I've now played Path of Exile all the way to the second act. The second act seems to have a little more freedom than the first. The problem with the first act at least was that there wasn't much in terms of opportunities for trying your hand at higher level areas, i.e. no opportunities at all other than by skipping areas. Unfortunately skipping areas would be rather effortful due to exits being difficult to find.
Without skipping content, there was zero challenge of any sort until the Act One boss - and even beating that didn't take me more than redoing the last couple of areas until I was lvl 17 and could wear better armor. I dislike equipment level restrictions btw. These games don't need balance as much as they need opportunity for trying higher level areas and skipping content easily, and cool stuff like finding an awesome armor at low level and being able to use it.
Game looks awesome. It also reminds me of Diablo specifically in some ways, like gratuitous tomes that reveal lore via voice acted monologue, similar equipment modifier system, procedurally generated loot and monsters and levels. Even beating monsters has a similar satisfying feel to it, although I wish that slashing-weapons sounded different than smashing with a hammer.
It seems to me the loot system could be better. First of all, there's too much loot - every monster type drops random loot regularly (compare with Dark Souls or Two Worlds, where you're motivated to kill for xp but not loot most of the time, and certain monsters drop certain kinds of loot). The 'money' of the realm here is mainly scrolls of wisdom. Those scrolls are used to identify items, and I'm running out of them. You can bring back solid, good loot and get one scroll in return or something while having had to identify multiple items. It actually doesn't matter much how good your loot is. It's weird. I think the game expects me to drag back to town and sell everything I find. Fortunately you find those scrolls on occasion, but not nearly like gold in Diablo. It's possible to progress without constant travel back to town because the game is so easy, but the whole thing seems a little off. The loot system does require a complete overhaul imo.
I alluded to it - monsters are nothing but trash mobs so far if you don't skip content, so even the ones that aren't just annoying slime balls kind of lose their coolness when you can just mow them down without breaking a sweat.
I need to start skipping content - maybe the game will become more interesting to play.
