Are You A Fan of The ARPG, Try Out Path of Exile! from luckypants's blog

Grinding Gear Games (GGG) thanks to their efforts with Path of Exile (PoE) have established themselves as thought leaders in the ARPG genre not only for fantastic gameplay mechanics and design but also their evident success in offering PoE as entirely free to play with a robust microtransaction shop for cosmetic and convenience related items. The game takes some inspiration from beloved titles of old and innovates in a variety of ways.

With the War for the Atlas update having fully waxed and another expansion just around the corner, I think now is a fine point in time to make a review. Originally released near the end of 2013, PoE has since seen a huge amount of support including seven expansions with substantial content and/or feature additions. I think the latest updates have been bigger and better than ever. Few others can rival the level of ongoing support for their game, especially in the Free to Play category.

A gritty, dark vision for the world of Wraeclast is realized in the art and visual direction as well as a soundtrack that sets this mood admirably well. The audio effects are distinctive (e.g. monsters, combat, abilities). Of special note for me is the voice acting and dialogue (particularly for the Templar); maybe it's just me, but I find it downright haunting.

You'll find a surprisingly filled out lore and setting, replete with a powerful narrative to take you through an interesting world. Honestly the best I've ever seen in any ARPG. The unsurprising downside to this is a heavy handed delivery of all that information via dialogue text windows. Regrettable but given the limitations of the genre, understandable.

The multiple systems that influence gameplay taken altogether are deep and empowering, making PoE from a mechanics perspective the single most complex and satisfying ARPG I've played to date, and I haven't even fully explored the different characters, playstyles and strategies yet. Just take a glance at GGG's old Build of the Week video series to immediately appreciate the cleverness and variety the player community can bring to bear.

It's a highly creative dynamic between active and support skill gems which are socketed into gear, attributes, classes with different specializations and different starting points on a huge passive skill tree, major and minor passive upgrades and more. In building your character you must account for all the staples of ARPG combat you could think of and then some. In addition to skill gems you have a host of consumable poe orbs and other items which serve as "functional" currency with direct uses such as modifying equipment, modifying gems, modifying your passive skill tree, crafting, etc.

These consumables have set exchange rates with NPC's and form the basis of PoE's economy. It's fair to say this item based economy with reliance on player trading can be tenuous given ongoing balance issues with drop rates and frequent disruptions resulting from regular and significant content, feature and technical updates. 

Anyone who considers themselves a fan of the ARPG genre owes it to themselves to at least try out this marvelous game which I hope only continues to thrive and improve long into the future. Thumbs up review!

TIP: a easy way for you to gain poe orbs fast is to poe buy chaos on U4GM. If you want to buy cheapest currency, just make sure to spare some time to join in our site.