When I originally reviewed POE, I created a few characters, but was constantly overwhelmed by the amount of complexity I thought was required to enjoy the game. There are an abundance of systems, all of which complement each other and build off one another despite seeming completely unrelated at first glance. There is the infamous passive tree which immediately gives most new players anxiety when opening it for the first time. I do not consider myself an ARPG master; I enjoy the gameplay of this genre more than the character building aspect of it; i.e. I prefer slaying thousands of monsters rather than calculating how to increase my DPS by 2% to trigger an effect of a unique item to completely change my entire playstyle. This means there was always a friction to my enjoyment of POE because I knew that to have fun, I would need to also have a build guide open in the background while I played, which ultimately led to me not playing at all.

However, in 2023, after playing Diablo 4 and beating its campaign, I lost the desire to continue playing that game, mainly due to its lack of complexity. The endgame at the time was essentially running back and forth between Helltides, an open world event where you slay demons and Nightmare Dungeons, effectively similar to white maps with a magic rarity in POE. I quickly lost interest in this, as there wasn't meat on the bone to keep me satisfied, and I gave POE another chance (like many others did post-release of D4).

I ended up creating a Cold Damage Over Time Elementalist, and finally beat the campaign. Something about this character had finally clicked for me, and I was able to enjoy POE. I had fun following a build guide which handled the character building for me while I got to blast through the campaign. I ended up playing up until yellow maps before I took a break from the game (at this point, a lot of the requirements for the build became much more difficult and I needed a lot more currency) but I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with the game. I learned that I was a Delve Enjoyer and wanted to build a character that would have more success in that league mechanic, so a couple months later, I ended up creating a Righteous Fire Inquisitor and beat the campaign a second time, though this was right before the end of the league and the latest patch at time of writing (Affliction) would completely change how Righteous Fire worked and I did not have the desire to rebuild the character. That said, I had gone from not making it half-way through the campaign to beating the campaign twice in the span of a few months!

The biggest issue I have with PoE is that it is balanced around trading, which is something I do not personally want to engage in. While it is simple, I personally prefer to earn everything on my own, and doing so in PoE can make progressing in certain builds anywhere from a minor inconvenience to impossible. For example, the build guide I followed for my Cold DOT elementalist required a unique item called Mark of Submission. For 85% of my playtime with the build, I did not have this item. Not having this item meant that I had to work around not having it for a bit, but overall it did not cause any meaningful harm. While I could have just scoured the forums and traded for it, I did not want to go through the hassle of messaging player after player hoping someone is online and trading the item I need. I'm sure there was a way to find it or obtain it but that was not clear to me as a new player. Even still, trading cheapens the experience of getting items for me, since the goal then becomes to get currency to buy items rather than engaging with the game to get those items. I.e. say you need an item for your build that only drops from a certain league mechanic that you hate. You could just trade for it and get back to the stuff that you enjoy rather than be forced to play a mechanic that you dislike. It makes sense, and I think it works well, and perhaps one day I'll get into trading but for now, its the antithesis to the type of gameplay goals that I enjoy. There are things in the game to mitigate a lot of this stuff like Div Cards but I would still argue that PoE is balanced around trading, and these things are alternatives for players like me who do not wish to trade. I don't mind grinding, as the core gameplay of PoE is so fun that grinding a certain boss/map/etc to target farm uniques would not be a deterrent to me. There could even be farmable items to boost the drop rates of uniques, but that would require much more thought than this review is meant to supply. I don't mind trading, but the time required to meaningfully progress your character without is a bit too massive to me.

I say all of that, to say this: Path Of Exile is an incredible ARPG. It has 10 years of content poured into it, along with a booming community to help you learn everything. It is also a game that only requires you to plan one step at a time, and trying to learn everything at once will immediately ruin your fun with the game. I have come to be a Path Of Exile fan, and I will continue to play the game for years to come.