Like many other active action RPG players, I was very excited to play Path of Exile 2's new update, The Return of the Ancients. This patch promised a major overhaul of the endgame with several new stories, and more importantly, some quality-of-life changes to make the campaign easier to complete.
Despite these changes, such as additional marking of important objectives and reworking of select zones to make them less confusing, I still found leveling my ranger to be little more than a frustrating waste of time. My build is relatively competent and I don't struggle with dealing damage, I just really don't enjoy playing through the campaign for the fifth time.
Grinding Gear Games will never implement a campaign skip feature because I don't believe the studio would ever want the game to be played. But what can be done to make the campaign more enjoyable for regular players like you and me? What is the answer?
Does it work like this?
This has always been a flaw in Path of Exile 2, and it's not just this ARPG. Diablo 4 has the same problem and to some extent Last Epoch, although this campaign is much shorter and there are methods to skip at least parts of it on second or third characters. It's the nature of ARPGs that every time a wipe occurs, you have to start from scratch – clear the campaign, level up your character, learn how everything works – before you get to the actual endgame.
PoE2 has a particular problem because the maps are so vast and dark. In fact, I wrote about this two years ago in one of my first reviews of the game, and very little has been done to remedy some of these frustrations since then. The Return of the Ancients added some neat little changes that I thought might have more impact than they actually did, such as taking the road in Ogham Village to get to the blacksmith – rather than running in circles looking for a small checkpoint on the map.
The campaign is always a bit of a chore, even though it shouldn't take that long to play. I would say my net time is around ten hours at the moment. It would be shorter, but I tend to experiment a bit with builds rather than completely following a very strong one already made by someone else with thousands of hours in the game.
And therein lies one of the problems: watching others play the game. There are very experienced players that I turn to before the season for build guides and tips and tricks, and those are the people who can finish a campaign in four or five hours. Every movement is rehearsed. They know exactly which buttons to click and which items to go to in order to maximize their running speed. It makes my stumbling down winding roads look utterly pathetic and is a bit of a motivation killer. However, this is only a small problem. More broadly, Path of Exile 2's campaign still needs balancing to be enjoyable.
Wider frustration
I understand the need for the campaign. It's basically a method of testing if your build is ready for the endgame. If the game were to just throw you into mapping without going through the rigmarole of conquering the campaign first, I imagine many players – especially those new to the game – would find the entire endgame experience extremely frustrating.
What's particularly damning, however, is how much easier the game is when you're using a build built by a player with far more game time than you. If I try to use a custom build, I can usually get through the campaign with no problems, but the difference is quite shocking once I take a premade build. I can take out bosses in seconds and clear the screen of enemies with a few button presses. Grinding Gear also made it a lot easier during this league with a new build import mechanism that allows you to copy builds directly into the game before starting the campaign.
Aside from your build choice, so much of your success in the campaign depends on good weapons. For example, in my current run with a ranger, I failed to drop a good Warden Bow at the end of the first act, which means my damage is about 150 DPS lower than my ranger built from the previous league at the same point in the game. Everything is just a little harder to kill thanks to simple randomness. This randomness of loot drops and how much of an impact it can have on how comfortable the campaign feels is just frustrating.
And that's regardless of having to run the campaign again if you want to have an alt later in the season. In almost two years of playing the game, I've only made two alternate characters, even though I quite enjoyed the ending. That's because I can't restart the campaign. Keep in mind that we are currently in the fourth act of a potential six-act campaign when the game comes out in version 1.0. Even more campaigns may be launched before the game is ready to launch.
My personal opinion would be that starting the campaign on alts will be completely skippable, with a new character just placed in your hideout with the campaign unlocked and simple equipment for the ending. The current campaign could still use some more tightening, especially in the third act, which seems too drawn out – even with some positive changes in this update. It's rare to ask for more branding in a video game, but I'd like to see the campaign be very simple to complete with clear instructions, maybe rolled into your account specifically after you've completed it once, even in a previous league?
We'll continue to see changes to how the campaign works before the release of PoE2, but I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. However, I have faith in Grinding Gear Games. I'm sure the studio has something planned.
Path of exile II
- Released
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December 6, 2024
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and gore, Nudity, Intense violence, Sexual themes, Language, User interaction, In-game purchases (includes random items)
- Developers
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Gear grinding games
- Publishers
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Gear grinding games
