Loot Grind and AoE Is a Cheap Replacement For High Quality Gameplay.

I've just spent around 200 hours on NRFTW doing six fresh campaign runs on six different builds, and I’m finally glad a studio has the balls to make an innovative and fun ARPG again.

COMBAT
I hoped PoE2 would be that game, but I now realize it can't. Not because of incompetence from the devs — it’s just too risky. The player base is too important, and making a game too far from its origins is financially dangerous since it may alienate players. I’m thankful that the PoE2 team tried making fun “combo” characters, but it will never truly work. I did have some fun trying combo builds, and I appreciate that, but it’s just not as dynamic and interactive as it could be.

The expected game style of PoE is to fight massive amounts of monsters at once, which doesn’t lend itself to anything but a lot of AoE. That style is inherently not very dynamic, interactive, or tactical, even if it can still be fun.

NRFTW makes us fight one, two, or three mobs at most, but with a lot of monster power and surprisingly decent AI behind them, while also giving us tools to make those encounters challenging and engaging. Especially in the early game, you have to observe monster behavior and find openings to deal damage — almost like real combat. It’s challenging, but fun.

The terrain can also be deadly, making it possible to die even if you have an otherwise nearly unkillable character. The combination of hard monsters and lethal terrain removes the need for cheap and frustrating mechanics like random one-shots or immunities that we see in Diablo and PoE. The burden of not dying becomes much more about player agency instead of chance.

MAP DESIGN
Procedurally generated maps were advertised as a big deal back in the Diablo 1 and 2 days, but now they don’t mean much, and I’m not sure they ever did beyond the first playthrough. Those maps feel cheaply made, and there’s no real joy in exploring them. In fact, the incentive is to get through them as fast as possible because of the underlying loot chase.

People care very little — if at all — about procedural variance. Most prefer a smaller, select pool of fun, predictable, well-designed maps.

Instead of cheap procedural generation, the NRFTW team created absolute hand-crafted masterpieces of level design. These maps are genuinely fun to explore to completion and are worth replaying because of how complex and well executed they are.

In conclusion, I’m really glad someone is making an action RPG worthy of its “action” label — with challenging and engaging gameplay — instead of just another giant loot piñata designed for cheap dopamine hits.

bruh nobody who plays PoE wants to sit there and fight one to three mobs at a time. we play to blow up packs of mobs. this game just isnt for you, cya broski

You're completely right. NRFTW is different to poe and even poe2. They are making a soulslike in iso 3rd. which is of course a subset of arpgs. Its a different game. I abhor souls games, I don't need the souls type combat in an arpg. I found NRFTW to be tedious and boring. Thank god there are games for everyone out there.