Tomfoolery Tuesday - Path Of Exile (And Another Segment Name Change)

Hello and welcome to Tomfoolery Tuesday; that strangely named day of the week where I can talk about games without trying to paw them off as technology. (*Cough* Richard *Cough*)

Screenshot taken from https://www.pathofexile.com/. Don't ask me about the blank timer. It's just weird.

Diablo has been cited as the classic hack&slash game to have played by many. So it should come as little surprise that its successful mixture of combat, character progression and treasure grabbing would be copied and improved by others. Path Of Exile is one of those games, but makes it a Free To Play Online game to boot.

Before I begin in earnest, allow me to explain the change in Tuesday's segment name. Unlike Thoughtful Thursday, the change was not inspired by a lack of topic's to talk about; but rather on the technicality of preference in topic. A certain friend of mine mentioned that games are not, in technicality, technology. Which he is not wrong about. However, he suggested talking about actual technological subjects such as "The evolution of the Wheel". Good as the idea is, after reading 2 pages of information on that, I figured that was boring as hell, and I know more about games anyways. And so came Tomfoolery Tuesday, bearing in mind that Tomfoolery is the only word that starts with a T that comes anywhere close to entertainment. (Besides, it's vague enough to allow me to talk about other strange things as well, like the Tabletop Roleplaying article I wrote.) Not to worry though, should there be any technology themed topics, they will likely be found on Thursday's or Saturday's.

Moving onto the topic; Path of Exile is a GrindingGearGames developed "Online Action RPG" available for download from Steam that a few friends and myself decided to start playing about a week or two ago. (This was following the realization that games like Unturned get boring rather quickly... ) Free To Play with a huge reputation as a good, fun and well made game, it seemed like a great choice for us to play, especially considering our enjoyment of co-operative Diablo dungeon raiding in the past. It sounded like a lot of fun, despite what can only be referred to as my general skepticism for everything. Turns out it actually is.

Perhaps not the most exciting home screen for a game, but that's partially the point considering the history of your character is told through the beginning menu's.

 When I first started PoE up, I expected a fairly average Diablo clone with online elements and a microtransactions shop that would bar you from everything if you wanted to play for free. Having experienced that kind of treatment in other MMO's, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Path Of Exile had  indeed chosen a different path with regards to it's development and the way it was being run. After a few days of involved playing; I must admit that I've been enjoying the game a fair deal.

First and foremost, a common trope in the so called "Free to Play" games these days is that they offer to let you play some of the game, but hide a deal of the features behind paywalls and "Premium Memberships", forcing the player to fork over money if they want to enjoy all the features of the game. Path Of Exile takes a leaf out of League Of Legend's fantastic free to play model, and allows all content freely to everyone, with only what they refer to as "Ethical Microtransactions" involving purely cosmetic items or other things which give no competitive edge over those who choose not pay money. (Thank you GGG for that, by the way, if you somehow end up reading this.)

A somewhat clever introduction of each available class is told below the decks of ship on it's way to Wraeclast with you, an exile from the lands of Oriath.

 Perhaps even better than their business model though, is that the game is actually pretty well made and genuinely interesting though. It should be obvious, but if your game sucks, even the prettiest business model won't attract anyone. Path Of Exile however, has taken the elements of Diablo and other action RPG's like it and improved on the formula enough to make the game feel well thought out and well fleshed out.

Combat with the creatures, which is obviously the focus of the game, feels genuinely challenging and interesting just as you would expect from a Diablo clone, with a large variety of creatures with varying abilities and strengths with which to test out you characters skills and strengths against. As said on the Path of Exile website, a large point of the game is replayability. As such, everything from the layout of areas, to the strengths of creatures, and the stats of the items you find are entirely randomized. Speaking of items, as you would expect, the items are varied and filled with interesting magical effects that are certain to leave you keen to find your next magical sword or suit of armor. The item system does what you expect it to, which is good because as far as I can tell, there's not really a way to improve on the tried and tested "Find item, use item, find item, use it instead" formula. However, there are some unique twists to the game. (Oooh twists. I love twists.)

If you've played one of the Diablo games or a similar clone in the past, you will likely feel at home with the familiar UI and elements such as the map and quest journal. 

Firstly, there is no such thing as gold in Path Of Exile. The selling of equipment gives players fragments of items such as "Orbs of Chance", "Orb of Alterations" and a variety of other appropriately named objects which become full objects when enough are obtained. These fully formed objects usually range from the mundane Scrolls of Knowledge which identify legendary items, to the aforementioned orbs which can change the stats of an item to better suit you and your needs. You can buy weapons and armor with these items, but I've never really found it necessary to do so.

Perhaps more interestingly though, is the way that these items are linked into the "Crafting System". Path of Exile doesn't allow for items to be created in the generic sense of the term, but there are item recipes that can be used to get various items of use from the vendors, such as giving them 3 small health potions will result in a return of a medium health potion. (Before you say that sounds kind've pointless, Path Of Exile all uses a tactic similar to Diablo 3's health orb drops by having potions refill as you kill enemies, allowing you to keep playing without continual returns to town for a restock.)

Combat is what you would expect it to be. Lots of action and fun. The ability to bind abilities to mouse buttons make combat far more interesting and fast paced than your average MMO.

 Finally, the third important part of Path Of Exile, characters and skills. Path of Exile has 7 character classes to choose from which fill the typical roles you would expect. (Witch that casts spells, Ranger that uses bows, etc) However, what it does differently is in the details. Firstly, skills and weapon use are not inherently linked to characters. You can create a witch that shoots bows if you wish, or a marauder that casts spells. (Not that those two combinations make too much sense to me.) This is all because of the way the basic stats of strength, dexterity and intelligence are obtained, as well as skills.

Each character does not possess a talent tree as you would expect, but rather have their own starting point in a mutual "passive skill tree" which is so big that I could only screenshot half of it. This skill tree infers various statistical bonuses to the character depending on what you choose, allowing you to design characters around the use of a bows, dual wielding, spells, or anything else you could think of really. The scope of it allows for a great deal of customization which means that making multiple characters is fun simply to see what new combinations you can get.

This is great thanks to the way skills are applied to the characters. Instead of selecting them from a similar tree, skills are obtained through gems which are found and then slotted into weapons and armor. This means that if you design your character correctly, they can effectively use any skill or weapon in the game based on your choices in the passive skill tree. The fighting skills also level-up as you use them, so there is no need to continually find new gems.

"Boss" creatures are always around to mix up combat with a variety of randomly generated stat modifiers.

There are a variety of multiplayer aspects as you would expect from a game like PoE, but apart from adventuring in PvE (Player Vs Environment) with friends, I've not had much experience with them. There are however guilds and PvP gameplay if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Perhaps less importantly, it's still worth stating that on my archaic AMD Athlon 2.51Ghz dual core and Nvidia 6800, I had no issues running this game at a reasonable frame rate, and rarely experienced any latency issues, even when partied up with other people. The graphical options are not extensive, but the attraction of PoE is hardly graphics by any length anyways. (Egads, that computer sounds older than your grandmother. It's possible. My motherboard is somewhere around the decade mark in age.)

This is the passive talent tree as it is called by the game. I should point out that this only the bottom half.

All in all, Path Of Exile is a fun and enjoyable game which takes the good aspects of hack&slash action rpg's, adds some interesting new choices to the formula and then holds it out for anyone to play. Well made and very well polished, having never crashed or had bugs or issues, Path Of Exile is definitely worth playing, and it a fair deal of fun to play with friends as well. (Path Of Exile hereby receives the OddballGreg seal of approbal. Play it. It's fun.)

In any case, I hope that you have found this review of Path of Exile interesting, informative, or just pleasant to read at least. (There are a few more screenshots below because I didn't want to scatter every paragraph between another image, but at the same time wanted to further represent the game. Peruse them at your leisure if you wish.) Think I put too many pictures in, or forgot to mention any important aspects of the game, make sure to let me know in the comments section below. Also, if you happen to have any bored friends, or just know someone considering playing PoE, perhaps consider sharing this review with them so that they can better decide if they actually want to try out a really cool FREE game. (Free. Should I say it again for emphasis? Free.) And of course, if you would like to read more reviews like this, make sure to like my Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the right so that you can get the latest articles, as I post them. Regardless of what you, I thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy appraisal; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Have fun my friends.

To add emphasis, the lit up line are the skills that my level 15 duelist has unlocked, focused towards dual wielding bonuses. That's a lot of skills and effects.

The "stash" as it's called, which is shared between all characters, allowing you swap excellent loot with ease. The far left of the stash also holds a variety of  "Currency Items" in the game

Fans of min/maxing are sure to enjoy the wealth of information with regards to everything that influences how your character works and the way it can be fine-tuned.

The settings are hardly over the top, but to be fair, the fact that this fairly pretty game runs so well on my ancient relic of a computer is a feat in itself.