Diablo 4 Completed more than one revolution around the sun. Since its initial launch in June 2023, Blizzard has made several fundamental changes to its project settings, leveling experience, difficulty options, and dramatically altered the structure of its endgame.
The game received a full expansion pack, six seasons, and a ton of updates that managed to address nearly every grievance that players had. In many ways, Diablo 4 in late 2024 will be completely different from the Diablo 4 that launched the previous summer. However, before it needs to do all that, it's my favorite ARPG anyway, because even that oft-maligned release delivered on what I care about most in these games.
But it's time for Diablo 4 to take a break, as Path of Exile 2 looks to be the first game since launch that has a real chance of attracting Diablo 4's casual players (which is most of them).
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That style of action RPG; an isometric, loot-driven, brutal narrative about the end of the world and the corruption of long-standing faith, that's what I'm into. When I find interesting games released, I follow them, but end up playing them for much shorter periods of time than I'd like because I'm usually overwhelmed by their gameplay, and I inevitably Driven back to Diablo.
Earlier this year, during one of the toughest times since Diablo 4's release, version 1.0 of Final Age was released. very good. It played well enough, but the focus was clearly on the endgame which I never cared about or managed to hang on long enough to get to. It often feels like a game that goes out of its way to cater to the every whim of its most dedicated players, introducing systems and solving problems that most players don't even recognize. It comes and goes, leaving only the most dedicated players behind.
Just like that, Diablo 4's dominance once again went unchallenged, with all the work Blizzard put into the game clearly making it the loudest player-favorite ARPG in the ARPG community. But that reign is about to be threatened with the arrival of Path of Exile 2.
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To be honest, I never viewed the original Path of Exile as any “threat” to Diablo. The idea that it would leave any trace among the large casual player base of Blizzard's ARPGs never really made sense to me. It's like a YouTube thumbnail announcing the death of Call of Duty at the hands of Arma.
However, Path of Exile is one of the most enduring games of all, so every year or so I download the damn thing and sink about six or seven hours into it before I bounce back. I can live with its limited inventory, its ridiculously large passive skill tree, its unnecessarily complex gem system, and even the way it handles item recognition, but I can no way Forget how clunky and unsatisfying its combat is.
The game's developer, Grinding Gear Games, even recognized this as a shortcoming of its game and tried to change it a few years ago, which made me re-download it again, only to quickly abandon it again.
I haven't actually played a minute of Path of Exile 2 yet, but from everything we've heard, seen, and read about the upcoming release, it sounds like GGG is finally chasing Diablo's audience; people who like satisfying action, a bit of loot, and the production quality of a big game.
I watch and play a lot of ARPGs, so I tend to notice things like character movement, attack animation priority, weight and weight, etc., and my guess is, most people would pay more attention to those. This is where I see most of the progress, and to my eye it looks closer to the flow of Diablo's combat – and specifically the flow of Diablo 4's combat – than ever before.
Now, I know that Path of Exile 2 will still be a much more complex game than Diablo 4. The developers recently spent over an hour working on features and systems, most of which are strictly made for the final game, although the early access launch version only contains a portion of the core campaign. Sure, it looks like a more accessible game, but GGG would be foolish to abandon its core audience now.
In the sequel, I still see some of the performance issues that persisted in PoE, and I know I'll want some of the Diablo 4 features in PoE2 that will likely never be mirrored. But the difference this time is that I actually Looking forward to playing; moving my character, interacting with the world, and feeling the magic of combat. Is this enough for me to ignore all the complexity? I have no idea.
My own feelings about the nuances of combat aside, it's hard not to see the release of Path of Exile 2 as a sign that the subgenre remains healthy. We've moved far beyond game X existing just to kill game Y. I hope and like them to coexist, and there's still room for more games. But secretly, I worry that I might become one of those PoE demons who launch into a tirade every time a casual onlooker laughs at something in their favorite game. Long speeches almost always begin with “No, you don't understand.”
Path of Exile 2 will be released on December 6th on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
