Preview: Path of Exile 2 Is a Dark Game with a Bright Future
When the original Path of Exile released back in 2013, it offered an alternative to the previous year's Diablo 3, which had turned off many players with divisive features like a real money auction house and cartoonier art style. But it soon proved to be more than just a call back to classic Diablo, setting itself apart with ludicrous build complexity, vibrant end-game, and regular updates. Now developer Grinding Gear Games is looking to improve its systems with a simultaneously supported sequel, as Path of Exile 2 looks to expand and refine its action-RPG formula.
Launching in Early Access with three acts of the campaign and a bevy of endgame content, Path of Exile 2's launch was rocky even by modern online game standards thanks to a huge influx of players. Thankfully, the developers appeared to get on top of it quite quickly. Though I still experienced a few hiccups and disconnections, it's now pretty stable. I can only hope the turbulence of the EA launch gives Grinding Gear the information they need to prep for the free-to-play floodgates opening later in 2025.
Once in the game proper, you'll be hit with a character selection screen that lets you know that same gritty Path of Exile tone is back in full force. Whichever class of character you don't choose is immediately executed by hanging. Your chosen character miraculously escapes, and it's on to fighting undead in the wilderness like old times, complete with the first living person you meet being immediately torn apart by a zombie.
As a sequel, Path of Exile 2 has a bunch of subtle, but impactful, changes from the previous game. The combat is a good bit slower and a lot tougher from the get-go, requiring players to come to grips with new defensive abilities like the dodge-roll and shield block. The economy is also no longer strictly barter-based, but uses gold instead, and flasks are no longer combinable like they used to be. Those latter two are a shame, since they were interesting mechanic that gave value to other items, but removing them does streamline things and free up inventory space significantly.
Of the classes, the two new, most different ones are the crossbow-toting Mercenary and wind-swift Monk. The merc has a really interesting and different style of play during which abilities augment your basic attack with ammo types, rather than being attacks of their own. Some are piercing shots, some are rapid-fire, and some fire grenades instead of bolts. One could strip armor from foes with enough hits, which could be exploited with another type of bolt for bonus damage. The Monk, meanwhile, is ridiculously fast and uses the new quarterstaff weapon type. It is able to exploit multiple elements as they build momentum. That wasn't my immediate pick to try but they grew on me massively.
While the new classes are fun and engaging, I'm interested to see what Grinding Gear will do with returning classes to avoid overlap. On the full launch, there are expected to be another six classes. This means there will be a total of two for each combination of Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity. Classes in Path of Exile have historically been less important, since all of them essentially share the same skill tree, though there are things like Ascendancies and particular skill nodes that are unique to them. That said, the Witch and Sorceress are both pure intelligence classes and do play quite similarly, so I'm hoping some of the others have a bit more unique flavour. Oh, and a female strength class would be nice too.
Another small, but welcome, change from the first game is the environment variety. While Path of Exile had you trudging the desolate beaches of Wraeclast for the lion's share of the early game, Path of Exile 2 has several varieties of forests, caves, and mausoleums for you to slaughter through within the first few hours. I particularly liked one called the Red Vale, the site of an ancient battlefield strewn with rust-stained weaponry and devolved monsters.
Once you've hacked your way up to around level 65 or so, the endgame begins. I've barely scratched the surface but there's already a surprising amount of variety in the modes available, each managing to keep slaying hordes of monsters engaging despite how used to it you've gotten. Some grant rogue-lite style power ups as you progress or ask you to gamble your rewards on exponential returns. And I've not even mentioned the skill tree yet, mostly because It Scares Me.
It's early days yet, we have yet to experience the true extent of the end-game or how the community and economies will form around it, but Path of Exile 2 is a solid start and an engaging ARPG already. The real test will be how Grinding Gear experiments on that foundation with future leagues, but with all of the first game's mechanics to pull from and refine, I'm pretty excited to see what they come up with.
Path of Exile 2 is available now in early access for the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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