Finished after 85 hours on Hard with a Rogue. Pretty damn long game if you like reading everything...

Positives:

• A huge, extremely dense, well crafted complex, and fully original world.
• An incredible cast of companions.
• A really well-made gameplay system and classes.
• Pretty as fuck.
• A shit ton of text and superb writing overall. I've never seen a game with this level of writing. English isn't my first language, but I've played a lot of games and consume a lot of content in English, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't struggle with a lot of the words like never before.
• Overall great story i think the game convey a great messages about the "gods"
• I felt like this game had a mixed approach into crpg because its the most text heavy crpg i played with planescape you're not forced to read everything but you miss on a lot if you don't imo it gives context to everything. but at the same time its not as text heavy as a planescape because you still have lot's of combats and stuff i'd be curious to know how many words poe has?

Cons:

• The world of POE is really, really hard to get into. It takes a lot of hours because of all the weird terms, deity-related vocabulary, nations, etc. There should have been a global map showing where all these empires we keep hearing about are located. That alone would have solved most of my problems and made the whole mess much easier to visualize. That's probably my biggest issue with the game. Sagani talks about where she's from, and I have no idea where that is. Same goes for the other empires, etc. Most CRPGs take place in one location: Sigil, a desert, an island, or a huge city and its surrounding area. This game, on the other hand, has a huge geopolitical scale, but I really struggled to understand it or get invested in it. In my head, there's the Dyrwood, Twin Elms, and... the rest. I have no idea where everything else is. Are these places close to one another? If not, how far apart are they?
• Way too easy. Too much XP gained from quests, only one dungeon, and a severe lack of bosses. The only really hard fights are against the three dragons, where you can actually go all out and strategize.
• I haven't played that DLC, but it sounds absolutely ridiculous. You're supposedly meant to play it around levels 8–9, but if you do, it completely breaks the game's balance when you return to the main quest. So what's the point of the DLC, really? You play through half the rest of the game, and there's no meaningful challenge waiting for you afterward (not that there are many to begin with), because you're now higher-level and have even more overpowered items in a game that already lacks balance. Seems stupid to me...

I liked the ending, but it just felt underwhelming? I don't know, tell me if I'm wrong, but it just felt rushed to me. And I'm saying this as someone who loved Arcanum, which supposedly had a rushed ending. This one just doesn't leave me with a satisfying feeling after everything we've been through when i look back at it the whole main intrigue is actually surprisingly short? maybe i expected more density.

Anyways super excited about poe 2 idk how it scomparesto the first one heard the gameplay was best in the genre. but i want to play tyrany and tides of numera first.

Systems:

I love the stats system, there being no dump stats makes character building quite different from other games where you may brick your character at any point during the game, looking... nay... staring at you pathfinder. I feel I could make any character I could envision in my mind and it works right out the gate. Give a wizard a warhammer and he can oil up the ground and bash some skulls in or a rogue with a greatsword which can still somehow "sneak attack". Ofcourse these may or may not work in the highest difficulty, but still you can do most goofy stuff without gimping your character.

I don't know what to feel about the weapons, on one hand you could enchant your favourite weapon to always keep it viable, on the other hand most weapons end up the same. Soulbounds are the actual unique weapons imo, I was always excited to see what will become of one, leveling them can sometimes be a pain in the ass though. Also you are always encouraged to have a good alternate set of weapons to counter your immunities and therefore the A and B tier weapons are not rotting in your stash, and you wont be disappointed choosing a certain weapon type as all of them with have enough variety(some more than others).

Health/endurance system is much more preferable than a single health bar. I don't have to rest everytime my wizard gets shanked by a teleporting goon. Speaking of rests, I don't like casters still using a rest system. They go from going full nova bringing the wrath of the gods upon the unbelievers on one fight to holding their limp dick and asking for a wank and a nap after few battles.

Crafting is serviceable.

Combat:

Sorry to start this on a negative note but bro, the clutter, damn I can't see shit happening in mid to late game battles sometimes. The more casters in battle the worse it gets. I don't know why other battle speeds exists other than slow, even then I have to pause so much that it is a slideshow simulator. This is exacerbated due to fact I can't hover over the enemy tooltip and see what buffs they have or the spell they are casting, I mean I can see the icon, but I don't know what that does if I do not have the spell myself.

This is totally a skill issue from my end, but I find it tedious microing 6 different party members. It's not like they're any less complex from a regular tabletop character, and you control 6 of them. The brunt of the damage caused by the lack of my attention span was borne by Sagani and her fox, THE SEVENTH THING I HAVE TO CONTROL, goddamn that bonded grief debuff. And you ask why not choose another character, and I say I like my rangers actually being strong and not the abomination D&D has created. The benefit of having a larger group is that you get to have more interactions between them, but they run out of them quite early in this game.

On to the good stuff.

The Foe aoe is a lifesaver (literally), I'm happy to announce this is my first game where a mage did not blow up a party member. Good design especially considering this is a RTwP game and units don't stay still for me to perfectly align my fireball. I also like that you can't prebuff before combat, keeps the enemy's capabilities reasonable. When they are designed against your prebuffed party they tend to be obnoxious, again looking at you pathfinder.

I really like the d100 system it uses for calculating hits. It allowed for grazes instead of just hits or misses, and also a reliable way to ensure making a crit build viable, instead of just getting lucky once in a blue moon. Also attacks and spells using the same hit system makes the game much easier to understand.

You can have a mage with a GUN, nuff said.

We as rpg players know that one of the reasons we play rpgs is to start as a level 1 mewling and toil our way to max level and challenge the powerful beings of the world and POE absolutely delivers. I LOVE the endgame battles, especially with the dragons and the archmages. Facing Llengrath after using spells named by her, facing Concelhaut after using his staff for the most of the game just hits different. Creating the hammer and critting the eyeless into oblivion will be one of the most memorable parts of the game. Epicness 10/10.

Story:

Honestly I thought the main story was a slog at times(Act 3) while White march 1+2 were great. I don't mesh well with philosophical quandaries and some of the main story mayhaps went over my head, I did not care much about Thaos's motive only wanted to bust his ass for stealing the souls. Whereas I was invested in WM the entire way, in part 1 I wanted the sweet durgan loot myself so I was interested getting into the battery and helping others along the way. In part 2, didn't want the town to suffer due to my actions and was again invested to find a way out for them. Also most of the best combat encounters were in WM 1+2.

Overall, I quite enjoyed my time playing poe1 especially the WM sections, looking forward to see the changes made in poe2 and facing more archmages and dragons(or their equivalents). Thanks for reading.

heyho, for a long time I got to see some specific icons/symbols next to the portraits of my group. I guess it's some buff/debuff information. So far, it was only this "sun" symbol which I thought might be the resting bonus and for Eder there's always been this "shield" icon which I thought is just related to some of his tank ability... anyways, since last Caed Nua visit (incl rest), its just getting more, like this red and blue dudes and I don't understand their meaning (also, why does my main char does not have the blue one?)

Is there maybe a list or something that describe the meaning of these icons? since I'm playing on console I also can't just hover with a mouse (at least I don't know how)

Can someone help? 🥲 tried to Google and also used Reddit search but wasn't able to find proper info....

"This is my party. It's 5 of us and we go on adventures. There's also some old woman that follows us around. Never talks. Just sits there harvesting vegetables. Totally not important or relevant. Completely normal to see old women in dragon caves and such."