Review
Diablo IV
Wonderful to play, exhausting to own. The seasons giveth and the storefront taketh away.
No. 22 in The Noteworthy 50 · Action RPG
Path of Exile 2
The deepest character-building system in any action RPG, now slower, harder and considerably more beautiful.
Path of Exile has always been the ARPG for people who found Diablo shallow, and the sequel doubles down. The passive skill tree is a constellation of well over a thousand nodes. Skills come from gems that socket into gear and are modified by support gems. Ascendancy classes branch further. The number of viable character builds is not large; it is effectively unbounded, and the community's build-planning tools are load-bearing infrastructure.
What is new in the sequel is pace. The original evolved into a game about clearing screens in a fraction of a second; Path of Exile 2 pulls that back toward deliberate, dodge-rolling, weighty combat where individual monsters matter. It is a better game for it and a more demanding one, and a meaningful slice of the original's playerbase actively dislikes the change — Grinding Gear has continued running both.
The economy
Trading is player-to-player, currency is crafting materials rather than gold, and the seasonal league structure resets the economy regularly. That produces a genuinely functioning market with price discovery, arbitrage and crafting economics. It also means a chunk of the game is conducted through third-party trade sites, which is a friction point Grinding Gear has never resolved on principle.
The caveat that matters: this is still early access. Balance passes have been substantial, content is arriving in stages, and characters have been affected by resets. Extraordinary at what it does, but do not treat the current state as final.
What works
- A passive tree and skill-gem system with genuinely unlimited build expression
- Combat is weightier and more deliberate than the original's zoom-fest
- Economy-driven trading league with real player-run markets
- Free with no power for sale — the monetisation is cosmetics and storage
What doesn't
- Still officially in early access; balance and content are moving targets
- Brutally opaque for newcomers — expect to consult external tools constantly
- The slower combat pace has divided the original game's own playerbase
- Stash tab purchases are close to mandatory for serious play
The Catch — what it will cost you
The famous asterisk on Grinding Gear's otherwise excellent model: the game is free and sells no power, but inventory and stash management without buying tabs is genuinely painful, and any player past the first fifty hours will spend money on storage. Call it what it is — a soft subscription for organisation.
Who it's for: Theorycrafters who read spreadsheets for pleasure and want a game that never sells them power.