In Path of Exile 2's gloomy Wraeclast, with its denizens once again facing down the apocalypse, there isn't much time to pick out a sick outfit. Nor are folk rushing to the local tattoo parlour, or jewellers, to spruce up their look. Not when demonic hyenas and ravenous zombies are prowling the streets. But for those coming from the also quite gloomy—but nonetheless rather fashion conscious—Diablo 4, this might be a little disappointing.
Even knowing that I would spend absolutely no time at all looking at my spooky Necromancer's face, ink or accessories—seeing as that they would inevitably be hidden by all the gear exploding from my victims' corpses—I remember poring over Diablo 4's extravagant character customisation options, refusing to begin my misadventures in Sanctuary until I looked just right.
When I see my Necromancer in the character selection screen, I do have to give myself a little pat on the back for making them look both fetching and terribly menacing. And I've got to give Blizzard credit for making it very easy to create a whole bunch of fancy outfits without ever needing to delve into the microtransaction shop—though the temptation is always there, given the exceptional quality of some of its offerings.
Again, though, when I'm amid a throng of monsters, zoomed out to give myself the best view of the battlefield, I'm not noticing any of this. At the start of every session, I get a few seconds to appreciate how I look, and that's it. ARPGs just really weren't made for fashionistas—at least not in the way MMOs like World of Warcraft are, where I'll merrily spend days at a time running legacy raids just to get a single helmet.
In Path of Exile 2, the gear looks good, even if you aren't going to be walking down the catwalk. It's a handsome, if appropriately miserable, game. You're not going to be seeing much diversity—my Monk has sported three looks so far, and one of them was an outfit I purchased for real bucks back in the first game—but you'll probably end up looking a lot better than you did in Path of Exile 1. Outside of MTX cosmetics, there's no transmog system, though, and every class has a single physical appearance—you can't change your gender, let alone pick out some snazzy earrings. But that's not really the point of what Grinding Gear is building here.
It's what's inside that counts. Your loadout of skill and support gems, the journey you've taken across the passive skill tree—that's where you'll find the rush. Not in finding a flashy new top. It's the same philosophy that makes the loot side of the game feel different from Diablo 4's, too, where you'll be constantly showered in gear that can dramatically change your capabilities or inspire a new build. As Tyler C said yesterday, Path of Exile 2 "can't match the dopamine hit of a good Diablo 4 loot drop", but it doesn't need to, because it has all these other things providing a dopamine hit that's just as potent.
In Diablo 4, the explosions of genuinely useful loot exist to bolster what is a rather simple suite of character progression options. The gear gives you a bit more flexibility, augmenting your skills or giving you new ones that you might not have unlocked yet. But Path of Exile 2 doesn't have a rigid class system, allowing you to equip any weapon or skill gem—as long as you meet the appropriate stat prerequisites—leaving you with no need for this crutch.
Of course, gear is still incredibly important in Path of Exile 2. Indeed, it feels like it has even more weight than it does in Diablo 4, and in part that's because you're not perpetually being showered in god-touched artefacts. When a legendary item I can actually use does drop, it feels so much more exciting because it's not happening every five minutes. When I was playing in pre-early access, I remember a quarterstaff dropping for my Monk that seemed like it was created just for me, and the power boost it gave me, and the way it interacted with my build, made me feel like I'd just gained 5 levels in an instant.
The more conservative approach to loot also emphasises the importance of augmenting your gear with crafting materials, which can be used to bump up their rarity, give them random modifiers or increase their quality. When I got utterly squashed the other day by a boss, several times over, I hit up my stash, prayed to the gods of RNG, and ended up completely crushing my adversary without breaking a sweat. This way, I was also able to see how different stats and modifiers affected my build, giving me a better understanding of what I should be aiming for as I continued hacking and slashing my way through Wraeclast.
So while Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4 might both be horror-infested ARPGs, they're actually dramatically different and tickle different parts of one's brain. It should be pretty clear by now that I favour PoE2, but even so, there's no reason they can't coexist. One of the few unpleasant things to come out of PoE2's launch is a certain smugness from a vocal minority of players who think that enjoying one ARPG over another is a testament to their intellect, when actually it just makes them insufferable dorks.
If you want a power fantasy with an expansive wardrobe and builds that don't require you to watch hours and hours of YouTube videos, Diablo 4 is a great choice. But if losing yourself in a complex web of skills and delving into the eldritch world of theorycrafting sounds more up your street, you'll find no better fix than Path of Exile 2. Just don't expect to strut your stuff during Paris Fashion Week.
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