Exile is a free to play ARPG. The appeal of the game is the depth and complexity that can go into creating your characters. The passive tree is a large web of skills, and crucial decisions to how your character will be play are made in here. Players are free to navigate the tree any way they want. The tree supports the skill gems that a character uses, which can be linked together with support gems to change the way a certain skill will work. At first glance, this is all very complicated, but after a little experience it all clicks together and makes sense.

    The complexity of the game only really applies to the character creation. The combat itself is lackluster, mainly because the monsters are unimaginative and lack any real challenge or AI. The only challenge at points are often only based on the quality of gear your character has managed to find. Having life and high resistances is nearly mandatory, however finding gear is rare and is completely random. Crafting is mainly just gambling, with no way to predetermine what you can roll on your gear.

    The funnest part is when your character begins to really come together. When your passive tree, skill gems and gear are synced up together your character starts to feel powerful. The only problem is getting to that point can take forever. At the upper levels, you will need to spend hours grinding areas for enough experience and gear to comfortably head into the next zone. Gaining enough experience starts to really slow down and the grind can become boring.

    I think this game is great on paper. In reality it's a decent game that has a lot of flaws. It can too often become a boring grind, with monsters that are just too vanilla. There are also a few technical issues that can really hurt the playing experience. The netcode will often cause your character to warp to a different spot and the graphical demands on your computer are too high for the actual graphical quality. The game requires a lot of patience from the player.    … Expand
  2. 1ManAndHisDroid
    Nov 27, 2013
    6
    What's not to like? It's free.. it looks good.. it's a damned site more impressive than Diablo 3 (just for variety of skills, etc.)
    You've got nothing to lose by trying it I was pleasantly surprised!
    :)
  3. Freaksy
    May 23, 2014
    6
    This game is focused on too much to be like D2 in artstyle and character builds, it just lacks fun.
    Embeding skills into gear is just a ridiculous idea.
    Giant skill tree seems good at first but lose your way in midway and you have to go get some help from community at some point. There are no ragdoll physics or anything, and animations are a little bit rough around the edges. But it's    This game is focused on too much to be like D2 in artstyle and character builds, it just lacks fun.
    Embeding skills into gear is just a ridiculous idea.
    Giant skill tree seems good at first but lose your way in midway and you have to go get some help from community at some point.
    There are no ragdoll physics or anything, and animations are a little bit rough around the edges. But it's acceptable for a f2p game I guess.

    I couldn't finish the game, it just got too boring.    … Expand
  4. pythag0ras
    Mar 31, 2016
    6
    pros:
    -lots of depth
    -interesting currency system cons: absurdly small player inventory....cant even collect all the items that drop from one boss... and no way apparently to make it larger. This is why this game was a 6 for me... woulda been much better if you had a larger inventory. i played for 3 hours one day and counted how many times i had to go to town to sell... 15    pros:
    -lots of depth
    -interesting currency system

    cons: absurdly small player inventory....cant even collect all the items that drop from one boss... and no way apparently to make it larger. This is why this game was a 6 for me... woulda been much better if you had a larger inventory. i played for 3 hours one day and counted how many times i had to go to town to sell... 15 times....15!!!! ridiculous

    The labyrinth (which you must clear to even get access to the xpac classes ) is designed poorly with too much emphasis on dodging clusters of traps that one shot you. Oh and you cant die in the labyrinth or you have to start all over. Terrible design and makes the ascendancy classes unaccessible.

    also no auction house.. closest they have ais a third party website where people connect to trade stuff (lol what year did this come out?? pretty sure auction houses were already a MMO staple by the time this was made)

    depends entirely on horribly calibrated RNG..everything is random , every time you try and modify an item you gotta sit there and gamble ...should be able to just set whatever stats you want... super tired of game devs using the RNG crutch . This game is so bloody RNG that you would be lucky to get anything that you want ...EVER!! this is the other reason i gave this a 6. too much rng...    … Expand
  5. MadWinning
    Aug 9, 2022
    6
    Just maps, mobs and items with different modifiers. Not rewarding. POE isn't as complex as you would think after seeing those passive trees. The game is just inflated.
  6. O3liveon
    Nov 9, 2022
    6
    I had pretty good time with this one. Good graphics, no technical issues for me. Some what interesting world, and creative mechanics that add it's own flair. Not gonna go too in depth but it's free so of course I recommend it. It just didn't hold me in its world for as long as I was hoping. There are better types of games like this, or maybe not necessarily better, but other games in whichI had pretty good time with this one. Good graphics, no technical issues for me. Some what interesting world, and creative mechanics that add it's own flair. Not gonna go too in depth but it's free so of course I recommend it. It just didn't hold me in its world for as long as I was hoping. There are better types of games like this, or maybe not necessarily better, but other games in which their world hooked me more. Like Undecember and Grim Dawn. Give those other two a shot first, but this is free so you minds as well go into it with the expectation that you'll have fun!… Expand
  7. BaldursThones
    Nov 26, 2022
    6
    It never really kept my interest at the start and I am not a fan of grindy MMO games.
  8. Izoeros
    Apr 26, 2022
    6
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  9. theedee
    Sep 21, 2014
    5
    Purely luck based.

    POE is the "unofficial successor" to the eminently respectable Diablo 2. And while it has inherited some good points it also inherited all the bad things. To bring it to the point: This game is completely luck based. Player Skill and the skilling itself (called passives here) are more or less irrelevant compared to the items. In this game you have to find the right    Purely luck based.

    POE is the "unofficial successor" to the eminently respectable Diablo 2. And while it has inherited some good points it also inherited all the bad things. To bring it to the point: This game is completely luck based. Player Skill and the skilling itself (called passives here) are more or less irrelevant compared to the items. In this game you have to find the right items, the right number of sockets in these items, the right color of sockets, the right skills and so on. If you run out of luck on just one of these you hit a wall at lvl 50 that you cant pass.
    Of course in order to give the player a chance you can use "orbs" to change the properties of an item, but that is also purely luck based. You can use one orb to get the desired result, or you can use 1000. I wanted to change the number of sockets on one item in order to use a skill with the needed amount of linked support skills. For that I used up ALL orbs I found in the game so far (like 50 hours) and I didnt get one step closer to the needed amount of sockets (wanted to change it from 3 to at least 4, never got more than 3 even though up to 6 are possible).
    Like in Diablo 2 the good items are only possible to find in areas where you wont be able to get without having luck in the first place, which turns this game into a stupid grind game (half of the party lobbies are farming lobbies with people running around in the same area for hours cause they cant continue the real game without a lucky drop). that may have been ok 12 years ago (in Diablo 2), but today thats just bad. Therefore this game is only for die hard fans of Diablo 2, who want to get the same game with better graphics. Those who want to play a game thats "up to date" should play Torchlight II instead.    … Expand
  10. Crimson
    Nov 3, 2013
    5
    A average game that despite some clever ideas, doesn't really play out well. In the end it becomes a very grindy hack'n'slash with poor, laggy, and uninspired combat.
  11. Simbosan
    Nov 30, 2013
    5
    There is a semi decent game, but I can't put up with only being able to see about a 10 foot square of it. The view is TINY tiny tiny. Crazy, can't see how it gets such good scores.
  12. Necrotaur
    Nov 4, 2013
    5
    Take away the F2P and you have a very, very average ARPG. The skill tree that looks so amazing at first glance is entirely passive, so you will spend all your points increasing health by X% or damage by Y%. The graphics are good, but overall the world felt uninspired. The trading and economy could have been done better, and there being no gold or money really annoys me for some reason.Take away the F2P and you have a very, very average ARPG. The skill tree that looks so amazing at first glance is entirely passive, so you will spend all your points increasing health by X% or damage by Y%. The graphics are good, but overall the world felt uninspired. The trading and economy could have been done better, and there being no gold or money really annoys me for some reason. Netcode is very spotty, and endgame is extremely grindy, though to be fair most ARPGs are like that. I think if I had spent money on this I would have walked away feeling disappointed.… Expand
  13. Ananisapta
    Dec 23, 2013
    5
    You get what you pay for! In this case, that amounts to an entertaining side-scroller that's free and easy to learn. User forums and support are generally friendly and helpful. An asset is the ability to develop your alter in any number of directions with the vast talent tree. I have trouble getting immersed due to the fixed, high-angle perspective. Also game-play gets very repetitious atYou get what you pay for! In this case, that amounts to an entertaining side-scroller that's free and easy to learn. User forums and support are generally friendly and helpful. An asset is the ability to develop your alter in any number of directions with the vast talent tree. I have trouble getting immersed due to the fixed, high-angle perspective. Also game-play gets very repetitious at times. Although you mainly play in an instance by yourself, save points are few and far between. It strives for an open-world feel but you may feel severely constrained and numbed by the milieu. I haven't ventured into the PvP part of this game, and that's not my forte anyhow. The game seems solo-able and I haven't found much in the way of fellowship opportunities. For fantasy role-playing fans, Skyrim and Guild Wars 2 seem much superior experiences, or you can wait a few months of Elder Scrolls Online.… Expand
  14. iseeall
    Mar 15, 2023
    5
    A Diablo-like free-to-play MMO.

    Good: - great music - a large selection of abilities, spells and effects - free So-so: - the game is messy in a sense that there are lots of mobs, lots of stuff happening all at once and it's often hard to see what's going on, especially if you play as a witch with tons of summoned minions. I recall playing Diablo 1 (I never played Diablo 3 and    A Diablo-like free-to-play MMO.

    Good:
    - great music
    - a large selection of abilities, spells and effects
    - free

    So-so:
    - the game is messy in a sense that there are lots of mobs, lots of stuff happening all at once and it's often hard to see what's going on, especially if you play as a witch with tons of summoned minions. I recall playing Diablo 1 (I never played Diablo 3 and only very little of Diablo 2), and this game feels like a mess in comparison
    - at the same time it's a rather simple game, at least the first act that I've seen. You defeat mobs like crazy and the game feels like it was made for kids. As a witch, you can just run around and occasionally summon skeletons - and your minions kill everything for you
    - the idea of gems giving abilities is novel but doesn't feel good. I'd much more prefer to just learn spells - this feels like improving a character. But with gems and gear it all feels like consumerism, fixed on the notion of owning things. But I understand it's the same from the game mechanic point of view. It's just the framing

    Bad:
    - poor performance. Even on the lowest graphical settings everything was lagging for me all the time. I have a decent gaming laptop from late 2018 which at that time could run Oculus VR
    - there are lots of items dropping but you never have enough space to loot them. You end up leaving even blue items on the floor. What's the point in this? They should have added some spell to disenchant those items or whatever, not just force the player to skip loot. Also, the idea to not have a universal currency (like gold) in the game was a bad one. You end up getting ingredients for various orbs in exchange for the loot you sell - and much of those aren't even needed for anything useful. It's just clutter and clutter in your stash. Sorting out inventory ends up consuming a lot of your playtime, and it's not fun
    - as it goes with most fantasy games, the story is forgettable trash that I stopped reading after the first few dialogs

    I didn't enjoy it past the few first zones. It's too easy, too quick, too messy. Maybe it just targets teenagers, I dunno. Not for me. It's sad for me to see the Diablo genre degrade into this.    … Expand
  15. edgil215
    Nov 13, 2013
    5
    I really liked this game at first but soon after about level 50 or so on a character it becomes more and more apparent the lack of polish and blatant oversights of fundamental game design issues.

    There was a review below by user "Rowsol" that hit a lot of the key points for flaws and holes in the game and other than the fact that you actually can respec, contrary to what he mentioned.    I really liked this game at first but soon after about level 50 or so on a character it becomes more and more apparent the lack of polish and blatant oversights of fundamental game design issues.

    There was a review below by user "Rowsol" that hit a lot of the key points for flaws and holes in the game and other than the fact that you actually can respec, contrary to what he mentioned.

    The passive tree is a novel idea but is just jam packed crammed full of useless nodes, it needs to be made smaller with better benefits. At first it feels like there are a lot of options and room to grow but there are only 1 or 2 logical paths to even take because of the surplus of pointless nodes. In turn the excess of useless nodes grants the game absolutely no level of customization when there is only 1 "correct" or most 'powerful' path.

    The majority of the vendor recipes never even come up or are completely useless anyways. For example iron ring skill gem a completely useless ring? There are lots of pointless ones like this if you look at the wiki page for vendor recipes. Skill gems are completely worthless to sell to vendors. The only skill gem "sink" is the onyx amulet needed 1 of each type and that is even if you want a worthless white amulet with +jack to all attributes.

    The race events/leagues are made a complete static joke by the fact that the starting positions on the passive tree force you to play in 1 direction. The end game maps are extremely repetitive and don't really make any sense to me as far as the progression of the "story".

    You can just use waypoints or portal scrolls in the game at ANY point or boss battle to go back to town and completely refill all of your flasks. And if you refuse to participate in such idiotic redundancy, there are simply not enough flask slots for how many different types of flasks there are that can be utilized. The keys 6-0 are not used for anything else by default why not have at least 6 to 10 flasks? Or possibly 2 sets of flasks (like with 'X' and weapon sets), that way you could have health/mana etc on one and then maybe resists on the other

    I just think for how many things were designed in a great where there are WAY too many things that are completely obvious quick fixes that for some reason go addressed? Just because a game or something is free doesn't mean people want to play or use it if it sucks or is no fun and serves no purpose. There are A LOT of free games nowadays this is not the 90s anymore where you had to play OG Runescape.

    The idea of an economy without gold is amazing but the consequences delivered in this game are in no way worth it what so ever. All of the consumable items have insanely terrible chances of giving you anything good or actually upgrading gear to be better than what you are currently wearing.

    Trying to level and grind levels in the later game (50+) is not rewarding in any sense of the word. Literally your only option to continue progressing (especially due to drought of any useful item drops) is to clear and re-clear the same exact boring instances over and over again. The leveling curve is waaaay too skewed and unbalanced. The game needs at least another act (Act IV) to spread out the rest of the levels throughout all 3 difficulties. Right now everything is jammed within the first 60+ levels or so and it makes no sense so it forces you to repeatedly farm "end-game" maps, SNOREFEST! I know often ARPGs in this style are referred to as a "Dungeon Crawl", well never in my entire life more have I felt like I was "CRAWLing" through a game or character levels. And then in the end what is it all for? Even if you get to a high level and get nice loot and gear on a league eventually all of your crap just becomes Standard, so ridiculously pointless.

    Plain and simple this game heavily favors people who are already in end-game and have been contributing donations since closed beta and before. These people have infinite orbs of all types and can readily farm even more for all of their lower characters. So yeah if you have the ability to farm hundreds of thousands of orbs and gear then maybe it is fun to gear up a lower level character and play around. But if you are playing with your highest level character don't expect jack to ever drop that will improve your character or keep you from dying.

    Beyond countless performance issues and bugs with this game it is still a great game to try because the initial price is right.. This game has an unlimited amount of potential but as far as I'm concerned had no business leaving beta. "Room to grow" doesn't mean "let's go", disappointing. DO NOT expect this to fill the void for fans left by "Diablo II" that "Diablo 3" completely failed absolutely miserably at delivering on. This game can be fun for short periods of time, however in it's current state is nowhere near ready or capable of bringing the ARPG experience that is deserving of over a decade now removed from Diablo II.    … Expand
  16. Illusion
    Dec 6, 2013
    5
    PoE is that cool girl you see and idolize in your mind.
    But as you got to know her better the illusion falls apart.
    PoE had the potential to be the best ARPG ever. But it is far far away from that in its current state. So what is wrong with PoE? For starters the most important thing in an ARPG is the gameplay quality. There is no point in complex mechanics if the game is not    PoE is that cool girl you see and idolize in your mind.
    But as you got to know her better the illusion falls apart.

    PoE had the potential to be the best ARPG ever.
    But it is far far away from that in its current state.

    So what is wrong with PoE?
    For starters the most important thing in an ARPG is the gameplay quality. There is no point in complex mechanics if the game is not working properly, or not responding to your commands. PoE suffers horrible in terms of gameplay.

    DESYNCH: imagine you play Mario, and on the other side of the wall there is a small monster wandering there. When you get there you will need to pay attention to it, but no need to worry now because it is not near you. And Bam! "GAME OVER" !?
    Well it turns out that this monster was not far away, it was actually near you, even better actually you were not even where you thought you were!!
    The screen position of your char and enemies may always be wrong in PoE, and if you rely on the information on your screen you will die.. ALOT!

    You may ask "But if screen information are unreliable, how do I maneuver to avoid things in fight?"
    Well game saves you from that problem, because DESYNCH is almost certain when attempting to maneuver away from enemies, and especially doing that with high move speed or with mobility skills. So you simply dont even attempt.

    COMMAND RESPONSE: PoE is a "pick a skill/spell and spam it whole game" type of ARPG. Nothing but nothing pays as well as overfocusing a single skill for DPS. Also skills not having cooldown, and reaching ridiculous attack/cast speeds like 2-10 per second; only viable way of sustaining DPS is spamming without interruption. So even if you had 2 skills it would not be possible to use them consequently.
    So we do spam in PoE. Now the real problem; game has no command queueing code, and completely ignores the commands given while spamming attacks. Everyone in game uses auto-cast supports for their auxilary skill for that reason.

    BLAND MONSTERS: PoE has a very boring monster design, they just rush to you with a single attack/spell. ONLY utility monster in game is necromancer to raise back undead. As there are no utility monsters to drive difficulty up, as you progress game difficulty increases only by making monsters deal more damage. Spike damage scales so ridiculously that you get one shot by everything unless you invest %70 of your passives to increase max life or reaching life nods.

    TRADE FOCUSED GAME DESIGN: Drops are based on trade oriented economy. So it is as bad as D3 AH. But it is even worse because game does not have an ingame trade system other than a horrible trade chat, so ALL players use an external trade find site named poe.xyz which is exactly same thing as AH.
    Trading 15 mins will get you gear which you can not get by grinding for 10 hours.

    In conclusion PoE is an ARPG where you should
    not try to maneuver mobs,
    not rely on position of enemies or your char on screen,
    spam a single skill keeping everything else in autocast,
    increase max life nonstop to avoid one-shot kills.
    Also trade oriented drops are as bad as D3 AH.

    That is not what I expect from an ARPG.
    (based on the experience of a player who completed all endgame content)    … Expand
  17. MONSTERPOWER
    Jan 28, 2014
    5
    I will give this game a 5 out of 10. Why you ask? Well, 5 points for a fun game. Minus 5 points for not being able to trade in global chat. I tried to sell my end game gear in global chat and was warned by the moderators not to post them in global chat. Well, suck my motherfu*king co*k! So, that is why I gave the game a 5 out of 10.
  18. gwkleong
    Jan 29, 2014
    5
    This is a great game (similar to Diablo gameplay) but what's with the region locked!!!??? I was playing from Australia and need to travel out of country to work for months. After I have updated my Steam Client, it has locked me out from continuing. Please update the system to trace the user profile and not the network IP!!!!!

    I also agreed with some comments on the chat system - the    This is a great game (similar to Diablo gameplay) but what's with the region locked!!!??? I was playing from Australia and need to travel out of country to work for months. After I have updated my Steam Client, it has locked me out from continuing. Please update the system to trace the user profile and not the network IP!!!!!

    I also agreed with some comments on the chat system - the chat screen is way too big which block a big area of your screen.....    … Expand
  19. Korriban
    Jan 31, 2014
    5
    To be honest i expected a lot from this game, but i ended up playing with a bad copy of diablo 2.5
    Not saying that this game is crap, I'm saying that it needs a lot of improvement, after reading in the loading screen that this game has been developing for 7 years, well... I can't help myself thinking "7 years and that's all you got ?"
    Overall the graphics and the effects are good, but    To be honest i expected a lot from this game, but i ended up playing with a bad copy of diablo 2.5
    Not saying that this game is crap, I'm saying that it needs a lot of improvement, after reading in the loading screen that this game has been developing for 7 years, well... I can't help myself thinking "7 years and that's all you got ?"

    Overall the graphics and the effects are good, but the game has some major problems with fps (FYI, I'm running a mid-high end pc) I got coninuous fps spikes and this occurred not only when the map was crowded and I were spamming stuff, but also while running around alone.
    Also, I don't understand the decision of not having a single player or, even better, an offline mode, we all know that guns don't kill people, but lag does.
    Another aspect I don't like is the active skill system, an original idea overall, but poorly fulfilled, a good old skill tree would have been better and less confusing imho.
    The passive skill tree, however, is a real gem, although is the copy of Final Fantasy X skill tree, but still, is nice, you have to plan in advance what you will become and choose wisely your path, I couldn't wait to level up just to look at the tree and place my skill point.
    But let's go back to another unpleasant aspect of the game, the story, is there one? I don't know what to say, honestly, I think it is almost invisible, you just play to reach the next map, that's all, I didn't have the feeling of going on a quest to kill the "evil enemy", just... killing stuff, dropping stuff, having lag/fps spikes, I didn't even finish the game due to boredom.    … Expand
  20. Zenslider
    Jan 31, 2014
    5
    Almost giving it a 7, semi hard core to hard core players please read on for perspective.
    Way too many posters here did not level past 60.
    8 for concepts Would be 9.5 out of 10 but the huge exception of crafting. For end game be prepared to farm for endless hours to attempt to upgrade gear. Imagine farming thousands of crafting items and maybe not get premium item upgraded. And it    Almost giving it a 7, semi hard core to hard core players please read on for perspective.
    Way too many posters here did not level past 60.

    8 for concepts
    Would be 9.5 out of 10 but the huge exception of crafting.
    For end game be prepared to farm for endless hours to attempt to upgrade gear. Imagine farming thousands of crafting items and maybe not get premium item upgraded. And it took thousands of drops and crafting items to get there. Now you can trade but there is no formal trading system. If you want a 2nd and 3rd part time job well this is your bread and butter. Want to somewhat gear a few characters past 70, good luck. It is better if you trade constantly for marginal gains, but imagine logging on and spamming trade chat every day getting your for sale equipment listed on 3rd party sites instead of playing.

    5 for Connectivity
    DESYNC will kill you. If you like to use skill at the margins in stead of power spamming be prepared to be annoyed. There are really cool races for points for a few mediocre items that are enjoyable but the better I do at these races is most correlated to managing desync. Hardcore leagues you have to really spec defensively and or group. If you play casual for end game a death costs you 10% of a level of experience although it won't drop you a level.

    I paid up because I feel like supporting the direction of game design they tried, but they would be much better off as a division of Blizzard getting some bandwidth, proper PR and support charging a few bucks a month. The free to play unless you want cool visuals or reasonable inventory space is weak for long term viability. The made huge leaps from D2 and yet made some rookie mistakes all at the same time.

    I can only pray someone comes along and learns from their mistakes. Happily ready to pay 10-20$ a month for that privilege.    … Expand
  21. robomartion
    Aug 3, 2022
    5
    I feel like Path of Exile is heavily skewed for hardcore players and all the content that leads up to that is kind of boring compared to Diablo III or Diablo II.
  22. Samfortal
    Sep 3, 2017
    5
    The game is really enjoyable, but the lack of auction house and the overcrowd chinese players abusing from bots selling unique itens on game, makes you have sure there a lot of things wrong there. There are even rumors about the company having profit from the black chinese market, allowing then to freely operate inside. Please, put auction house in game, stop this flipped non sense economy.
  23. b4l4cps
    Oct 3, 2020
    5
    ok first of all.. i really like the game and enjoy it, this game could be 10/10 without some issues... for me the main issue is the currency/items drop rate... lets say a new season begins and u want to play .. a good 6link chest or weapon is avg 1-8 EX also clusters and others stuff u expend 10-20 ex on most of the builds to make it work properly (U CANT DO THE END GAME WITH BUDGET BUILDSok first of all.. i really like the game and enjoy it, this game could be 10/10 without some issues... for me the main issue is the currency/items drop rate... lets say a new season begins and u want to play .. a good 6link chest or weapon is avg 1-8 EX also clusters and others stuff u expend 10-20 ex on most of the builds to make it work properly (U CANT DO THE END GAME WITH BUDGET BUILDS , TRUST ME, 5-10EX).. u will need to sit ur ass at least 10-12 hours per day to enjoy a good build with expensive items... this is nutS!!!

    i think if they work on this and make thinks a litle bit easier to drop.. like increase 10-15% stuff to drop a lot of ppl who doesnt play or have stoped playng it will come back to the game..i know a lot of friends who think the same and some of them work and have wife and children.. so they play other games that u dont need to stay 24/7 on to enjoy it.. if u know what i mean    … Expand
  24. F3T1W
    Aug 27, 2021
    5
    I ran for a couple of hours, I won't paint too much, it's stuffy, pass by ...
  25. CoolDadTx
    Jun 14, 2020
    4
    Ok ARPG starting out but steadily goes downhill starting with act 5 when you go back through the same areas again. Mostly the same thing every other ARPG has but the skill system is out of control, the crafting is so large as to be mostly meaningless and the boss battles work the exact same way every time with just another paint job. It is clear this game is designed for MMO even thoughOk ARPG starting out but steadily goes downhill starting with act 5 when you go back through the same areas again. Mostly the same thing every other ARPG has but the skill system is out of control, the crafting is so large as to be mostly meaningless and the boss battles work the exact same way every time with just another paint job. It is clear this game is designed for MMO even though you can play it solo.

    The boss battles are probably the worst (or close to it) of any ARPG I've ever played. The all work the exact same way and are guaranteed for you to die. Bosses do some mediocre attacks a couple of times and then do some high powered attack that is sometimes avoidable but often not. If you don't die immediately then you'll need to regen health. Rinse and repeat. Laster bosses also have an area of effect attack that pretty much instantly kills you irrelevant of resistances or anything else. My resists were maxed and I died every time. Early in the battle they tend to affect an area of the (already small battleground) but as the battle goes on they get bigger until they cover the entire field. So there is no defense against this attack and you die. After a while the boss becomes invulnerable and summons minions. This is where you're supposed to recover your health/mana but they some literally entire screen fulls of enemies such that you generally get overwhelmed and die. Even worse is that when you reenter the area they are already on top of you. I died multiple times as soon as I entered the area before I could even move. The boss battles are plain awful. The best choice is to get up close and wail on the boss until you die and then spawn back in. Nothing else works.

    The next issue is that the devs haven't gone to UI 101 training. When you die you get 2 options: return to town or return to checkpoint. The default is town but that almost always involves tracking back through areas (which have probably respawned). The correct choice is checkpoint but if you're mashing buttons to try to attack someone when you die it is read as return to town and so you get screwed over. Every UI person knows you don't put the least popular choice first and choices that have consequences should never be applied just because of a click. I thought games were past these poor UI issues??

    ARPGs are loot based and the loot in this game is pretty poor compared to others. This game is clearly mass RND but most stuff you find late game is worse than what you have now. Most ARPGs start spitting out better equip later in the game but this game keeps spitting out useless stuff. The equipment itself can be good but mostly doesn't help you in larger battles. This is where the crafting comes in. There are so many different pieces of crafting that it is insane. You need it all though because each crafting has minimal impact on anything. It is like the devs knew this was a problem so many crafting items are simply for taking a normal item and making in magical. A better idea would simply to improve your loot system. I never created a single item that was anywhere near as good as what I had.

    The skill tree is out of control as well. Skills are so far apart that to get the ones you likely want you're going to be snaking through useless skills. Most all skills provide bare minimal usefulness anyway. +5% dmg here, +2% health there. Nothing is overly useful in this tree, if you can find it to begin with. It is clear this has evolved so you know can put "jewels" in your tree. But only if you select useless skills to get there. jewels aren't worth it. Again it is like the devs know this so they hand out respec points like there is nobodies business so you can change your mind. I never used them and had 21 by end of game.

    As the game evolves they add new features which could be interesting but all of them are poorly described, scatter everywhere and rarely useful. I can't count the times somebody said I should go here and I went there just to find out it was to clear out yet another area to get something that I had no idea the purpose of. There comes a point where you should just start removing things that are old, stop adding to the chaos.

    The enemies are traditional but in later acts it is clear the devs just pump up the damage and hp to add the challenge. Nothing new here. Even worse is that "uniques" appear around almost every corner and they tend to be more bullet spongy. To the point that I would run away from certain classes of uniques because they weren't worth the fight. There is serious balancing issues in later acts for no real reason. The whole level guide on the map means nothing.

    Overall this is an OK RPG (at least early on) that stays entirely too long (act 5+ is equivalent of higher difficulty in traditional games), has poor loot, meaningless skills and crafting, and boss battles that are just unfair to a single player. Later acts bring this game way down.    … Expand
  26. MrZero
    Nov 1, 2013
    4
    To begin with, props to the developers. They've created a free game that truly tries to keep it grounded so players have to actually play the game to progress, instead of just buy their way through, a la gear from an auction house, RL player, ect.. This product appears to be a true labor of love, and the title screen even touts "After 7 years of development, we are proud to present toTo begin with, props to the developers. They've created a free game that truly tries to keep it grounded so players have to actually play the game to progress, instead of just buy their way through, a la gear from an auction house, RL player, ect.. This product appears to be a true labor of love, and the title screen even touts "After 7 years of development, we are proud to present to you POE!!"

    And that might be where the problem lies: The game feels extremely dated, extremely short, and fails extremely bad in most areas.

    The graphics are very meh, the story is forgettable music is just-okay, and with the way the party system is setup, you can literally win this game within ohhhhh, 4-10 hours? True story.

    The game has different difficulty levels, but who cares? It boils down to monsters hitting harder, not tactics. All you do in this game is mash buttons. There's so many animations and crap flying across the screen, you spend the entire game looking at your health/spirit level waiting to pop a potion, all while just holding down the auto-attack. I literally held "Q" and pressed numbers 1-5 for my potions.

    As far is loot is concerned, this game should be renamed Path of the Ninja Looter, because it becomes a crazy game of Hungry, Hungry Hippo when a rare item (and by god, they are rare) finally drops. You'll then sell that POS item to a NPC vendor who will give you scraps for it (literally) and then you put about 1000 of those scraps together to make some orbs, and then you spam-trade those orbs for other orbs (amassing about 1000 of those, too) and then spam-trade those orbs for other orbs, spam-trade more for another type of orb and when all is said and done you'll come out of it with LITERALLY 1 orb.

    You'll then take that orb and find a spam-trader, whom you will then trade you a sword that he found for you're 1 orb. Congrats after all of that running back and forth to NPC and real-life spam traders, you now have a sword that does 3% more damage, with a chance to evade. If this sounds overly-complicated and un-rewarding to you, let me assure you, it is.

    Now, I won the game at level 38; however, I see people leveling to 70+, grinding away to get the best gear, for a game, they've already beaten ....

    That's is. Let me repeat. Beat the game in level 30's but grind away and spam-trade for gear up to level 70+. Oh, and you cant even inspect another players gear, so it is truly self-gratification unless you wanna be that jackass spam-linking his gear.    … Expand
  27. v3ctor
    Dec 4, 2013
    4
    Pros: its free, dark Gothic style, reminds me a bit of Diablo 2, fun to start with.

    Negatives: frustrating waypoint system especially near bosses. Not suited for solo play (especially with Act 2 boss onwards) as bosses/mobs become incredibly hard. In game trade system confusing and clunky. In game chat annoying. Character stats system confusing and complex easy to get wrong first time.    Pros: its free, dark Gothic style, reminds me a bit of Diablo 2, fun to start with.

    Negatives: frustrating waypoint system especially near bosses. Not suited for solo play (especially with Act 2 boss onwards) as bosses/mobs become incredibly hard. In game trade system confusing and clunky. In game chat annoying. Character stats system confusing and complex easy to get wrong first time. Grinding through mobs later in the game gets incredibly hard. Equipment socketing is confusing at first. Player deaths are not handled very well especially near boss fights where you need to fight your way through massive map of monsters to reach the boss if you die without having a portal open. Inventory system feels like a chore and constant juggling for space. Desync is frustrating beyond belief when fighting large mobs or an end boss. Maps expire too quickly often within minutes the map you just portaled from resets and you lose the portal (especially annoying if you just portaled from a boss fight!!)

    Final Opinion: yes its free (which is a big plus), but for me the negatives way outnumber the positives. I ended up uninstalling after finding myself not enjoying this game at all. It's a shame, because if just a few of the negatives were fixed (especially with boss waypoints) I might consider coming back to it.    … Expand
  28. ratapwnz
    Mar 9, 2014
    4
    This game is boring. No, i mean REALLY BORING. The only reason people play it, is to say "im not diablo3 fanboy, look i play better game". Ah and its free, schoolboys like to grind not work to buy game.
    But meanwhile there is no game at all. Only excel skill planing. Gameplay is boring rightclick like 1000 times before.
    The plot sometimes interesting, but can you write down any NPC name    This game is boring. No, i mean REALLY BORING. The only reason people play it, is to say "im not diablo3 fanboy, look i play better game". Ah and its free, schoolboys like to grind not work to buy game.
    But meanwhile there is no game at all. Only excel skill planing. Gameplay is boring rightclick like 1000 times before.
    The plot sometimes interesting, but can you write down any NPC name after you finish it? Nope.

    How fanboy see it: thousand builds
    In real world: 3.5 actual builds, other is weak and unplayable / playable only with gear grinded 500 hours.

    How fanboy see it: SOOOO MUCH PASIVESS!!!!
    In real world: 99% of nodes are same as "put 5 points in str/agi/int after lvlup".

    How fanboy see it: free game, no pay to win, no money auction
    In real world: bots in every league, black market = same money auction but some people dont know / dont wanna use it

    etc. etc. etc.

    Overrated game. 4.    … Expand
  29. xferix
    Apr 1, 2019
    4
    I cannot recommend this game despite having some fun with it. Why?

    - Loot is unrewarding (quantity over quality) - even unique items suck or are not useful for your build in 95% cases - Too much focus on trading, which is technically cumbersome (3rd party apps/webpage) - Skills are unbalanced - esp. lately, when the power creep has become so obvious (chaos dmg skills **** on melee) -    I cannot recommend this game despite having some fun with it. Why?

    - Loot is unrewarding (quantity over quality) - even unique items suck or are not useful for your build in 95% cases
    - Too much focus on trading, which is technically cumbersome (3rd party apps/webpage)
    - Skills are unbalanced - esp. lately, when the power creep has become so obvious (chaos dmg skills **** on melee)
    - Outdated gfx engine
    - Very laggy in maps (ping jumping from 20 ms to 3000 ms!), connection problems resulting in death of your character (also, you lose precious XP needed to level up)
    - Too much RNG, esp. in crafting
    - Too much grind for currency if you want to get to the endgame content
    - Too much repetition, esp. when levelling new characters - and the campaign is nothing special (you just eagerly wait for it to end ffs)
    - So much time consuming that I'd rather play 10 other (better) games in the same timespan
    - Unbalanced/unrewarding boss battles (bosses can be either pathetic or OP; you'd expect something special for killing Kitava in the final act. Nope, there is only trash!)
    - You need to buy expensive stashes to hoard stuff to improve your characters, etc. - the game is falsely advertised as F2P; it's like "free to try out" but then you need to invest heavily if you want to keep it going.

    League specific problems (Synthesis):
    - Badly designed, bloated content - even more unrewarding/time consuming than other parts of the game. F*** that!    … Expand
  30. Airek
    Oct 28, 2013
    4
    Bland graphics, bad animations, lack of variety in mobs, laughable tryhardy currency system, and the over reliance on spamming a single ability.

    The skill system, while at first glance seems interesting, ends up being a mess with a bunch of support gems making a single skill more powerful, which allows (promotes) you to spam a single ability even more than the average ARPG.
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Awards & Rankings

20
#20 Best PC Game of 2013
18
#18 Most Discussed PC Game of 2013
14
#14 Most Shared PC Game of 2013

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
86

Generally favorable reviews - based on 27 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 25 out of 27
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 27
  3. Negative: 0 out of 27
  1. RPGamer
    May 9, 2014
    100
    Grinding Gear Games has created something special here, and given it gratis to the world.
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  2. Pelit (Finland)
    Mar 11, 2014
    88
    Hack & slash games are addictive because they follow a simple formula: kill, kill and kill some more. Path of Exile is no different in this regard. During your quest in the perilous continent of Wraeclast you need to slay thousands and thousands of monsters but it never gets boring because there are a plenty of fresh ideas like the very vast skill system and barter-based economy that differentiate it from other similar games. But it's not a perfect game. The story is weak and the difficulty level is too low in the beginning. [Dec 2013]
  3. PC Gamer
    Jan 13, 2014
    84
    An exceptionally generous free-to-play action-rPG. What it lacks in punch it makes up for in depth and value for money.
    Read full review
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