176 hours in: loving POE 2!

My first playthrough of the campaign was an awesome experience. I love all the beautiful new biomes, the music, the cool new monsters, and all the boss fights! The boss fights were especially good. I rolled a warrior, built pretty tanky using totems, and yeah, my damage wasn't great, but it was still enough to get through the campaign fine.

All the acts feel really distinct and rich with lore and architecture. There are so many areas where I see them and think "I would love to have a hideout like this!"

I think the replayability is so much better than POE 1. I've leveled two characters to endgame and a few others about halfway through the acts, and it feels great.

I don't really like the ascension system as it is now, though. I really don't like the "don't get hit" style of play for Trail of the Sekhemas, but Trial of Chaos is pretty cool. I think once the boss AI and abilities get some more polish in Trial of Chaos, I'll be happy to run that more often. I would like it if you could get all your ascendancy points by just doing higher and higher difficulty of the Trial you like. So if I could just do Trial of Chaos 4 times at increasing difficulty, that would be ideal for me.

My initial foray into endgame was brutal. I cleared campaign fine without following a build guide, but as soon as I hit maps, I was getting clapped. I posted a complaint thread previously. But once I respecced and regeared following a build guide (corrupting cry warbringer), I had a much better time, and I understand why my builds weren't strong enough.

Now that I'm in T15 maps and handling the league mechanics fine, it feels like the comfortable endgame experience I'm used too from POE 1, which I love. Mostly chill, with some spikes of difficulty where you have to focus. I think the bones are there, and I'm excited to see things fleshed out as more content is added.

My experience with pinnacle bosses so far has just been one attempt at King of the Mists where I died basically because my dps was too low to kill his Fetish totems fast enough to avoid getting a bunch of debuff stacks, but I appreciate that the fights are more mechanically interesting than POE 1 by a longshot. I'm ok with the fact that I just need to get better at the game.

You guys have made an absolutely awesome game and I'm stoked to keep trying out all the new things to come!