When The Fall of Oriath launched, I was going to play it in a very deliberate manner; in 1-2 hour sessions since I have a bad habit of sometimes getting very engrossed in something where it ends up consuming way more of my attention than originally expected. Plus the game I am currently putting the most time into (TERA) has a leveling event going on which I am trying to take advantage of on most all servers. Unfortunately, sometimes even those original intentions don’t play out that way.
So far this first weekend, I have spent three times as many hours playing on the Harbinger League with solo self-found enabled (no partying or trading). The last time I played Path of Exile like this on my actual characters was back in 2013. Later content updates never really did pull me back unlike 3.0. At least for me, this is usually an indication that the designers got it more right than wrong.
That tiny optional checkbox for the solo self-found mode is one area where GGG is just heads and shoulders above Blizzard (for Diablo III) when it comes to providing these specific game modes (solo self-found characters can be converted back to being able to party and trade).
As for the actual feeling of the game play, it’s not like the character movements (still stiff) or combat (still lacks that visceral or impactful feeling) have changed much from before either. Both of those aspects are still better to me than Grim Dawn though (which I tend to play in shorter spurts). It’s the other small things that they have improved which have made the overall game play experience feel a lot better though.
What probably helps a lot is discovering changes made to the passive skill tree, skill gems that have been added over time as well as game systems (like hideouts) which I had missed by not playing most of the updated content for the past 4 years. Even smaller QoL changes like the improved look of the map makes the game play experience (of exploring the game world again) feel that much better.
Overall, I have nothing but positive initial impressions of this release where it will likely be my go to ARPG over Grim Dawn (that is unless its expansion offers similar game play and QoL improvements).
