Recent reviews by Ratsk Ater

A lot of comparisons to dark souls which is kind of unfair, you'll get way more loot in dark souls.

It's PoE Ruthless 2. Ya know, a sequel for the mode that probably had less than a couple thousand players.

The combat is definitely slow and difficult compared to any ARPG im familiar with, but the loot is so scarce that chewing through maps slowly for no reward again and again starts to really tire you out.

The loot is almost the only complaint i have. Almost every other parts feels great compared to PoE1, but they've almost completely removed any kind of deterministic crafting and the loot.

First impression of the skill tree is half-negative. The nodes just don't seem too strong, or at least, not to balance out getting *no loot*.

I'm so desperate im wearing increased rarity of loot which was trash in PoE1, but who knows, maybe it's helping...and it's still bad...

I'll probably end up still playing it to try the endgame but i did stop having fun like 5 hours ago.

Game of the year material.

Servers seem fixed. I'm at level 86. Buy buy buy.

I have a decent amount of hours in Dota Underlords/Autochess and TFT.

You can be very creative in this game. Tooons of synergies, and without the PvP element you get to explore them yourself, without the sort of 'monkey see monkey do' method of learning builds in TFT.

Insta buy if you like autobattlers or deckbuilders imo. Very good game.

Edit: I now have all achievements at 56 hours. Game is still an Instabuy.

The first couple games I was so hyped because the gameplay concept is almost exactly what I wanted.

Played a bit more and I realized an extraordinary grind for gear/levels that can be sped up significantly by paying $20 for a battlepass and ~$1 *per game* on boosters. Gear/Levels are very important

Hard pass with that sort of monetization. Hurts. I already told someone it was GOTY material before I really dug into the monetization.

For what its worth, sentry anticheat didn't stay active for me, and uninstalled as intended with the game.

Also game chugged a tad in big battles with everything on low. My PC isn't great, but given the graphics it's a bit surprising.

Theres a lot of room for improvement. UI is kind of lacking at the moment, but otherwise, a very well made game. Loot is annoying because 99% of it is pure vendor trash from what I've seen.

Classes equip 8 spells at a time, but they don't feel hollow at all. Classes are condensed into basically the best parts. Less of a focus on cycling through 2 minute offensive/defensive skills. Long CCs are 3 seconds in this game with a CD. Feels much more impactful, rewards proper timing, more difficult to chain CCs, great change.

Stands on its own as a good game. Im a gladiator 2s/3s WoW healer, I genuinely hope WoW takes note. WoW arenas have never been this good.

The base game has a decent amount of content. Plenty to justify the purchase.

Community maps are easy to try, and most have been pretty fun. albeit a bit laggy.

Hope they continue to support this game. It has solid QoL features. Some of the puzzles are a lot more interesting than real escape rooms, which often revolve far too much around number combinations.

It is a neat foundation but the balance in the game is a little wack. Putting balance complaints in spoilers because it can make the game feel a bit linear.

Almost every benefit you pick comes with a negative, which is reasonable enough...except the degree of scaling varies greatly. Each round, to my knowledge, monsters gain flat hp, which means % enemy hp is FAR more negative than, say % for enemy chance effects, or % chance to spawn as a brute/wolf. I find that I'm often picking upgrades based on which one doesn't have these severe scaling negatives. One negative gives enemies % of their hp every second, which is always going to be a hard avoid. Your ability to scale damage is severely limited for the most part. Since your towers don't gain flat damage round-to-round, they'll get hopelessly outscaled. With this in mind, picking between 3 different perks is relatively straight forward.

I like it more than DBD and theres a lot more room to grow, whereas DBD has been stagnant for years.

Devs are active and very vocal on their discord.

Lost my save because of no cloud saving. Big oof.

I honestly can't stand scrolling through my collection and seeing $ values to all my cards.

And, it might actually be cheaper to buy everything in Artifact, compared to buying everything in any other card game.

But theres never going to be a point where I just play the game, and don't worry about the $ value of cards.