Friday, February 7, 2025
GAME ON

Path of Exile

If you like Diablo, you'll love Path of Exile

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The whole reason I joined the Steam platform back in 2014 was because I wanted to play Path of Exile. I really missed playing the old “Diablo,” and PoE was a nearly identical gameplay experience, but better.

Like Diablo, Path of Exile is an online action role-playing game. You play as your choice of Templar, Shadow, Marauder, Scion, Ranger, Duelist, or Witch. Even though the gameplay resembles Diablo, the game engine was created entirely in-house by Grinding Gear Games and has a unique currency system and skill gem system.

Just like in any other sword and sorcery game, the stats of your character depend on the class you’ve picked. Strength, intelligence, and dexterity attributes can be boosted manually or automatically as experience points accumulate.

Your character has been exiled to Wraeclast. You’re earning power “that will help you get revenge against those who have wronged you.” That’s what the description says, but so far, I’ve gotten no revenge. I’ve killed several monsters, demons, a couple of demigods, and lots and lots of zombies, though. There are weird monsters in this game, like animated blobs of water, electrified steampunk bird cages and flying ribbons of death. There’s a lot of really imaginative monster design, and some spectacular spell effects.

What makes Path of Exile stand out is its insanely complicated passive skill tree. Each character starts at a certain point on the tree that gives them access to the characteristics they’re best at. The character can get better at what they already do well, pretty standard with an adventure game. Or they can use the experience points to travel across the tree and find weirder skills for the character, like making a Marauder with magic abilities. It’s all about how you choose to use the experience points.

Path of Exile did two things better than Diablo — the money management currency system, and the death in-game of the character.

In the original Diablo, when your character died, they left everything on the battlefield, including what they were wearing and the items they picked up. I always made sure to have a back up suit of armor so I could go and rescue the regular outfit. Even in Diablo 3, when the character dies, they get a little bit of damage to all the items they’re equipped with.

In Path of Exile, when your character dies, they are resurrected either at the last checkpoint, or at the portal in the last camp/town you reached in the narrative, with all their inventory intact and undamaged. In fact, if you don’t want to cast a town portal spell to get them back to town, you can just quit. Very refreshing.

Instead of picking up gold pieces, you pick up skill gems, scrolls, and orbs. Skill gems give you various spells, which improve with experience points. Weapons and wearable items have color sockets, and your character has a wide range of combinations of gems that can be inserted into these sockets. Gems, orbs and scrolls can be traded up or down for whatever your character needs.

One thing I always admired about the Path of Exile creative team was that they never charged for the game. “The game is completely free and will never be ‘pay to win.’” If you want to give the developing team money, you can purchase character looks from their online shop. They also have pets, and spell effects that change the look of spells you cast.

If you’re cheap like me and just rely on items you pick up, after a while you’ll have a collection of what they call unique (extremely rare) items. Many of the items you pick up have an attribute generator with a naming system (also very complex, and kind of boring unless you’re into that kind of thing.) Unique items have specific pieces of art that are rendered for that object alone and have better attributes.

After you’ve finished the story, there are side quests, ascendancy paths, spy missions, and even an arena where you can battle really difficult monsters for prizes. It’s a huge game.

Now, after seven years, they’ve come out with Path of Exile 2!

It’s set 20 years after the original story, and promises updated visuals, items, mechanics, and a new storyline. It will be available alongside the original story, rather than replacing it. It will also be free to play. Expected release date will be in 2024, but no firm release date has been set. The release of trailers coincides with ExileCon, an annual convention for fans of Path of Exile.

Path of Exile, free to play on SteamOS. It can be played solo, cooperative or PvP. I have played 487 hours of this game, and I’m nowhere near done playing it.