Far be it for me to get in the way of your fellow loot-addicts’ dream of running the same PvE gamut in the same 5 ways for the rest of their lives. I’m not quite so arrogant as to think that just because Path of Exile is obscenely repetitive and boring to play that the people who do enjoy its offerings have nothing to show for it. Nor do I think these players are seeing a mirage when looking at the aspects of PoE they do enjoy.
Path of Exile is another Action Roleplaying Game that has spawned out of Diablo 1’s revolutionary design. Much akin to as least some of the Dark Souls / Demon Souls copies that have sprung out of the game stores in the last decade, ARPGs having swung in the direction of combat and looting more than world building and moments of serenity (or terror).
Where I might have found myself engaged with Tristram because of the perfect balance between combat and immersion, moving through Path of Exile’s maps (not to be confused with Path of Exile’s maps) engenders monotony.
The starting beach presents itself as the most engaging area of the game because this is where the player will have the most danger inherent to their combat. After each area, act, and trans-fat ridden dialogue scrapped over the canvas of this game being read aloud to the player, so drastically shall the sense of true gameplay fade.
The game progresses, you character leans more and more heavily into the one skill that actually matters for combat, and your brain will be subdued into thinking its doing anything valuable with its time because you’re about to get a pair of boots that equate to 1.5% more efficient mass murdering.
The antagonist of the game can be squarely aimed at Piety, although there are multiple enemies in Path of Exile, and anyone who knows anything about the game will know that Piety is an enemy that’s defeated relatively early on in the PoE. You may wonder, then, why I name her the main antagonist. My reasoning is simple: I didn’t play past act 3.
Getting to act 4, I had defeated Piety, my already waning interest in the game was no longer bending, but cracking at the seams, and the enemy HP buffing and absurd level of spam was growing old.
Diablo 1 had plenty of enemies to deal with, but it also had a lot more to give to the player once they had accomplished a combative goal. I’m afraid Path of Exile’s story and world-building only exist to facilitate endless gameplay, instead of gameplay with an end existing to facilitate the creation of a good game.
I couldn’t possibly recommend this game to anyone who likes spending their time on anything other than a hamster wheel. Unironically, Oldschool Runescape is a better use of time for the hardcore grinders, and actually has a definitive point(s) that can mark the end of a journey.
It isn’t a bad game, but the talent shown in Path of Exile’s dev team is being spent on an endless loop that exists to show just how endless it all really is instead of trying to be anything else.
