Page 17 - PC Gamer - UK (February 2020)

PRE VIE W
NEED TO KNOW
RELEASE DEVELOPER
2021 Grinding Gear Games
PATH OF E XILE 2
Path of Exile gets a major
overhaul with this free,
upcoming campaign
hen Path of Exile creator Chris Wilson
took the stage during ExileCon in
W November, I didn’t expect him to
announce Path of Exile 2, a whole new
campaign that overhauls most core systems and
upgrades graphics. No extra costs, no divided
playerbase, and every core expansion from the
original will be re-integrated into the new one.
And after playing 45 minutes of the game, PL AYED
I can’t overstate how much it feels like a IT
true sequel, despite technically still being
the same game. It’s an improvement over
the original in nearly every way, and its
smart refinement of its skill system makes
Path of Exiles daunting complexity a lot
’
more accessible – all without sacrificing
an inch of depth. If anything, Path of Exile
2 is going to become even more of a
theory crafter’s dream come true.
RETURN TO WRAECLAST
Set 20 years after the events of the
original campaign, Path of Exile 2 is the
story of a society trying to rebuild after the
original cast of player characters killed
every single god in existence and used
their power to murder an even bigger god.
Now every deity is dead and humankind is
left to clean up the corpses (there are a
lot) and try and move forward.
Path of Exile 2, Wilson tells me, is
Grinding Gear Games’ chance to press the
reset button and tell a smaller-scale story
that isn’t about world-ending threats. You
play as an entirely new exile who narrowly
escapes their execution and washes up on
the shores of Wraeclast again. Though it
wasn’t immediately clear from the early
quests I completed, your goal is to THAT HIGH-STAKES COMBAT
investigate the duke who sentenced you TRICKLES DOWN TO REGULAR
to die and the paranormal mysteries that
surround him. Like the original campaign, PACKS OF ENEMIES
that means clicking on enemies until they
Path of Exile 2
PUBLISHER LINK
In-house pathofexile2.com
explode and good loot falls out of their
dismembered corpses.
Even in the first minutes of this
adventure, Path of Exile 2 feels like a big
improvement over the original. The
original three acts of Path of Exile are now
seven years old and their age is shown
most in how one-dimensional much of
boss fights are. More often than not,
you’re standing in place clicking on a big
monster until it stops moving. And after
beating those bosses dozens of times, the
lack of challenge is grating. Path of Exile
2’s bosses clearly benefit from years of
figuring out what makes boss fights fun.
One early quest tasked me with killing
The Devourer, a monstrous worm living in
an underground passage. Path of Exile’s
first bosses are usually pretty simple but
The Devourer was a surprising challenge.
During the battle it would frequently
tunnel underground and explode, forcing
me to run for my life or die. But I had to be
careful, because each time its head
moved it would leave behind a pool of acid
that I had to avoid, slowly reducing the
space I had to manoeuvre, and its deadly
tail would crush me if I ventured too close.
Meanwhile, the worm’s head constantly
fired acid projectiles or tried to dismember
me with one of its large mandibles. It was
hectic and overwhelming – exactly what I
love about action-RPGs.
Each of the bosses I fought were
exceptionally good at keeping me on my
toes and fighting for my life. In a later zone,
The Rust King pelted me with jagged bits
of metal. If I got nicked even a little bit, I
could quickly bleed out. It forced me to
pay careful attention to his movement so I
knew what type of attack to expect and
could prepare. If he levitated a swarm of
knives, I had better run to his flanks. If I
spent too long hacking away at his ankles,
he’d trigger an explosion that would kill me
if I didn’t step back.
That high-stakes combat trickles down
to regular packs of enemies. Contorted
witches spawn occult symbols that
explode seconds later, while hulking
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