Yeah, OP wasn’t very inclusive. PoE is Path of Exile, an ARPG. The second title which has been in development for a few years now just got an early access date (November 15th).
As a casual user who refuses to get on the daily F2P "treadmill’ or the trading economy (I just want to play it like Diablo) is it still worth playing?
You can easily get through PoE1’s main campaign without paying a dime
Someone also posted a video of them essentially getting through the “midgame” of path of exile in 24 hours without paying as well youtu.be/JeIDCxQhZM4
However, during that midgame he shows that he really starts having trouble with the lack of stash tabs for trading. It’s doable, but that’s kind of where you start hitting your limits
All in all, if you play for the main campaign it’s essentially just a free game, and if you play without trading the game is still designed to be somewhat doable. Really the only thing you miss out on is trading
Yeah if you play ssf you sidestep these problems entirely and then the only problem you might have is simply just inventory management (which also only comes up in the lategame)
and if you play without trading the game is still designed to be somewhat doable. Really the only thing you miss out on is trading
I don’t agree with this at all. Even if you don’t want to trade (which only really requires a single premium stash tab anyway) you’ll struggle in the endgame if you don’t have at least a currency, fragment and map tab. I actually think you need even more tabs in SSF (solo self-found) than in trade league. Because you can’t just buy something if you need it you’ll probably want to keep way more items. And with the four default tabs you pretty quickly run out of space (in the endgame).
But yes, for the campaign it’s not really an issue and I would definitely consider that as perfectly playable for free. And by the time you’re done with it you’ll probably know whether you want to buy some tabs and keep playing or not.
Tip for people who do want to buy stash tabs: there’s a sale every three weeks where all tabs are around 20-25% off.
PoE2 early access is still months away, so I assume you’re talking about PoE1.
In my opinion it’s definitely worth playing if you’re into that type of game. The monetisation is still very fair in my opinion. It’s perfectly playable for free until you reach the endgame, where you’ll probably want to spend around 30-40€ on stash tabs. But you’ve probably played for at least 20 hours before you even get to that point. And it’s a one time purchase which costs about as much as Last Epoch. And less than Diablo 4.
Personally I’m not a huge fan of SSF (solo self-found), it does make the game somewhat harder since parts of the game are not designed around this mode. It’s supposed to be a limitation. If that’s how you want to play and you’re a more casual player then Last Epoch might be the better choice, they have a mode that caters specifically to people who want to play like that (Circle of Fortune). But lots of people play SSF so it’s not like it’s not a viable way to play the game or anything. Playing trade league but only trading for a few things you need (like build defining uniques) is also an option. And in the current league they also introduced an automated currency exchange market which makes trading certain items a lot easier.
I’ve only played the most recent Cycle in Last Epoch so I can’t tell you how the game “now” compares to previous states, but I’ve enjoyed it. The story is a bit convoluted and there’s certainly room for improvement, but I enjoyed the gameplay. Both building your character and the crafting system are way more approachable than in Path of Exile, but still interesting.
Overall I’d probably recommend Last Epoch to a casual player unless you’re drawn to PoE’s more complicated systems or abundance of content, especially in the endgame.
I am getting excited for it! They’ve been making some great QoL improvements for PoE lately, I’m looking forward to seeing what everything they’ve done with 2.
Crazy talk, and you’re onto something… that’s been solved already.
First part: you hate that a 10+ years old game is only getting cosmetic changes instead of a rehaul of the whole character model. That’s crazy, nobody’s going to do that, not the ones expecting a profit, and not the modding community doing it for free. If you feel it’s a silly change, you’re right, but realize that it’s the only change they could do.
You’re onto something: body feature sliders. Male, female, giraffe, and turtle bodies, have some structural differences, that however mostly match to the same bones having different shapes. The solution is a body shape slider, or 50. It’s something that existed, in some games, since at least the 2000s. Others were lazy and didn’t do it.
For reference of how far this could go, the following all have the same bones, only change in shape, size, and muscle placemen:
It’s a simplified version of animal crossing for mobile, with some microtransactions to speed things up. I played it on release and it’s pretty decent.
It’s very similar but nowhere near as good. I got it for free on playstation a while back and stopped playing it to go back and play the dead space remake again.
It does have decent atmosphere, cool visuals, etc. The combat system is very good. Much more action game than horror game. The melee system meant that not running out of ammo and being careful with your shots wasn’t as important as in dead space.
It falls short in several disappointing ways. The “stealth” system is a joke. There’s a level where you have to sneak around “blind” monsters that only act on sound, except you can walk right up to them and just melee kill them, LOUDLY, without any of the others reacting.
So the stealth sections are completely trivial.
There’s a pretty interesting enemy in the form of the automated security robots of the prison, except it literally shows up in just the tutorial, where it shows you how to deal with them, but then they’re utterly absent in the rest of the game.
The whole game is really impressive in a couple ways (graphics and animation, the combat system) but it feels like 50% of what was supposed to be in it was cut, and like several mechanics never got implemented.
Sounds a lot like they tried to make a “game like dead space”. But then by trying to imitate that, they necessarily and almost predictably fell short behind the original.
It was good in many ways. And it expands on dead space in many ways mechanically, it just didn’t follow through in some aspects.
The guns are cool and there’s a very satisfying melee system.
But the melee system is overpowered, which means monsters are less scary. The sound-based stealth sections where you go through rooms full of blind monsters that allegedly react to sound, have the monsters being completely deaf to melee kills, which means you can just walk up to them one by one and clear the room.
And you’re right about the story. The game should have had LORE, but it’s just the bare minimum generic excuse to have a horror setting.
It was just what I understood went wrong with the game.
That it’s a good game on it’s own premise, but when compared to the games it was supposed to be compared with, it just seemed mediocre. It’s just hard competing with an established franchise. Especially one that is as beloved as DS is, not to mention that DS’s own reboot also fell short as the OG games are still as grand as ever.
With exception of the graphics looking a little dated, Deadspace 1 holds up just fine even when compared to newer games. From atmosphere to mechanics, UI and story… It’s all perfectly within parameters for the type of game it is.
I think we’re likely gonna see some of same with the Silent Hill 2 Remake. There’s a lot of marks to hit. Even the old tank controls adds to what makes the game intense and updating the combat system to something less clunky could potentially take away from the game rather than improving it.
It doesn’t really even manage that. It’s not bad, there’s a lot to like, but playing it I ran into a lot of stuff I wish was there, but wasn’t.
The story was one thing, but it completely fails at bulding tension. DS1 fills you with adrenaline at regular intervals, but in Callisto Protocol the second I realized the “sound-sensitive” blind enemies don’t react to the noise of melee combat, it was like all the air went out of the balloon.
That’s a perfect microcosm of the whole game. Really neat ideas, really good execution, but only to 90%. And that last 10% matters. A LOT.
The combat system is great, but it doesn’t lean into it at all. The final boss is just a bullet sponge that makes no clever use of any mechanics, and the game is so obsessed with trying to be DS (and TLOU) with boring stealth sections and puzzles.
You end up spending a lot of time wishing combat was happening.
I feel like a Callisto Protocol 2 that leans into the things worked, and fixed just a couple small things that get near working, could be amazing.
Know what was actually really, really good?
The tie in podcast. Great production value, great voice actors, and really great story, character development and pacing!
I grab Calisto Protocol off Epic, but only because it’s free. I watched some reviews and gameplay footage, and it’s…kinda meh. From what I saw of gameplay, the story is a bit reductive, and, unless they fixed it the melee combat is a bit of a joke.
Thanks. The Companion app never seemed to work on my sandboxed Google Play profile on GrapheneOS however. I’ve since found Golden Cheetah which is a native Linux program and totally free. Zwift raising their price was the final straw for me to move on and I’m grateful for it.
GC works perfectly on Linux Mint with my Garmin USB ANT+ dongle, Garmin heart rate strap, and retains all the functionality with my Zwift Hub trainer if anyone is curious.
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