I currently have my head deep in Dota. But this has been catching my eye recently, and so how is it? Never played an ARPG before and wondered what the duders' opinions on the game were.

It's great. Nothing at all like Dota 2 though, but still... it's a great game. (Coming from someone with well over 1000 hours in Dota 2)

Hard to beat the price, but it didn't really grab me. I found the nature of skill progression to be annoying. I'd sooner recommend D3, or if you want an F2P, maybe Marvel Heroes. Or if you want fantasy but D3 is too expensive, maybe Torchlight 2, though I found that way too easy.

It's ok. Good enough to pass time until the Diablo 3 expansion is out.

I hear it's pretty deep and well balanced. A lot of people swear by it as the current de facto game in the genre. And if you enjoy going deeeep into a game and figuring out all the quirks and intricacies, PoE has a lot to offer.

But personally I think the artstyle is possibly the worst I've seen in quite a while. Honestly I would rather play progressquest for the rpg feedback-loop since windows UI isn't immediately eyesearing. And getting new loot isn't satisfying when your character always end up looking like garbage.

If you haven't played an ARPG before, you might want to get into Diablo 3 when the expansion comes out this spring. It's currently not the best on the market, but with the incoming changes it has a high chance to reach the throne. And at it's core it's a very accessible fluid take on the genre.

I'm not that far into it. Trying to play a Witch specialized in pets. I'm level 12 now and not feeling it. The passives tree is gigantic but most skills are just percentage buffs. I've seen 2 interesting pet skills when I scrolled through last night and they are all at the far end, meaning I have at least 20 more levels and boring buffs to go. My spells are also pretty standard. I tried to vary my picks, but maybe I'm just unlucky. I know Diablo 3 got a lot of flack for being inflexible but at least every single skill did something totally different with secondary effects and all. I'll stick with it for a bit. If you want to try it out, hit me up if you want. http://steamcommunity.com/id/Tigercash

I really liked the gold-free economy and Materia-esque skill system during closed beta but Diablo 2 remains the only ARPG I put any actual hours into. Worth the download if nothing else.

It feels like a more faithful sequel to Diablo 2.

I like it, i like it's tone and overall dark theme, it's pretty tough in the higher levels.

You know, I like it, but it also made me realize that I'll never love a 3D ARPG as much as I did those isometric sprite based ones.

It's pretty dope. Character customisation is deep, but the action itself is a bit flat. Got bored after a while, never got back into it.

it's like diablo 2 kinda...

It's like Diablo 3 except a whole lot more interesting and more fun.

Something seems to attract Dota people to PoE, must be the crazy depths or something (personally I love both games). It's the first dungeon crawler that have gotten me really invested in different skill/item builds rather than just grinding with the same character over and over. Trying out new stuff with the skill tree and the different combos of skill gems is quite addictive. So I recommend it wholeheartedly.

The skill tree is not the only part of the complexity in PoE. You also have the ability to combine skill gems in a myriad of ways.

Also, although a lot of the nodes are nothing special, part of the complexity is to optimize your build while getting to the interesting nodes.

PoE is the best diablo-like ARPG, imho. (I finished D3 Inferno Diablo and thought character building was very primitive and boring in comparison).

It's pretty fucking fun. Tons of possibilities with skill and support gems and the huge passive tree. I am really liking it alot more than Diablo 3.

I'm no expert on the game, but here are my feelings on it from what I've played so far.

In a world of greedy and gross microtransactions, PoE refreshingly avoids that shit with their cosmetic only model. No exp booster potions or anything like that. The downside is that gear that drops kind of looks like shit since they make their money of you buying store gear to look cool. If you can get past the rough visuals and dull looking loot, PoE is kind of awesome. It's got really deep customization. You can mold any class to make your dream build. A lot of this comes down to the skill and talent system. The skills (your spells and abilities) are obtained via gems that drop from enemies and quests. You socket your gear with these gems to be able to use the skill in question. Then you can modify theses skills with modifier gems. So lets say you get a lightning arrow skill gem. You can modify it with a gem that splits the arrow into a spread shot. The gems aren't bound to your gear either, so you can swap out when you get new loot.

Then there's the passive skill tree. It's HUGE (over 1300 passives) and all classes share the tree. It's a big constellation of passive skills. Each class has a designated place on the tree that they start on. From there, start connecting dots as you please. Here's a picture of it.

Yea, it's kind of overwhelming at first, but in the end, I love the freedom to make what I want.

Outside of the skill systems, it's your standard ARPG fare. The economy is unique in that there is no gold. You trade only in items and materials to craft or modify items. It's kind of awesome, but a little hard to know what's worth what when you're new to the game. The game seems to suffer from server stability issues. I've experienced syncing problems and disconnecting from servers. I figured they would of fixed that stuff from the beta, but oh well. Only other thing I can think of that I didn't like was how tedious moving items around in your inventory is. Selling (trading) junk is equally a pain. I feel like other arpgs such as D3 and Torchlight 2 have made that stuff so much more snappy and easy.