Path of Exile 2 is Diablo 4’s first true competitive game, and I’m really happy that it arrives during a quiet time for Blizzard’s game

Diablo 4 has completed more than one rotation around the sun. Since its initial release in June 2023, Blizzard has made several fundamental changes to its detail, upgrade experiencehardly any options, and dramatically changed the structure of its final phase.

The game received a full expansion, six seasons, and numerous updates that managed to address almost every player grievance about it. In many ways, the Diablo 4 from the end of 2024 is completely different from the one released in the summer of the previous year. However, before I have to do anything, this was my favorite ARPG, as even this oft-maligned launch version delivered on the things I care about most about these games.

But it’s time for Diablo 4 to rest, because Path of Exile 2 seems to be the first game since its release that has a real chance of attracting the casual audience of the first one – the majority of people who play it.

This action RPG style; Isometric, dark, loot-driven narratives about the end of the world and the corruption of long-held beliefs are my thing. I follow the ones I find interesting when they’re announced, but I end up playing them for far less time than I’d like because I’m usually disappointed by the timing of them, and I’m inevitably drawn back to Diablo.

Earlier this year, During one of Diablo 4’s toughest times since its release, the launch of Last Epoch version 1.0 took place.. It was good. It played well enough, but the focus was clearly on an endgame that I never cared about or managed to stick around long enough to reach.. It often felt like a game that was going out of its way to cater to the every whim of its most dedicated players, introducing systems and solving problems that the majority of players wouldn’t even recognize as such. He has come and gone, only managing to keep his most dedicated players.

So Diablo 4’s reign was once again uncontested, and all the work Blizzard put into the game clearly made it the favorite ARPG among the loudest players in the ARPG community. But that reign is about to be threatened by the arrival of Path of Exile 2.

Honestly, I’ve never seen the original Path of Exile like any “threat” to Diablo. The idea that this would leave a dent in the massive – casual – audience for 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 longest lasting of all, so every year or so I would download the damn thing and spend about six or seven hours on it before bouncing back. I could handle its limited inventory, comically large passive skill treean 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 recognized this as a shortcoming of their game and attempted to change it a few years ago, leading me to re-download it once again, only to later drop it again quickly.

I haven’t played a minute of Path of Exile 2 yet, but from everything we’ve seen audiencesee, and while reading Speaking of the upcoming release, it looks like GGG is finally going after the Diablo audience; people who like satisfying action, a bit of loot, and the production quality of big games.

I watch and play a lot of ARPGs, so I tend to notice things about character movement, attack animation priority, weight and all that more than, I’m willing to guess, most people. This is where I see most of the progress, and to my eyes it seems closer than ever to how Diablo’s combat feels – especially Diablo 4’s.

Now I know that Path of Exile 2 will still be a much more complex game than Diablo 4. The developer recently I spent over an hour reviewing the features and systemsmost of which were strictly designed for the end game, even though the early access launch version only includes part of the main campaign. It seems like a more accessible game, sure, but it would be silly for GGG to abandon its core audience now.

I still see some of the presentation issues I always had a problem with in PoE in the sequel, and I know I’m going to want some Diablo 4 features in PoE2 that will probably never be reflected. The difference this time, however, is that I am In fact I can’t wait to play; move my character, interact with the world, feel that punch of combat. Would that be enough to make me forget all the complexities? I don’t know.

My own feelings about the nuances of combat aside, it’s hard not to see Path of Exile 2’s release as anything other than a marker of the subgenre’s health. We’re well past the point of Game X existing only to kill Game Y. I want and love for the two to coexist, and there’s still plenty of room for more games. Secretly, however, I fear becoming one of those PoE fiends who launch into a tirade every time a casual viewer makes fun of something in their favorite game. A tirade that almost always begins with “No, you don’t understand”.

---

Path of Exile 2 releases December 6 for PC, Xbox and PlayStation.