After the few hours I spent on the game my impressions are reserved. All feels good but there are few annoying things.
First the good:
The character creation is awesome, full of possibilities and really easy to understand
The music is nice and the environments are astonishing.
I tried most of the classes and all of them are fun to play, easy to understand and powerful. (Cipher and monk <3)
Quest and dialogues seems good and immersive. Especially the interaction with the environment (eg: the dragon egg quest).
When the combo Heal/stamina is fully understood it works very well.
But there are the fights:
My first fight was a slaughter (for me of course), I fed the beetles. It’s okay: I reload.
I try something else. Great: I killed all the beetles at a frightening speed. What happened? It’s the feeling I have after each fight. Even when I pause the game and zoom. I do not fully understand what I’m doing. It’s messy, the character are too huge (their heads especially), melee character are stuck together during fights.
EG : I’m in the spider lair and I attack the queen end her minions. I made some moves (fireball/ knockdown/stun…) but nothing happened, my warrior is running into my monk, my rogue is dead, my mage nearly dead. I reload, do the same move and all works: the spiders are vanquished.
I’ll join what others people said: it’s too fast and we lack of some information (Character knocked down/poisoned /slowed…) whereas we have too much information about life/ attack per round …
And minor things: Some spells add mess (eg : binding spiderwed), when I cast this spell I can’t tell where is my foes and where is my allies. Another point about spells: we do not have any information about how fast a spell can be cast with leather armor or heavy armor (except in combat). Does it have an impact at all?
About the character sheet : I think it could be more user-friendly. It’s a bit hard to check between the abilities/talents/spells (Especially for the priest)
The last thing that bothers me is the customizations. We have not enough choice (heads/hairs/faces…). I fully understand that it’s only a beta and we’ll get more on the release.
Despite the bugs/fights and all disagreement I had. I really enjoyed the few hours I spent on PoE. This game has a huge potential and I can wait to play to the final version.
I'm not fond of the experience point system. It feels so empty. I agree with the idea of resolving a quest by other way than killing monster(or people) but wihout rewards the end of the fights feels empty. ( I do not include loot in the rewards) EX: I killed a queen spider, good, where is my rewards (except her skin). What is the point to kill such monsters? (outside the fact the spiders won't do anymore harm). I don't mind if i do not win exp when i kill some "trash mob". But for a big one it's not fair and not fun at all. There is an other point. If only relsolving quest give xp.There will be only one way to level up. I like very much to wander in the wild, resolve some mysteries, killing some dangerous monsters ( it's part of an adventurer life). IMO the only quest xp take away a lot of fun and a great part of an RPG.
