Odyssey (Day 133)

I've been playing a lot of Path of Exile recently, which I've talked about previously on this blog. I haven't made a lot of progress because I've been branching out and trying different classes and playing it with friends. It's a free game, so it's easy to just suggest someone download it and try it out. It really stands out in comparison to other similar games. It lacks the polish of Diablo 3, but I feel like I have a lot more freedom to experiment.

Even though there are only a few classes, nothing is set in stone about them. If you are creative enough with your skill tree, you can customize your character to do whatever you want. Depending on the class you've chosen it may not necessarily be optimal, though. Every class starts at a different spot in Path of Exile's gigantic skill tree--so if you're trying to make a spellcasting Marauder you'll inevitably have to travel through a lot of "talents" that will end up being poorly suited to your specialization.

I just really like how all of the stats work together in this game. There are three primary mitigation stats in Path of Exile: armour, energy shield, and evasion. These are associated with the three main statistics of strength, intelligence, and dexterity respectively. Marauders are associated with strength, Witches are associated with intelligence, and Rangers are associated with dexterity. However, certain classes are associated with multiple stats. Shadows, for instance, are dexterity/intelligence characters so their skills and gear focus on a mixture of melee attacks, traps, and spells. They use both evasion and energy shield, but they won't dodge attacks as consistently as a ranger of absorb as much as a Witch with their energy shields.

You can customize these hybrid classes so that they're closer to one extreme than another--say you wanted something very similar to a ranger but you like to have access to certain spells or the energy shield mitigation stat. You're not prohibited from experimenting with "off stats" with the non-hybrid classes either, but you'll likely have to go further out of your way in those classes' skill trees to do so.

Path of Exile rewards experimentation and theorycrafting far more than other games in the genre. I had fun with Diablo 3 and Torchlight II but there's only so many options available to you in those games and much of it hinges on gear that's not easily acquired. Hopefully I'll actually get through act 2 soon so I can have more to say about this game.