I don't know what happened. I usually play a weekend of a league, finish the campaign in one day and then spend the next two days playing maps until I am satisfied, bricking my character in some YOLO move to stop myself from feeling like I have to keep playing and then move onto other games until the next season comes around. But this time it was different. I realised that I could complete (almost) all of the league challenges. Have they always been this straightforward? who knows. I reached level 100 for the first time, had a hinekora’s lock drop for me, managed to afford a headhunter, cleared 38/40 of the seasonal challenges to unlock all of the "free" MTX outfits (rip the final totem reward), levelled a 2nd magic-find character and then decided I was done.

I started watching Noah Caldwell-Gervais' Diablo Franchise Retrospective in the background during early maps and I was positively mental stimulated by his discussions of casino psychology, skinner boxes and how they relate to loot-driven RPGs - specifically the idea of an addict sitting a slot machine all day, not because they think they will win big, but because the world around them can fade away to be only the wheels spinning in front of them.

I laughed at the time, but after some 100 hours of playtime in just under two weeks, I understand that sensation deeply. Path of Exile is the most finely tuned slot machine to ever exist and thankfully, for the most part, it doesn’t require credits to spin the wheel, only your hard earned time.

The most insulting part for myself is that Necropolis isn’t even that good of a league! I graveyard crafted one(!) good item, sold any allflames for profit and then spent the rest of my playtime mad that I couldn’t disable corpse drops or atleast hide them without clicking a tiny button on their massive UI tombstone. I quit affliction much sooner because I had FOMO from picking the wrong build and atlas strategy but I now realise that anything can make profit (at least with the new atleast/scarab set up introduced in this league). Running Harvest, Heist, Incursion and selling the outcomes lets you get such a steady source of income that you feel more like a business mogul than a gambling addict.

5 I can quit anytimes out of 5.

So the bastards roped me back in with hundreds of free packs, an expansion featuring the return of some of my favourite characters and I managed to make the push to legend. I'm older now, the player base is more mature, metagaming is solved quicker, easier and more definitively thanks to sites like vicious syndicate. The end-result? This isn't what I was playing when I was booting up the game everyday to complete my dailies when I was 14. This isn't the game that me and my friends would play when we would mirror match up Legendary Priest. This isn't even naxxramas.

Pure distilled ludo. The three-man team behind Timemelters and previously Sang-Froid trim all of the fat, sacrificing graphics and presentation to make this clicky, thoughtful puzzle-tower-defence-action game.

Each handcrafted level leads you comfortably through trial, error, iteration to the end (or often the beginning) of each map, where the plan comes together, your five clones high-five each other and shoot lasers into a magic ball.

The systems are smooth and intuitive, with very little unintended friction or bugs and that is a dream for such a miraculously complicated time-travelling mechanical device.

Truly baffling how mismanaged this project must have been. My heart goes out to any and all people who had to work on anything regarding this game. A multi-billion dollar company is incapable of giving the resources and the scope required to NOT end a half-a-decade development cycle with this bland, copy-pasted rehash. The grappling hook is goated, thank god, but even the implementation of alternative equipment sucks. They had to bring back the Halo 2 Gondola Ride, everyone's favourite masterclass in waiting for an encounter to end. This Halo sure could be infinite if they were willing to reuse the same environments a few million times more.