I’ve been really craving a good Diablo clone lately, but there haven’t been any new releases that have really interested me. Therefore I decided to give some older ones another try. I reinstalled Titan Quest and Path of Exile and started new characters in both to see which, if any, would stick.

Titan Quest didn’t last long. I love the idea of Diablo Meets Mythology, but the game is just too dated. I kind of want to go back and give it a bit more time… but realistically I don’t think I will.

Right now I’m about about fifteen hours into my new run at Path of Exile, and it’s been scratching my ARPG itch, but I wouldn’t say I’ve been fully converted to a fan. I can only reiterate what I said in the past: Despite what its fans like to tell you, it’s actually a very easy game that mostly gets its “challenge” from poor UI design and a pathological aversion to basic quality of life features.

I started out playing a templar, but melee turns out to feel awful in that game (seriously, why is he swinging so slowly?!?), so I quickly went back to playing a witch like I did the first time around. Going for a basic necromancer build; I was in the mood for a minion swarm.

I decided to play on “Ruthless” mode. Given my main complaints about the game were a lack of difficulty and the pain of inventory management, a mode that increases difficulty by drastically decreasing loot drops seemed like the ticket, and it definitely has improved my experience significantly.

There are still some downsides. I like limiting gear drops as a way to add challenge to the game and make rewards feel more meaningful, but the incredible rarity of skill gem drops feels more like a nerf to fun.

On that note, I’m still not convinced that the game’s build system is really all that. The skill web looks overwhelming at first glance, but it’s not hard to figure out you just take the nodes that buff the stuff you’re using. I’d actually argue having so many nodes cuts down on meaningful choice because you never really run out of ways to buff your core stuff, leaving no space to take luxury nodes. I’d like that area of effect buff, but I still have about twenty more minion nodes I need to take to keep my zombies alive.

If I’m to try to be fair, I guess it comes down to what you want an RPG to be. If you see RPGs as a math problem to be solved, then yes, Path of Exile is as deep as they come. There’s never ending ways to tweak your numbers to min/max your performance.

But if you see RPGs as, y’know, role-playing games that are about living out cool character fantasies, then I’d say PoE’s customization options are middling at best. Builds mostly just seem to come down to picking a nuke, choosing the passives that buff it, and spamming one button until the cows come home. There’s not the variety of gameplay or aesthetic customization you see in games like Diablo III or Wolcen.

I also need to say that even Ruthless mode still isn’t that hard. A few of the boss fights have gotten a little hairy, but even then I mostly beat them without a single death, and even if I do die, they don’t heal to full health. Compared to how much Belial mauled me on my first run through Diablo III, this seems pretty forgiving.

To be fair, I do get the feeling running a minion witch build is playing on easy mode a bit, but even accounting for that, I don’t see how any honest assessment of this game could describe it as especially challenging.

Which is fine. I wasn’t necessarily looking for a nail-biting challenge. It just makes it hard to take the game seriously when its community has spent so many years heaping sneering scorn at how supposedly brainless Diablo III is, when in reality PoE even on Ruthless is at most maybe equal in challenge to vanilla D3 on normal mode.

I’ve never had a community negatively impact my opinion of a game as much as PoE’s does. Lost Ark comes close, as does First Descendant — for the love of the gods, guys, just watch some porn like normal people.

Anyway, I’m not really sure if I’m going to stick with PoE or not. It’s fun enough, and I do like the art, music, and ambiance, but the minimalistic story is starting to feel more unfinished than intriguing, and the gameplay is very repetitive, even by the standards of this genre.