Recent reviews by ethers dual hunting horn

a short and interesting game with interesting visual

control and visual related to gameplay can be improved. sometime it feels weird when trying to dodge or get a hit.

the game have a lot of potential with more development but i dont think there will be more update or content

it is an ok game overall considering the price

tldr
PoE 2 is an overly ambitious game that is still in early access under development by a company who seems like does not care about long time player at all. It is trying to deliver new PoE experiences but end up forgetting on how to be fun.

it is hard to recommend the game unless you are searching for something specific
If you like build crafting, at the time of this review, PoE 2 deliver a little bit of it.
If you want more complete game and having more fun, just play PoE 1, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn, D4, etc.

___

It is really hard for me to write this review.
The main problem for me for PoE 2 is I am not very sure what is the vision and direction of the game.
Is it a souls like?
Is it a new PoE 2? what is new?
Is it just a way to kill PoE 1?

Before EA, I got the feel that PoE 2 will be a new PoE with new engine and try to give different challenge compared to PoE 1 where players will need to think more when they play the game. Most of the time, depends on your build, PoE 1 end up becoming 0-3 button game where you just zoom around except when you do some mechanics or bosses. PoE 2 pre EA materials emphasize boss fight videos and much more slower gameplay where we need more thoughtful movement and combinations.

After hundreds of hours playing in EA, i feel like PoE 2 is just exactly another PoE 1 with slightly better engine but worse in gameplay and even the core of the game itself. PoE 2 is trying too much to be "harder" but end up forget on how to be fun. Understandably the game is in early access, but, looking at the current state, the game may at least need 1 year or more of early access. I am perfectly fine if the game will be in early access for 1 or even more year, but the problem here is they decided to delay PoE 1 to fix PoE 2 instead of supporting the people who actually make them able to reach this point.

- The game starts ok showing some difficulty and something promising similar with the pre EA material, but, it become more clear as you progress the game, the pre EA material only talk about bosses. In most cases specially at the core gameplay and endgame you will be surrounded by enemies and effects that will threaten you. This end up with you don't have much time to think or have flexibility in your builds, because it is always better to kill everything as fast as possible using less buttons as possible similar to PoE 1. We can argue about farms, build optimizations, early game build, etc. but this is already happen in PoE 1, so literally nothing new in PoE 2. The skill combinations are already available in PoE 1 but not very famous. Thoughtful movement in bosses is already necessary in some mechanic in PoE 1. Formula is pretty much the same between PoE 1 and PoE 2.

- In PoE 1 we can somewhat to some degree choose how or what we want to play. PoE 2 forces you to play some mechanic like ritual, sanctum, ultimatum, etc. You can still somewhat skip them, but, you will miss some core reward. You have to run ritual to get your first spirit. You have to run sanctum and/or ultimatum to get your ascendancy classes. A little bit of joke here, current PoE 2 itself is a "betrayal", so you are playing betrayal. In PoE 1 skipping mechanics does not mean you cannot use aura, you get your class and ascendancy from campaign and labyrinth. In PoE 2 you have to do campaign, ritual, sanctum, etc to even get the base of your character.

- Push of Exile 2. You are literally can be pushed everywhere by single white mob even if your character is level 100 and hero of the story.

- Balance is bad. You can play using mace with already slow attack speed compared to other weapon and forced to use mace skill with builtin reduced attack speed.

- The fact the game is tagged with "Souls-like" at the time of this review is just showing how bad the difficulty is. The game is just trying to be difficult but instead becoming annoying and showing no reward and fairness as in "Souls-like". Easy to die, death from visual clutter, on death effects, body blocked, pushed around, trolled by the game telling you to use skill combination but the enemies are run at you and stun lock you is not "Souls-like"

- pre EA materials are just bait

- You are paying to be Quality Assurance and delaying PoE 1. Imagine pay 2 lose.

+ you can feel the engine is slightly much better in handling certain stuffs, but, currently no blight mechanic yet.

+ wasd movement

it does feels like a combination of some other games like noita or binding of isaac, etc.
it does have a lot of similarities and maybe also learn a lot from them

the main feature i like the most is the skill/spell system feels like path of exile except this one is way more flexible
if you like crafting build i think this can be your heaven

+ spell system is very flexible and several things can affect each other and matters. ordering of spells can matter etc.
+ graphic is good and suit the game. it can be funny and beautiful at correct places. don't expect expensive AAA graphic but some part of the gameplay and story can look funny and with tinkering some build can look beautiful
+ progression is nice and there is pinnacle boss and secret.

- not really a negative but performance can be bad. performance is actually feels optimized and good for the amount of flexibility it have in the spell system. it can go bad with some insane build. i have done the final final boss with a build without lag but i also have done it with a build that can go lag.
- there is a progression where we unlock more spell and give us a way to remove some spells at the price of some in game resource. the problem is it add way more spell than the free remove, so we may need more resource to remove some spells than what we get from the run.

chill driving space sim game. i played a lot of truck simulator and this game have some good ideas similar to truck simulator with space feeling. the game definitely have the core ideas but sadly missing a lot of opportunity and it is fine considering the developer maybe not big enough to handle all of them.

+ there are some story progression and upgrade progression for your truck
+ you can walk, space walk, salvaging things from space and do things in your truck
+ there is changing in game market and items, combined with previous point sometime it give the feeling of something like supermarket simulator where you tidying your item for you to sale at next star system

+ performance is ok
+ visual is ok
+ audio, music, and radio are good but there is only small number of them so it may get boring after some session

- only one truck at the time of review
- there are story progression bug at the time of review

at the time of writing, i played and bought the preseason and season 1 battle pass. i upgraded multiple character and weapon and bought character slot.

it feels similar to other games available out there. it is a grind game and a very grindy game. it is somewhat chill once you got into it. the game have some quality of life for grind.

if you like grind game or just want to chill grind the game is just ok. overall it is an ok game but sadly plagued with bad monetization. if you value your time and money i don't think this is good for now.

+ developer updated things that need to be updated

+ a lot of character and weapons and building blocks for your build

+ audio visual is ok
+ fsr is available
+ performance is ok

- there are no real build and difficulty. most build and difficulty are end up becoming just damage check.

- drop rate is really weird and does not feel like it value your time. there are 20% chance that i only get 1 for multiple sets of 10 try. there are 15% chance that i always get 1 in 10 try. technically ok in term of probability but can be improved in a lot of ways.

- battle pass is not good. most are fashion for things that you most likely will not use and something like short real life duration xp bonus that activated on claim. imagine paying for battle pass that alreay might be a fomo and some of the content is an item to get a buff that activate fomo effect.

- shop is not good. there are a lot of items that exactly the same but you have to purchase it again full price if you want it for other character.

- bad monetization. some core part of the game are monetized. you need to pay to get more preset. the problem here is the dev keep saying build diversity but they hurt it themselves by monetizing the very core part of build diversity.

- performance is ok but use a lot of resource. it doesn't feel like i get much for how hot my pc run.

if you like kamitsubaki studio this game is perfectly fine as a media player
it is also a good idea and inspiration for other music studio
as a game, it definitely have some stuffs can be improved

the ui color choices is understandble for some people to feel too much
the ux can be improved compared to some other rhytm game
the mapping for some songs i have played is just ok. it is not too much but also can left things to be desired.

early review because i heard news about ouka studio

+ you can feel the mana series

- no ultrawide setting

if you know age of mythology, this is the age of mythology but better
there are some improvements but most things still feel similar

+ keeping things similar to old one
+ AI
+ campaign
+ tutorial
+ online service runs ok and can spectate
+ there are a lot of control setting
+ there are a lot of visual setting and FSR setting also available

- the kind of not good part is, the visual and audio feels weird. it feels like developer try so hard to keep the old feel with new technologies. i personally okay and was hoping to have current technology visual and audio.

surprisingly chill game and nice idea

i played diablo 1 and 2 a lot in the past
i preordered diablo 4 and bought some battlepass using blizzard launcher

ironically diablo 4 is not the best diablo like arpg game. it is an ok diablo game.
there are more contents and systems need to expand and catch up with other similar games.

season of loot reborn definitely improve a lot of stuff and the direction is good but a lot of stuff still need and can be expanded more.

- the only reason i bought diablo 4 in steam and i give thumb down for this review is because blizzard need to improve their payment system