Diablo 4 has completed more than a single rotation around the sun. Since its initial release in June, 2023, Blizzard delivered several fundamental changes to its itemisation, levelling experience, difficultly options, and dramatically changed the structure of its endgame.
The game received one full expansion, six seasons, and plenty of updates that managed to address almost all grievances players have had with it. In many ways, the Diablo 4 of late-2024 is altogether different from the one that came out in the summer of the prior year. Before it needed to do any of that, however, it was my favourite ARPG regardless, because even that often maligned launch version delivered on the things I care about most in those games.
But it’s time for Diablo 4 to take a rest, because Path of Exile 2 looks to be the first game since its release that stands any real chance at luring in the former’s casual audience – the majority of the people who play it.
That style of action RPG; the isometric, loot-driven, grim narratives about worlds ending and corruption of longstanding faiths, that’s my jam. I follow the ones I find interesting when they get announced, but end up playing them for far shorter than I’d like because I’m usually underwhelmed by the moment-to-moment of their gameplay, and I’m inevitably driven back to Diablo.
Earlier this year, at one of Diablo 4’s roughest stretches since release, along came the 1.0 launch of Last Epoch. It was fine. It played well enough, but the focus was clearly on an endgame I never cared about or managed to stick around long enough to reach. It often felt like a game that goes out of its way to cater to every whim of its most dedicated players, introducing systems and solving problems that the majority of players wouldn’t even recognise as such. It came and went, only managing to keep its most dedicated players around.
And so, Diablo 4’s reign was once again unchallenged, and all the work Blizzard put into the game clearly made it the favourite ARPG amongst the loudest players in the ARPG community. But that reign is about to threatened by the arrival of Path of Exile 2.
Truthfully, I never saw the original Path of Exile as any “threat” to Diablo. The idea that it would leave any dent in the massive – casual – audience of Blizzard’s ARPG never really made sense to me; it’s like a YouTube thumbnail proclaiming the death of Call of Duty… at the hands of Arma.
Path of Exile, however, has been one of the most enduring out of all of them, so every year or so I’d download the damn thing, and put about six or seven hours into it before I bounce off. I could stomach its limited inventory, comically large passive skill tree, unnecessarily complex gem system, and even how it handles item identification, but I could never get past how clunky and unsatisfying its combat is.
The game’s developer, Grinding Gear Games, even recognised that as a shortcoming of its game, and attempted to change it some years ago, which got me to once again redownload it, only to quickly drop it yet again.
I have yet to actually play a minute of Path of Exile 2, but from everything we’ve been hearing, seeing, and reading about the upcoming release, it sounds like GGG is finally going after the Diablo audience; the people who like satisfying action, a bit of loot, and the production quality of the big games.
I watch and play a lot of ARPGs, so I tend to notice things about character movement, attack animation priority, heft and weight and all that more than, I’m willing to guess, most people do. This is where I see most of the progress, and to my eyes, it looks closer than ever to Diablo’s combat flow – especially Diablo 4’s.
Now, I know Path of Exile 2 is still going to be a far more complex game than Diablo 4. The developer recently spent over an hour going over features and systems, most of which were strictly made for the endgame, even though the early access launch build only includes a portion of the core campaign. It looks to be a more accessible game, sure, but It’d be silly for GGG to abandon its core audience now.
I still see a few of the presentational issues I’ve always had a problem with in PoE in the sequel, and I know I’m going to want certain Diablo 4 features in PoE2 that most likely won’t ever be mirrored. The difference this time, though, is that I’m actually looking forward to playing; moving my character, interacting with the world, feeling that oomph of combat. Would that be enough to get me to look past all the complexities? I don’t know.
My own feelings on the nuances of combat aside, it’s hard not to see the release of Path of Exile 2 as anything but a marker of how healthy the subgenre remains. We’re well past Game X existing solely to kill Game Y. I want, and love, both of them co-existing, and there’s plenty of room for more games still. Secretly, though, I am worried I might become one of those PoE fiends who go into a tirade every time a casual onlooker mocks something in their favourite game. A tirade that almost always starts with, “No, you don’t understand.”
Path of Exile 2 releases on December 6 on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.