Our version of this today is Diablo III breaking just about every sales record there is in the first week. There is obviously a market for games where you clear dungeons and gather progressively better loot while leveling a champion. This weekend I satisfied that desire by cooling off my Witch Doctor a bit and downloaded Grinding Gear Games' aRPG Path of Exile.
My experience with Path of Exile: About 20 hours spread among a Marauder, Witch, Ranger, and Shadow. I've finished Act I with the Marauder (solo) and Ranger (with 2 friends).
For my first impressions and a whole lot more about the game... CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP
First Impressions:
The game starts out on a prison ship with a group of exiles being shipped to a prison colony. The idea is "you get 1 weapon, good luck bro." With Grinding Gear Games being located in New Zealand it's hard not to see parallels to the common understanding of how Australia worked back in the day. So, you pick your exile, wash up on the beach, and you're on your own. I have a feeling we'll have a cut scene, some dialog, or something to make it more clear that the prison ship went down, but even if we don't... it's super clear by the way you start the game, the debris on the beach, etc.
The first enemy you kill will drop what you need to get started. For example my Ranger got a bow and a Gem (capitol G on purpose... we'll get back to this) that granted me the ability to use Fire Arrow. I thought this was a nice touch. Not all that much different than just starting with the items, but the little touches are nice.
Movement still doesn't feel right for some reason. It's not the control or the responsiveness... it's the animation. Every exile I've played feels a little too stiff while moving around. Not a big deal, but I can guarantee that when this game goes full (free to play) release some people will walk around the beach and drop the game right there just because it's not what they are used to. I adjusted quickly, but it would be nice to see the animations shined up a bit before full release.
Attack animations are outstanding. The way my Marauder swings a two handed club is amazing. You actually see him adjust his hands as a real person would when swinging a heavy tool. As someone who's swung his fair share of heavy tools... this was greatly appreciated. The ranger's arrows STICK TO THINGS AND STAY THERE. I put that in all caps because it was one of those little details that made a big difference to me. For how difficult it must be to program that in it was definitely worth it. I would imagine arrows sticking in enemies/walls/etc would be too low priority to make it to the beta of an indie game, but I was wrong... Thanks, GGG.
Then I leveled up...
This is my level 22 Marauder's skill tree so far with a highlight on the first skill I picked... not so bad, right?
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
NOTE: This is only about a third of the skill tree... You can't zoom out enough to get it all on one screen.
I was a bit overwhelmed at this point, but once you realize it all branches off of two skills it's not so bad. Making your first character exactly what you've always wanted him to be? Difficult. Making a very capable warrior out of what's in front of you? Not so bad. I selected a lot of 2 handed weapon damage skills, life regen, and armor. Can't go wrong with that, right? I guess we'll see.
What I ended up with was this:
And I'm very pleased with my experience so far. The combat is satisfying, the skills make sense (or can be changed however you want) and the graphics are good enough to not take away from the gameplay, but not so amazing that you're going to be blown away.
Atmosphere:
Dark... scary... depressing. Dungeons in Path of Exile are DUNGEONS. They have this looming darkness that really makes for some tense situations. When I play an "aRPG" I like to feel like I'm lurking in ancient old scary holes in the ground... you get that in spades here. The screen shot above is in the forest camp, so it really doesn't do justice to creepy places like the ABANDONED PRISON which is pitch black, everything is rusted and falling apart... oh and it's filled with the undead... and necromancers who can raise enemies as fast as you can put them down. Add in creepy little ghosts that call to you and all sorts of other little touches and you've got yourself a game that knows it's identity. Dungeons here will feel crushing and lonely... dark and evil. I can't say enough good things about the atmosphere. Really hit the nail on the head.
Skills (aka Gems):
You can mix and match pretty much anything in the game. The only limiting factors are your weapon (some skills require a specific weapon... like Sweep requires a 2 handed axe or mace) and your attributes.
Let me back that up a little bit and explain how skills work in Path of Exile. Your equipment has gem slots that are colored one of the 3 primary skill colors (Red = Strength, Green = Dexterity, Blue = Intelligence). They also can be "linked" which means that they have a little gold bar between the sockets. Skills come in the form of Gems that can be socketed in your armor. Once you put a gem into your armor/weapon it gains experience and becomes more powerful as it levels up. This is where specialization comes in. I can use Frost Nova (intelligence gem) on my Strength based Marauder, but I can't level it up enough to scale with my enemies because I don't have enough intelligence. Each level has requirements that must be met before you can level a skill. These skills are bound to mouse 1, 2, 3, q,w,e,r,t and can be mixed and matched on the fly. It's actually been hard for me to utilize the qwert skills because potions are on 1 through 5 and I'm always a little more concerned about death than hitting the perfect skill combo.
Here you can see the experience progress of my Cleave Gem, required level and stats for upgrading the gem, what it does, etc. Now, if you look at my breast plate it has "linked" sockets. One of the gems in the link is a "support gem" called "Life on Hit" which gives my cleave ability a secondary ability to restore health on hit BECAUSE the two sockets are linked. Gems can be swapped out on the fly as well, so if I decide I'd rather have another ability linked to "Life on Hit" I just have to change gems.
What this comes down to is you have near endless ability to customize your exile the way you want him or her to play thanks to the flexibility of gems. Awesome.
Loot/Economy:
This is something Grinding Gear Games says they are "working on" so it's not really fair to judge this yet... in fact... the whole game may be 100% different when you get your hands on the final version, but regardless... Loot is free for all with the exception of "timed assignment" of magic+ items. What that means is if a rare weapon drops, it will be assigned to someone for 5 seconds with an on screen timer. After that, it's free for all. This is fine if you have bag space available to pick things up or if you're playing with friends who won't take that rare evasion BP you've got your eye on, but it's hard to maintain an empty bag space with how little space you have overall.
What's more important is how the loot/economy works after you've picked up an item. Let's say you see a great 2 handed hammer laying on the ground but it's just a normal item. No magic properties, no stats, nothing. Just a big ol damage number and a white name. You can use items to make it magic, rare, a random rarity, wipe the stats, redo the stats, etc. Yes... it's THAT flexible. It doesn't mean you can roll perfect stats on whatever item you want, but you can use little magic items to turn anything into any rarity. These little magic items are the basis for the economy in game! That means when you sell your junk to a vendor they'll give you little broken down pieces of these magic items that alter the way your gear works. No more ignoring white (non magic) drops! You can make it into a rare item with a simple right click left click! Those little pieces automatically turn into the final product when you stack enough of them (aka 5 torn pages turn into a scroll of wisdom that can identify an item). Those same items can be used to buy things off the vendors.
I didn't realize how awesome a "gold free" economy was until I tried it. Money is too easy to manipulate in dungeon crawlers (DOH... aRPGs) so this is a great way to avoid inflation and take away the need to gather another resource. Just keep picking up loot and you'll end up with more loot!
Potions:
Potions in Path of Exile go on your Potion Belt (seen in the above screen shot). These potions are not really "potions" in the traditional sense. They are bottles that hold healing/mana regen/stat boosters. These bottles themselves can have magic attributes that change the way you play (increased heal, faster heals, movement speed buffs, resists, etc). You don't have to carry more than 1 bottle to heal yourself forever because they bottles fill up with "charges" as you kill enemies. A bottle may have 100 charges but cost 20 charges for one heal. This takes away the bag slot typically required for a huge stack of potions, makes healing more "active" and allows for some interesting gameplay as you figure out which potion to drink based on the situation while also recovering charges by actually fighting instead of spending currency. Excellent little detail that was obviously very well thought out.
Final (for now) Thoughts, who should play this game, etc:
Path of Exile is teetering on the fence between niche enthusiast game and pandering to people who feel that current aRPGs have become stale and over simplified. During the Open Beta Weekend 3 I learned really quickly how to disable the "Diablo III Was Disappointing Support Group Chat" and the "This game is garbage and I'm waiting for Torchlight 2 Chat" aka Global Chat. Today, as a closed beta member, the D3WDSGC was actually Global Chat... which was nice. Please notice I haven't mentioned Diablo 3 since paragraph 2. This was on purpose. I am coming from almost 400 hours on Diablo 3. I actually installed Path of Exile after a failed attempt to run Inferno Act 2 on my Witch Doctor and was just hungry for more dungeon crawling but was frustrated with Diablo 3 for the day. I had seen TotalBiscuit's video WTF is Path of Exile and was interested to see what it was all about from before I had every set foot in Diablo III. I'm not angry or disappointed with Diablo III... I just want more!
So, the graphics feel good, but the game lacks the clean finish of a true AAA title. The animations are half extremely satisfying and half "meh." The skills are awesome and varied... though you'll probably focus on one or two. The gameplay is strong and addictive. The skill tree is deep, but will probably take multiple play throughs to figure out as 'respec points' are hard to come by. The classes are varied with 3 "pure" classes and 3 "hybrid" classes. The story is great, the immersion is great....
It's just hard to recommend that you buy a supporter pack to play right now... especially if you're coming off Diablo 3. Why? This game isn't as visceral and satisfying as Diablo 3. The flow isn't as smooth and rewarding. This isn't a game made by a juggernaut like Activision Blizzard. If you require things to be silky smooth with a cherry on top you're in the wrong place. This game is unforgiving in a "I just dropped 100 hours on a character I hate" type of way. There is no guarantee that what you decide is the right way to go will work, that you'll be able to get to a place where you want to be, or that you'll even understand why things aren't working. Hitboxes are strange at times... this will be the first thing you notice as you go through your first set of caves. I didn't want to make this it's own bullet point because I'm hoping with some feedback those hitboxes become better, but it's "visceral immersion" breaking when you are clicking on an enemy's face because you want to rearrange it with a hammer and you just start walking past it.
When this game goes live it's going to be 100% worth it to jump on board right away. It will be free to play with the only "buyable" stuff I've seen being more character slots (which I'm sure will change, but that's all I've seen so far). GGG seems very similar to Riot Games in the way that they are all about changing/adapting/improving the game up until full release and beyond. They are hungry. This is an indie dev team taking on a massive project and they want to make it perfect. Give them time.
or... just pay 10 bucks today and figure it out for yourself... just don't come back and tell me it's not the shiny diamond that you're used to or that it's "too hard" to figure out... or that things just don't feel right... it's in beta with a motivated team behind it. Like I said, it's an awesome game... just give it time.
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