#right after i came back i got my digital monster x in the mail and now im SEVERELY hyperfixating on digimon again

[totallycorrectjojoquotes]

you watch jojo and stanned pentagon? you're immediately my favorite person

good taste anon 😌

-admin mista

[kapanbenernya]

Path of Exile -- Daddy Diablo’s Little Hellspawn

 Do you remember Diablo? If you're a guy that's been playing the PC when LAN was still the best method to play together since the internet is still an undependable piece of shit it was before puberty hit it hard and turned it into digital cocaine, you probably do. That's right, how can you forget about Blizzo's isometric dungeon crawler? I still remember my first hit of Diablo II, it was in the computer lab of my middle school. I never tried it again since until my college days, when me and my 3 friends basically rushed through the story in 3 days straight, all while cramped together in a 3 x 4 metres room. I'll spare you the gnarly details, but one of them involved laying my legs on the bathroom floor just to make some room.

So, um, let me change the topic here: Do you LIKE Diablo? Well if you remember it and are still playing it's sequels to this day, I'd say you do. And you know who else likes Diablo?

These guys!

That's right, they like Diablo so much they made their own Diablo. They cloned Diablo, mutated its genes and gave birth to their own brand of grindy isometric RPG: Path of Exile and Torchlight, respectively. 

I've actually played Torchlight before, the first and the second. The first one was very simple: 1 town, 2 pets, 3 classes, and like, a billion enemies. The second one was more fleshed out with more towns, more classes, but I didn't like it as much as the first. I liked the first one because it doesn't try to emulate Diablo that much. It's got a more laid back cartoony style, which sets it apart from the competition because it's always demonic horrors with these kind of games. Don't wanna swing too far from under Daddy Diablo's hairy ballsack, eh guys?

That's about all I can say about Torchlight, so let's change gears and finally talk about Path of Exile.

Story is, you are a criminal of some sort in a city that seems to be filled exclusively by pompous assholes, and your sentence is --you guessed it-- being the person that rubs the King's left ballsack until it shines. Of course you fucking don't, it's exile. You are sent away into the wilderness before you stain all the marble and rugs with your filthy criminal hands. So on your way. the boat you are sent on shipwrecks because God feels like karma's been to slow these days and he wants to take control once in a while. You then awaken in the land of Wraeclast, filled to the brim with criminals, monsters, and other undesirables you might think of. And so begins your journey to find your path. As an exile. The Path of Exile, if you will (BOOM TITLE DROP). 

And that's about all the story you need. For the rest of them, you can make an effort and click on the NPCs. If you do want to bother yourself by reading all the flavor text you can access in the game, you will actually find a quite decent story of the city, the culture, their gods and progenitors, and why everything is fucked the way it is now. I personally couldn't be bothered because I know it’s going to be the same shit over and over again. In fact, let me summarize everything for you, the plot is basically "Everything's gone to shit, there’s demons everywhere, oh God somebody do something”. That's my mantra for the story of Diablo, and it works fine enough with PoE. Now let's talk mechanics

I promise you, this is where the section where the game shines anyway

Now I'm not gonna go into the details here because almost everyone knows the general mechanics of isometric RPGs: you click around to move, attack, use skills, pickup items, drop items, initiate conversations, end conversations, open loot, pay respects, and so much more. What I'm going to discuss is the one thing that I think is the unique selling point of PoE, which is the Skill Gems. In PoE, the skills are not tied to your class or level or any skill tree, it's tied only to the aforementioned skill gem. To equip a skill, you have put the skill gem into a socket in the equipment in accordance to their color: red, green, or blue. So if you happen to unequip an item with a skill gem, the skill becomes inactive and you can't use it. To me, this is a game changer since it changes the way you look at weapons and armors from the old traditional way. The old way was that the higher the number equals better weapon or armor and usually it's the one you want. But in PoE, this might not be the case since the skill system is tied to the equipment. And here comes the part where you have to think hard. Let's say you found some cool new bling to wear with higher numbers than the one you have, so naturally you wanna equip it right away, right? But what about the gem slots? The colors? The gem links? Does it accomodate your build? How about element resistances? Is it an armor armor or an evasion armor? It makes you choose between the mystic plate mail made out of virgin tears with a measly single slot or the plain white T-shirt with 6 linked slots. It's like making you consider going out in a Lamborghini that'll turn all the ladies' heads or a minivan because it can fit more whores.

While you're thinking about that, let me give you another headache: the passive skill tree.

Intimidating, isn’t it?

This is the reason why I decided against playing the game when I first heard about it from my friend. I can’t give you the numbers because I couldn’t find the total number of all the passive skills on the internet. And I think it’s a testament to how utterly ridiculous it is! I mean the internet’s got all kinds of information, so the fact that the total number isn’t available means that no one can be bothered to count them all. And you know that internet nerds would do anything just to get any semblance of productivity and sense of self-worth. Oh whatever, it’s not the numbers I’m here to talk to you about, because in the long run the numbers aren’t important. The important one is the passive build. If you’re not familiar, a build in RPG is kind of like a template or a preset that you plan in accordance to how you want your character to be. Or in other words, building your character. In the case of Path of Exile, your build is about taking the right passive skills that supports the active skills you want to use. Now that you know what a build is, here’s an advice to save you from tears: pick a build before you play. Well ok, maybe you’re a veteran RPG player or you just wanna go in blind and improvise (like me), but how about you think again? There are about 100+ passive skill nodes you can take from the God-knows-how-many are available, not to mention the active skills you’d want to use. I mean the numbers alone are terrifying, how about the synergy between the passives and the actives? What if you want to change your active skills and the passives are no longer compatible? Should you take the health node or an offensive node? How about the special nodes that grants you unique abilities? Would you like to invest in the socket node that buffs your skill gem?

OH GOD OH LORD MAKE IT STOP

So far I've listed the mechanics and the happenings of the game. So here's the last thing on my checklist before I draw my conclusion: do I enjoy it? 

Well, here's the part where it starts going sideways.

On my playthrough, of course I decide to go at it with my friend, since these dungeon crawlers are kind of made to be played that way. My friend told me to search for a build guide, but I decided I'm gonna be a brave boy and go blind on this character. For a while, we journeyed together, slayed together, get slayed together, and fought over the loot together. Then I went offline for several days and came back to find my friend had continued grinding for those days. The power gap had become too much of a difference to the point he coudn't flex his arms without a monster dying somewhere in the vicinity, and that's already after the party nerf. Turns out the stat nerf doesn't mean that much shit when he's already got most of the endgame skill jewels. So there I was just picking up the loot while he's busy mowing down the enemies. The most helpful thing I could do was cast a debuff spell to curse the enemies (as if they aren't helpless enough already). And it is in that moment that I thought to myself, "How am I anymore useful than the golem following his ass around?". It is at that moment where I stopped taking the game and its fancy ass skill tree seriously and just go at it for shits and giggles.

But of course, being a credible man of high-credibility and redundancy, it would be unfair to judge the game based on my experience with my friends. I mean how would I know that my friend didn't ruin the game for me? He turned me into a vestigial golem for fuck's sake, and I'd bet your ass that wasn't the intended game experience! (I mean maybe, I didn't check if there's a fucking build for that). I went off to set out on a lonely journey of my own; alone and without any companions 

ok I'll stop with the redundancy thing, I promise

So I made a new character to test out the game unhindered by my friends only to have it backfire on me because after half an hour of playing alone, all I can feel is the grind. I mean it made sense, at least when I'm with my friends I can still chat and crack jokes with each other. Take the social aspect away and in comes the grind, just like real life.

So finally I gave up on the new character and I'm about to give up on the game entirely. Or at least that was the plan until my friend suggested to take a look at my sloppily made character. 10 mins after he looked at my build, he told me that I got a lot of things wrong and that I'm a fucking waste of human life. He then proceeds to tell me which passives to get, which skills to throw away, and gave me his hand-me-downs. Afterwards, I took my optimized guy for a test drive, and I found out that he performs a lot better than before. And that's when the game feels great for me. No longer am I dead after I brushed elbows with a monster, and no longer do I have to spend 3 minutes to clear a normal enemy mob. It turned my dungeon crawl into my dungeon one way bullet train to Funtown. The grind feels less grindy, and that's about all I can ask for because I'm starting to enjoy the game proper. Or at least that was the case until I beat the final boss and my friends introduced me to the endgame content. I went in confident as hell, and I ended up getting 1 hit-KO’d once more. No. That’s too much. This has been an uphill struggle from the start and now that I’ve reached the peak, my reward is another mountain to scale. So no thanks buddies, I’m fully content with THIS mountain peak, it’s a good enough place for me to throw myself off the cliff.

In Brief

There's no easier way for me to summarize PoE. It always goes back to the Diablo comparison, so the conclusion is: if you like Diablo, I'm 90% sure that you'll like this one. The other 10% however depends solely on your tastes, and the differences lie in the skill gems and the passive tree which is the 2 things that defines PoE. Here's the cliffsnotes to help you with your decision so you can get on your way. If you think Diablo is too simple and you want a creative challenge in creating a build that feels unique to you, go get PoE. If you like Diablo as is and you think that the skill gem and passive tree appeals only to maniacs whose wrists should be broken with pipe wrenches for their own good, I'd suggest you buy an expensive mobile phone and keep your credit card nearby.

The one thing I learnt from this is that it's all about optimisation. It's either you go all-in and find the best build, skill, and equips or you'd better off not playing the game at all, because all that's left is the grind and pain. And fuck me if grind and pain is what passes for fun these days. Cause if it does, then I fear for the humans of the future and how they're gonna have to find a way to eat spaghetti with their ball-gag still on.

15/4/2019