This looks kinda bad but I can’t place my finger on what it is. I think it’s the like clay like textures and mobile phone like graphics.
This isn’t giving next gen to me and the trailer felt was less put together than they usually do. I guess I like the more realistic or hyper realistic style the cinematics have always pushed in my heads.
That being said, I hope it slaps. I miss a solid dawn of war that my pals and I can play. Nothing like Dark Crusade LAN parties back in the day.
It’s on my to do list. It seems like it’s lacking the playstyle customization that I’m interested in but I look forward to playing through it.
PoE2 promised engaging, methodical combat but as of right now has failed to reach that mark. The end game is that of PoE1 which the developers claim they don’t want but I’m not seeing the design choices to slow things down in a meaningful way. Let’s hope they figure it out, I have no doubt the first ARPG to figure this out will bring in larger numbers than most have seen to date.
I’m arguing some of the developers know it’s broken (including arguably all PoE leads and No Rest for the Wicked leads)(I would extend this to an even larger group but I won’t to keep it verifiable).
I don’t think all isometric ARPGs copy D2 because they think it’s not broken, I think they do it because it was an innovative genre defining game for its time, most of the devs look back to it with nostalgia, and it was a blockbuster hit. And I wouldn’t minimize the innovations in the scene to just QoL. I think what PoE1 and 2 and LE are doing around their systems is very innovative, including their financing model and tech. I would argue that they’re still fundamentally maintaining the moment to moment loop while expanding all the subsystems that give the game as a whole massive complexity and content - and that’s great but will inevitably pale in comparison to a game that innovates the moment to moment gameplay. I think most genres have innovated their core moment to moment gameplay compared to their genre defining counterparts 25 years ago, but that ARPGs haven’t.
And I completely disagree on my expectations being “unrealistic, unknown to the genre, or incompatible”. That’s laughable imo and something only a player incapable of imagining change would say.
So what exactly is incompatible here? I think the answer you’d give is engaging combat, because that’s what I always get when I have this conversation. “All changes that have already been made to the genre are great but no more changes to the genre would be good.” That’s the sentiment I always get. “I want to mindlessly grind mobs while watching a show I can only partially pay attention to on my second screen.” Is something I get a lot as well. Which just feels like a mobile game, an idle clicker, but not what most people want when they go to play a video game including in the ARPG genre. Even if we said there’s room for idle clickers in the genre, why are our stand out examples all idle clickers, that to me feels like a clear sign of stagnation in a genre. Dota, rainbow six, BG3, BioShock, portal 2 - none of these games would be better if they were less engaging such that we could watch TV on the side, so why is it okay when talking about the genre defining games of our Gen in isometric Diablo-like ARPGs?
I think you’re getting the wrong impression.
I absolutely like isometric ARPGs, I just like them exponentially more in theory. Most of them have barely innovated on Diablo 2’s core moment to moment loop and it’s something that seemingly everyone is aware of but no studio has yet to be able to fix. I’m looking for good combat, which was what PoE2 pitched in all of their videos, in most of their dev interviews (although as of late it feels like they’re pulling back on this), and has so far failed to deliver outside of the boss arena (and sometimes in the boss arena too).
I want:
In theory this describes games like Diablo/LE/PoE as well as remnant 2/destiny/borderlands. But classic ARPG’s have so much of these needs theoretically covered that if they’d just tweak the moment to moment gameplay they’d have a perfect game for me. Where as games like Borderlands barely has a dozen skills in the entire game and they barely change how you play (coming from B3 and B4), the combat by the nature of being an fps is more engaging but it’s not much past that - it’s very repetitive and the number of mobs that are interesting or good is low imo. If each quality I’m looking for is scored 1-10 borderlands may have some of them but they score lower than most ARPGs. Remnant 2 was fantastic but it didn’t have the hundreds of hours of content and systems to do that wasn’t grinding story paths (I’d still rate this experience at 10/10). Hades and Enter the Gungeon and most roguelites have fantastic moment to moment gameplay but lack most of the other qualities I’m looking for. Wo Long and DS and all of those are fantastic games with good moment to moment gameplay but similarly lack multiple qualities I’m looking for.
I honestly think I want an open world Diablo where it’s designed more like a Gauntlet and DND-esque groups in mind, with better combat and better loot and more skills. I want exactly what PoE2 was promising and delivers in their campaign (by and large, some things would still need to improve to score highly in my desired qualities) but which they completely abandon in the mid-to-late game. I want something in between No Rest for the Wicked or Hades or Remnant 2 and PoE 2 or LE or Diablo. And listening to the developers in this space on various podcasts and dev interviews, they know that is what’s missing but seem unable to get there quite yet. I think PoE2, if it doesn’t fix combat, will be an innovation on PoE1 but will be remembered as PoE1.5 and lumped into the age of ARPGS that were still Diablo 2 successors or the age after of innovators instead of the next generation of ARPGs i think we’re on the cusp of.
I think an ARPG without meaningful combat would require a significantly good story for it to be worth it for me. At least at the 20-25 hours of depth level. PoE 1/2 at thousands of hours of depth are struggling to hold me because their combat isn’t very good, and I really like the PoE2 campaign so far.
I guess as someone who loved Titanquest when I was a kid, I’m a bit disappointed in Titanquest 2 as of right now. And there are other great slot machine ARPG’s and I don’t have much desire for them as is, so it’s hard to justify this games asking price when the reviews are saying a play through is 4 hours at act 1. Maybe when the story is complete I’ll pick it up, but can you imagine it being €50 instead of €30. I mean even €30 with no crafting and minimal legendaries… Idk, not trying to be a downer but ya - those are my honest thoughts.
I generally agree with you, a fun short game is worth more money than a forever game to me right now.
It looks like it falls very short of the engaging combat I’m still looking for in an ARPG. €30 for less than 10 hours of an incomplete ARPG at that makes this a wait to buy if ever for me. I’m not certain I have the faith it’ll ever have 30 hours of content, this release feels like a “we’re running out of money” situation more than a “we’re confident in our product” scenario.
I burned out of Last Epoch in their last patch I think for good, because the combat is so bad. And PoE2 is approaching that for me as well - at least they have an engaging story and a long guaranteed road ahead of content - so maybe this is the slot machine ARPG I keep on hand (but I wish they’d just fix their combat). And I’m waiting for multiplayer to play No Rest for the Wicked, but I suspect it’s not ARPG enough to be a long term game.
The technical alpha slapped and I’m fuckin dying to get back in. I was really hoping for them to open up a beta but now I’m just sad I have to wait till October to play this.
I understand the delay to get things right, but there’s almost half a year where no game is satisfying this itch which is a shame. Marathon hasn’t been delayed yet and I know Hell Let Loose guys are making an extraction shooter that looks sick as hell that’s due to release this year as well.
All I’m saying is I would have paid €40 for that alpha it was so good, October will be a slam dunk, but the genre will be more crowded by that time.
I mean, I guess you’re right as far as I’m willing to debate the point. Does that change anything? I don’t feel like the franchise has done the Lost thing where every episode (in this case game) only asks more questions and never answers them. I also don’t feel like I’m dying to learn more about the world or that the small scope of their answers takes me out of the experience. Like, it’s perfectly encapsulated to what I need to enjoy the “movie” that is this game.
I completely agree that this has costs, and that it probably can’t go on for forever. Like one of the costs is I don’t super care about this world, it’s not a world I want to run a TTRPG in, or could envision a hundred spin-offs. I want the end of this story and I’d be okay if it stopped. Idk, that’s a fine thing to make imo. And again, it’s been top of it’s class in execution since it’s inception (never played the smaller games like Blue something or other) so idk - hard for me to nitpick the world or the game.
Now Valve please release your new VR set so I can buy it or the Big Picture 2 and get back into VR.
I appreciate difficulty options for other people and I think everyone should agree it’s a good thing to make games more accessible or more challenging depending on what a player is seeking.
My only caution is maintaining the vision for the expected experience. I imagine we’ve all played games where the normal difficulty or the default experience feels bad or improperly tuned. Multiple difficulty options can, I imagine, lead to less tuning on the default experience. I have no doubt I disliked games I would have liked if they’d encouraged me to play at a different difficulty or spent more time tuning their preferred difficulty. I have no doubt I liked games that if they’d provided difficulty options I may have changed the default experience to my detriment without realizing it.
Speaking entirely personally, I thought at least Half Life Alyx’s story worked on two levels. It was about freeing the gman as Alyx but gman sorta represented… Oh man, now I’m worried I can’t remember the game well enough to communicate my original thoughts. I remember playing it and feeling like the gman represented the writers or creativity, a bigger picture concept or something that went meta. And if that was the case it felt like Valve creating a piece of art that said Alyx and VR have revitalized our desire to tell stories and GMAN is free again.
The moment they drop their new headset I’ll buy it and play again just to relive the experience but I’d say I’m excited about Half Life because Valve makes A) good games B) they make solid diegetic games which I find to be kinda rare C) their games often feel like they came from a team of artists than just a team of coders. Maybe that’s the polish or maybe that’s the massive amount of testing I’m led to believe they do but when valve makes a new game it often feels like the guy who made Stanley Parable just made a new game - easy to recognize art because it’s so good.
I assumed pretty immediately upon hearing him in a couple of interviews that he was exactly this right winger camoflaughing as a centralist. I gave the game the benefit of the doubt because I hadn’t seen any hard evidence but I’ll stop talking kindly about the game based on this info.
Politics is how we organize our society. Most of everything is political. When society starts organizing movements against groups of people, stripping away rights, and generally being Nazis you have to get more political to stop them. Taking no position is taking a position. Join the rebellion or support the empire, there is no in-between.
Unfortunately, the snippet from the Wikipedia article you quoted exactly exemplifies my understanding of the genre tags and how I’ve seen them used since I was old enough to get on the Internet and read such things.
Zelda has, for me, always been an action adventure game. I don’t think I’d called Zelda breath of the wild an RPG game or an ARPG game but that’s because the item portion of the game felt incomparable to a game like Witcher or Diablo where every piece of your character is an item that can be upgraded.
That being said, I’m not exactly the biggest Zelda fan and BotW was like 10 years ago for me.
I guess I haven’t heard Souls-Like or games like Zelda or Witcher 3 (what I’d call Action Adventure I guess or RPG) called an ARPG although they fit the name well enough that maybe I have and today I’m falling on the other side of a fuzzy line.
Yes, I was referring to Diablo, PoE, Last Epoch, and the rest of the “looter” ARPG’s or what I’d just call ARPG’s. Maybe this is why the Diablo-like meme came up? To further drill in to the genre.
Totally valid take. I just think the text to voice system is hilarious, the animations/models are more enjoyable, the actual item gameplay loop has more fun and interactive components in repo, I like the items in repo more although shout-out to the boom box in LC, and the monsters in repo are way more interactive imo - I miss the coil head and the turrets and the teleporting randomly into base but otherwise the monsters are really fun in repo. I agree that Repo’s difficulty doesn’t scale too well currently but I expect them to balance things as it goes on.
I think LC is a great game and I hope everyone tries it out as well. Repo just feels like a more polished iteration on the concept and I’m happy to see the genre expand.
Sorry about the motion sickness, that’s rough.
To elaborate a bit on what Harrk said. It’s a linear dark souls-like with a heavier emphasis on rhythm gameplay (parrying) and only melee combat (no like magic or full ranged). It’s got a decent story that has most of its payoff in the final moments imo.
I’d recommend it for anyone interested in the dark souls experience with a the sharp edges rounded off and a more linear story using familiar characters.
That’s totally cool by me, it’s a fun game. PoE2 is probably the best ARPG on the market, it’s just falling short of what they sold me (and the community at large) on. But for now, it’s definitely an idle game during mapping with the right build (and the wrong build will see you roadblocked progression-wise).
I mean to say “idol” as in… Oh fuck. Omg I’ve been misspelling idle in literally weeks worth of comments. Woooooow. Okay. Feeling a bit dumb.
I meant idle mechanics. Hopefully that makes a bit more sense but just in case - I’m making the argument that most modern ARPGs since Diablo 2 have not innovated on the gameplay directly but have innovated on the systems of the genre. This behavior has led to what I consider to be a stale endgame game to game that often or exclusively boils down to trivializing the content such that it’s comparable to a slot machine, an idle game like Eggs Inc., or a “phone” game.
I think PoE2 is working hard to evolve the genre to what id consider to be a “next gen” ARPG, where most or all previous games fall into a large “Diablo 2 inspired” bucket. I think No Rest for the Wicked is similarly attempting to evolve the genre. A counter example for the genre is Titans Quest 2 which seems to be falling squarely in the “Diablo 2 inspired” bucket.
I’d like to see more “No Rest for the Wicked” level of swings regardless of if you consider that EA game a hit or miss in its current state.
I think you did a great job of talking about the various issues and I haven’t played noita yet but I appreciate the example. I think there is a way to create a game with a baseline power level of 1x and give the player a range of 0.8 - 1.6x power creep based on their build and 0.8 - 1.6x power creep based on their mechanical skill. Capping the possible player power range from something like 0.6 (a game twice as difficult as it was designed) to 2.5 (a game that’s a slightly more than twice as easy as it was designed) seems feasible to me - a none game dev. I believe this would allow me to have build expression from a power perspective and not reduce the game to a slot machine’s level of engagement. I think the problem is the lower range is closer to 0.1 or worse in the end game maps and the upper end is 100x+ even on the hardest content in the game. That to me is the core issues.
I think part of the fun in ARPGs, something almost all of them do better than say Dark Souls or Hades, is that the individual abilities are way different per character or per class/weapon/etc. I can play a magma barbarian in PoE2 in a way I just couldn’t in Elden Ring in a satisfactory way. I can play a lightning Amazon and a poison archer and a frost monk and the builds are visually (and in the best cases mechanically) diverse enough to make experience a new power fantasy that in itself is super cool. There are items and powers I can’t or wouldn’t experience on one play through that I could in another, and the best games in the genre provide me a ton of variation. That to me is more important to build expression than the power of my build, at least it’s more important than the share it gets in normal conversation. A build for me becomes bland and identical the moment combat is trivialized, but ideally before it trivializes things it can feel expressive if the moment to moment gameplay is unique compared to other builds.
So personally I’m confident to the extent “the needle has to be threaded (lol)” it’s not critically hard or critically important that it’s gotten perfectly right. I think it just has to be choice from the developers on what the power range is and how much of that is mechanical vs itemization based.
I disagree completely. I think you can have a game that is “about the builds” when engaging in meaningful combat. I think you’re right to hint that people may play these two kinds of games for two different reasons, but I think there’s a massive untapped market for the overlap.
I want the build creation and fantasy expression of typical ARPG’s but I want to use them to do more than just idol click monsters into loot. I don’t like the phone game playstyle of modern ARPGs. It’s not compelling to me to trivialize the gameplay loop in order to get slightly more powerful gear to further trivialize another tier of difficulty.
I think if GGG took their boss combat design philosophy and extended it out to their monsters - mimicking genres like roguelikes or action games - they’d have a lot more success than the hybrid game they’ve produced. I think they’re moving towards that but haven’t quite yet committed publicly to reworking the monsters.
Imagine Hades or Dead Cells or Enter the Gungeon but in Raeclast. I don’t think they’re far off on the player side, a few more abilities per weapon type, especially interactive defensive options, and monsters re crafted to roles in an encounter and they could mimic the compelling gameplay of a rogue-like but give you far more expression than the four guns you have on you or the two weapons and two items or the boons you pick during a run.
I think the genres are wholly compatible. I don’t think the idol vs engaging mindset are and that’s where all the friction seems to be coming from.
I do not believe “everyone” wants to zoom. I like the engaging combat they’re going for. I think the loudest people in the community like the idol game mechanics of most modern ARPGs but I think the genre is ripe for innovation.
Everyone praises their boss design and enjoy that aspect of the game, which to me reads “we like engaging combat with balanced rewards” but when that logic is theoretically applied to monsters we get people throwing online temper tantrums which tells me they don’t know what they want except for the thing they’ve already been given.
They’re missing the mark with the monster design, getting closer than anyone else in the genre (besides maybe No Rest for the Wicked). They need to look at roguelikes such as Hades and make each monster have a “role” when building encounters. Give each monster abilities like the bosses in the game and don’t make it about being auto-hit to death and they’ll have a truly next-gen ARPG.
I’m positive the first team to crack the infinite loot/immense player expression of ARPGs and engaging combat loop of action games (or really all other genres besides idol click farmers) will make the next genre defining game akin to Diablo 2.
I think PoE2 is on the road to doing that but the immense pushback they’re getting online seems to be wearing them thin. Which they asked for, for releasing an unfinished game and not having a clear line in the sand.
I’m still having fun. Pushing T4 maps today.
Swapped to Arch Linux! I wouldn’t say it’s been a bug free swap but it’s been extremely doable and everything I needed to work worked like a charm. Gaming was uninterrupted and nothing hasn’t worked yet.
I need to figure out how to connect my stupid printer but I couldn’t do that on windows either, which is sad cause I thought printers were gonna be easier on Linux but I guess this brother model is a pain in the ass or something. Oh and connecting to network drives while on a VPN. That’s my list of pending problems and I’ve been on Linux for two months. Not bad really.
Cyberpunk was the last game I preordered preordered and it was because of the blatant lies they told about the game before the release and still have not (and will not) deliver on.
I loved the world they artistically manifested and expanded in some ways (thanks Pondsmith!), loved the music, loved the start of the game. I have yet to finish it because it’s still a buggy mess at times.
I’ll finish it one day, everyone says the DLC is great. But it will be several solid and honest game releases before I trust cdpr again with any sales pitch. Until third parties have their hands on it, we can’t even trust the footage.
PoE2 will be Free-To-Play upon 1.0 launch. For now it’s in what they’re calling Early Access (a Beta period) and requires a €30 euro key. I believe they said they did this because it wasn’t the complete game, they were still looking for feedback, and it’s a bit janky in terms of balance.
So far it’s been worth every penny, many times over, but I also think the promise they deliver on in the first three acts they fail to deliver on in the end game. I’d recommend people wait if they have other games or ARPG’s to play. I’d also recommend anyone who loves ARPG’s, if they have run out of content elsewhere to give it a try without hesitation. It’s a fantastic game and the best arpg on the market in almost every aspect.
I’ve stopped preordering most games, partially because of a backlog, partially because games like 2077 ruined my trust in even “good” companies (and no, I do not think 2077 deserves the redemption arc the Internet gives it). I did however pre-order Path of Exile 2 by a week because I had A) played a beta experience which was terribly fun B) followed all of the content creators talk about the beta’s they played and how even when they complained it felt like choices I’d like (more action focused combat) and C) the preorder I got came with keys for friends I wanted to distribute ahead of time. So I knew for sure I was going to play it, like it at least enough to justify the price, and that I wanted to preload it for a launch party.
Pretty much the biggest and best reason to preorder is for the preload so you can play at launch. But not every game needs to be played at exactly the launch time (in fact we struggled on launch day of poe2 but did eventually get to play) and all pre-orders should be done as close to the launch date as possible so you can get an easy refund if it sucks.
I played it on launch with friends. It was an arpg with better combat than most and pretty great graphics. Those are ALL of the positive things I have to say about it. It was so buggy it was hard to play without crashing. We lost progression multiple times. The servers were atrocious, the first 6 hours of playtime were trying to log in and not crashing. We ended up refunding it obviously.
Unfortunately the ARPG genre is super stale right now and we were looking to support any project we could. No rest for the wicked is the best thing to come out in ages and it’s still got a ways to go in EA before I give it a proper play through.
That’s great for you, I’m happy you got a bug free experience. Overall that has not been the case for most, you’re the outlier. Maybe now with the dlc I’m the outlier, I can’t say. Most reviews I saw only talked about the dlc and not replaying the main game.
But even ignoring performance, the original marketing even up to weeks before the release contained promises that were never delivered. That to me sours anyone comparing this to no man’s sky, which has received dozens of major updates compared to Cyberpunk’s one.
It’s still a buggy mess for me unfortunately. It can run, but I bugged through the world at the delimane (?) quest and closed it again. I’ve got a top of the line rig and I was so tired of the game bugging out.
Maybe I’ll push through but everyone calling this one of the best turn arounds is giving them too much credit. They promised us so much, delivered a buggy mess, spent years fixing it, released a dlc which fixed even more and added supposedly a great story, but they still fell very short of their original marketing promises and as I said it still requires resetting frequently enough to be frustrating.
Crawl - technically pvp, arcade game Overcooked - try to manage a kitchen together Duck Game - completely pvp, ducks with guns, very fun