Posted by
I’ve had the opportunity to play Path of Exile 2 several times throughout its development cycle, and there’s one thought I had after my latest session: this action-RPG keeps getting better every time I play it.
The first session I had the opportunity to join was a demo at Gamescom 2023. Grinding Gear’s Jonathan Rogers took me through the Warrior and Druid class, and I also had the opportunity to wait in line and try out the Monk for the first time. As expected, I got my butt kicked. But that’s par for the course. In early 2024 I had the chance to try out the Ranger, whose incredibly fun gameplay loop has you shooting lightning arrows and propagating lightning storms of death across the screen. And more recently I got to try out the Monk again and get some hands-on time with the Warrior, Sorceress, and Witch – all for the first time. Each of them feels unique, powerful, and interesting to play as. The Monk, once you get past the early leveling portions that have you whacking away at enemies with slow and methodical staff strikes, becomes a force to be reckoned with. You can dash in to weaken your enemies, get a few charges, and then annihilate the playing field with an incredibly powerful staff strike to the ground that sends ripples of energy that rip into the earth itself. And once I got the hang of this class’s gameplay loop, I felt like I may have found another new favorite.
But the majority of my time I found myself playing as the Witch, who was one of the first classes I enjoyed in the original Path of Exile. In the sequel, the Witch starts out as a corpse-reviving menace who chooses what abilities the minions will wield, and can even command them to do unique attacks to great effect.
The Unearth skill gem, for instance, will create spikes of bone that travel from the earth in front of you doing a bit of damage, but will also raise the bones of corpses as short-lived construct minions. You’ll then start unlocking Skill Gems like Skeletal Warrior, Skeletal Sniper, and Skeletal Arsonist. Because you’ll only have a set amount of spirit, early on you’ll only be able to choose one of these to get started. The Skeletal Arsonist is the option I picked as it has the unique ability to explode any low-life minion in your pack. And not only is that very cool, but it also does a ton of damage to packs of enemies or bosses that weaken your minions to explosion status.
Later, when I unlocked Bone Cage and Contagion, I was able to further expand my tool kit to create a trap for enemies, hit them with Contagion, and then watch it propagate across enemies – killing everything it touched. Even at early levels, these builds feel very fun to use and execute, and I found myself grinning from ear to ear the entire time I played as the Witch. In addition, Grinding Gear Games gave us a sneak peek at some later-game builds, and while they are interesting, I just wanted to briefly say that the gigantic skeleton that is erected by a sorcerer looks so freaking cool. Path of Exile 2 continues to surprise me with designs that are either creepy or look like they jumped straight off the cover of a heavy metal album and into the game. I’m at the point where I don’t need to see anymore.
The other class that I spent a significant amount of time with for the first time was the Monk. The build-up to your more powerful attacks takes a bit of time, but somehow the Monk really surprised me. You start out with a methodical smack to the enemies you’ll face, but once you start getting your Skill Gem combat kit together, the class gets really fun – and powerful – very fast. Near the end of my demo, I had the Tempest Bell Skill Gem that would drop a massive Bell onto the battlefield. When struck with any elemental Ailments, including my Frozen Locus AOE damage, it would create an elemental shockwave and deal extra freeze damage to anything in the vicinity. But my favorite combo included Killing Palm and Staggering Palm, which let me zip into battle with a Staggering Palm Strike, drop a Frozen Locus into a group of enemies, attack the bell, and finish off anyone left over with Killing Palm. That Killing Palm final blow would then give me a Power Charge that can stack up to three times. Once powered up, you could execute Falling Thunder to create a ripple of damage that tore across the map and obliterated anything that got in the way. That sounds like a bit of a setup, and it can be, but the reward just makes it so fun to pull off time and time again.
This surprisingly fun gameplay loop seems to be present for each class I’ve played so far. While there are still my personal favorites, having taken some time to try out the Sorceress and Warrior at an event the next day, I think that five seconds of fun is going to be there for all the classes. I keep finding myself grinning as I learn how that introductory Skill Gem build synergizes together in a way that’s hard not to love. More generally, Grinding Gear Games confirmed that they’ve tweaked the gameplay of these introductory moments so that they’re more enjoyable for players to learn the game in the beginner areas. And I have to say that the power progression is feeling particularly great at this moment in time.
And that adjustment is going to go a long way for Path of Exile 2, because the developers just revealed that couch co-op will be an option for players in the same household. I tried about an hour of this, and it definitely is going to be a big selling point for anyone in the same household who wants to jump into a game and level up together. The only slightly disorienting aspect to this was the inventory menu that takes up a large portion of the screen, so hopefully your teammate isn’t bringing it up during combat too often, but otherwise, it felt pretty seamless.
A few classes are still yet to be officially revealed, but Path of Exile 2 continues to impress me every single time I get some hands-on time with it. The Ranger demo got me to roll a Ranger in the new season of Path of Exile on PC. The Monk in Path of Exile 2 surprised me as it became very powerful so early on, and it made me want to try out all the other classes to see if I’d be surprised in the same pleasant way. Path of Exile 2 will likely have a few more pre-release reveals before launch, but I am ready to dive in right now. And based on what I’ve played over the last several months, this is shaping up to be a game you should not miss. We’ll find out for sure when Path of Exile 2 goes into closed beta later this year.