Path of Exile 2

An 88 while still half-built — it earned its spot in a crowded lane

Add it all up. A game that has not even shipped pulled an 88 average across 19 outlets on OpenCritic, the top "Mighty" tier, recommended by 100% of critics and sitting in the top 2% of all games. Players voted with their feet too: the Steam rating has climbed to Very Positive, with 82% of 24,740 reviews coming up positive. Put those numbers side by side and they say one thing — in a lane packed with Diablo IV, Last Epoch, and Grim Dawn, Path of Exile 2 has carved out a place that is unmistakably its own.

How? The thing I keep circling back to: it wrings Souls-style dodge-and-read into a looter whose skill gems prop up almost limitless build depth. Neither piece is new on its own, but no rival has put exactly that feel on the table yet. That is why people forgive its many warts.

Look at it through the series lens and it gets clearer. As the proper sequel to Path of Exile, it did not coast on a decade of goodwill from the first game; it tore the combat feel and the onboarding down to the studs and rebuilt toward something more modern and action-driven. The price is that, for now, it cannot match the original's sheer content volume and mature ecosystem built over more than ten years. But the direction is right. Its rivals come at it from two sides — Blizzard's Diablo IV with its industrial presentation and friendliness on one flank, the cleaner Last Epoch and the depth-first Grim Dawn on the other. It does not win on any single one of those axes. It wins on the combination: Souls-flavored action plus build depth plus a relentless seasonal pipeline, a punch nobody else throws all at once, and that combination is what carved out a spot none of them can take from it.

Who should jump in now, and who should wait for 1.0

So should you actually buy it? Let me split the room.

If you are the player who loves drilling dodge timings with one hand while endlessly tinkering with builds, and you are happy to dig through external guides and videos to decode systems the game barely teaches, then Path of Exile 2 is your long-term home for the next year or two. There is no reason to wait.

What you are buying, after all, is exactly that depth — and that depth is already here in full, even if the story and the polish are not. The half-built parts are the framing, not the core.

But if you want something relaxing to coast through, a complete story you can finish in one sitting, or you simply cannot stomach stutter, frame drops, and near-zero hand-holding, hold off. This is still a 0.x, half-built thing: the story is unfinished, the optimization is rough, and onboarding is squarely on you. Those problems will very likely keep flaring up before 1.0 finally lands.

For that crowd the rational move is simple. Drop it on a wishlist and circle back once the full release doubles the content and irons the performance out. At that point, with twice the bosses, acts, and classes and a smoother engine under it, this could well be a different beast entirely — and the wait will have cost you nothing.

One last word on the price of admission, because it changes the calculus. This is a free game that sells only cosmetics, and the entry pack returns its cost as in-game currency, so the financial risk of finding out which camp you fall into is effectively zero. You do not have to take my word, or anyone's, on whether the Souls-meets-looter pitch clicks for you. You can simply install it, play the opening hours, and feel for yourself whether reading boss tells while chasing a build is the itch you have been waiting to scratch. Few games this ambitious make trying them this painless, and that alone is reason enough not to dismiss it just because the version number still starts with a zero.