So the Path of Exile open beta started up last week and as a huge fan of hack & slash Action/RPGs, I signed up. I’m really liking it so far.

My favorite hack & slash RPG up to this point has been Titan Quest and the biggest reason is because Titan Quest features an awesome multi-class system that offers a lot of flexibility in how you build your character. Path of Exile takes things even further and borrows liberally from the Final Fantasy series to create what is quite possibly my favorite leveling system ever. On the one hand, it has a humongous, more sophisticated version of Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid for stats & passive bonuses and on the other hand, it straight up steals Final Fantasy VII’s materia system for abilities (complete with support orbs that offer bonuses to abilities they’re attached to). The result is a tremendous amount of flexibility in how you choose to design your character.

Another thing that I really like about Path of Exile is how it handles items & currency. Simply put, there’s no direct currency in the game. Everything is done via a barter system that primarily uses consumable items. Because of this, there are a lot of cool consumable items that are used to improve your equipment. This system creates a lot of interesting choices – do you sacrifice this one item to buy this piece of equipment from a vendor or do you save it to boost a piece of equipment that you already own?

I’m not generally a fan of most Free-To-Play games, but I can find no fault with the way Path of Exile is currently set up. The vast majority of purchasable items are merely aesthetic options and the few things that can be purchased that do affect the playing experience directly are for stuff like extra character slots & more shared stash tabs. Since the default number of character slots & shared stash tabs seems ample for most players, this truly is a game that can be played to its full extent without the need for grinding (unlike other popular free-to-play games like League of Legends).

So is Path of Exile my perfect game? Not quite. The biggest issue is that it does require a constant internet connection which means that if the server is having problems, you could get booted or otherwise suffer poor gameplay. The graphics in Path of Exile are serviceable but are closer in quality to Diablo 2 than the better looking games that have come since then. The actual combat doesn’t feel as polished as games like Diablo 3 & Torchlight 2. Oh and it’s a little annoying that your character’s appearance is tied to their starting position on their passive sphere grid (and there’s only one gender option for each “class”). But despite these issues, the good far outweighs the bad at this point. After all these years, I may have finally found a worthy replacement for Titan Quest.

I’m still eagerly awaiting Grim Dawn (a new hack & slash RPG from some of the actual developers of Titan Quest) though. 🙂