TLDR; LE still has some issues, but overall is a great game and one of the best ARPGs out there.
So, Steam says I’ve played a bit over 150h. I have about 10 chars but only 3-4 are doing empowered monos and I haven’t yet tried to advance corruption. I also haven’t tried dungeons much and I haven’t tried arena at all (I don’t think I will enjoy that, but I’ll eventually try it as well). That’s not too much but I think I’d post my general thought on the game, what I liked, what I disliked and what I think could improve.
Now, I know that some of the things I’ll say are already known and many are being worked on, but I thought I’d still mention them for emphasys and to aggregate all the issues.
This is going to be a LONG post
I’ll start with the good things:
0-I’ll number this as 0 because it isn’t actually part of the game. The community is great and overall very positive and the dev feedback is amazing. I almost don’t want this game to leave EA and want to keep the community as it is now
1- The build diversity is pretty good. You can play many different builds that actually feel different when playing. Even the same mastery can have different playstyles. This is great for someone like me that likes to have several different characters with different playstyles. I get bored if I play the same build for a long time.
2- Some of the skills feel really unique and great. Especially Runic Invocation and Volatile Reversal. The concept behind these is awesome and nothing I’ve seen before in an ARPG.
3- The mob density is great. Doing monoliths is very fun. It’s a sort of mix between delve and mapping from PoE, but it’s more fast paced and short. I find it more fun in LE.
4- The loot filter is amazing. While it’s true that it can’t do everything PoE’s can, what it does is great and is done in a very intuitive way that anyone can use and tweak without needing to use external tools or learning codes. And it can (as I think it’s planned to) become even better.
5- The crafting system is also great. It has a great balance, being mostly deterministic but also with enough RNG so that you can always improve things. I haven’t delved too much into endgame gear crafting, but I love that you can even craft stuff as you’re leveling up. You don’t need to save it for endgame to improve the random drops as you do the campaign.
6- Uniques are pretty good. Most of them are geared towards a specific playstyle and many are useful as you level up. I also love the LP system that allows uniques to become even more unique.
7- Weaver’s will is an amazing idea. I had a lot of fun leveling up characters with these items. They felt really new and exciting. I personally hope there will be more of them in the future.
8- You don’t need to finish the campaign to jump to endgame. As soon as you’re done with passives and idol rewards you can go to monoliths whenever you feel like.
9- Stash tabs are plentiful and easy to increase. There are some things that need improving (I’ll mention them later) but overall it’s great we can have (almost) as many as we want, as long as we have the gold for them.
10- Almost all the maps have a great design. They’re either linear or circular and there’s barely any backtracking as you’re doing echos. So far, the only big exception I saw on this was lightless arbor, where the random blockages can force you into several dead ends.
11- The passives trees have a great balance where you can sort of figure yourself out as you’re leveling up. It’s still hard to balance it for an endgame build if you’re a new player and you don’t know how the several mechanics overlap and complent each other, but overall I think they’re in a good spot.
12- The skill trees is a great idea. Most of them are impactful and change the skill meaningfully (I especially like the throw hammer one where you can make it spiral, orbit, nova, etc) and also boost it considerably. I especially like that you can make some skills trigger from other skills and don’t even need them in the hotbar. It add to the diversity and fun of experimenting.
Now for things I didn’t like as much:
13- Idols. Not the idols idea itself, that feels good, but getting the idols you need is a pain right now. I’m aware that they’re being looked at and some solution will make it better in the future, but right now they’re frustrating. Especially for builds that rely on specific affixes to work properly or to scale into endgame. After 150+ hours I still have to find a single health/health idol, which almost all builds use. I also need 4 throw crit idols for my hammerdin and a week I have only one and it was a bad roll.
14- I’ve noticed this mostly during the campaign, but lots of times you hit an exit and the game just keeps running for a while, even as it’s already working on changing zones. This is especially annoying with summon builds because as soon as you hit the exit the summons are unloaded, but the mobs keep attacking you. I’m sure this is being looked at, but it’s worth mentioning.
15- While the map design itself is pretty good, almost all maps have a bunch of assets that obscure it. Trees, cliffs, etc will sometimes obscure the fight and it happens a LOT that they are in the way of where you’re aiming. I notice this more on summon builds because sometimes I’m aiming at an enemy that’s goes behind a cliff asset and it will try to summon on top of it and fail. I notice this mostly because of life drain, that stays in these places that we can’t even access ourselves.
16- I know I’ve already mentioned this in a previous post and I understand it’s not an easy fix and that the devs are aware of it, but casting summons into these map obstacles and running out of mana is very annoying. Especially when it’s not our fault and we only realize we were casting into the assets when we move forward.
17- Instances resetting on port. I know the devs are already aware of it and trying to fix it, but I thought I’d still put it here to be part of the overall picture.
18- Since we can’t have traversal skills in town due to performance, towns need to be smaller and more centralized. Too much walking just to get to the quest NPCs, waypoint, chest, exits. It’s not as bad in the first playthrough, but when you’re doing the campaign for the nth time, all this wasted time is just annoying.
19- While the loot filter is great, some sort of PoE-like beacon would be great. Especially for drop and run builds, where you place some totems/wraiths/whatever and run along as they do the killing.
20- I know this is being worked on, but stash searching is pretty bad. If I want to search for idols with +health I have no way of filtering just those. Everything that has health in it will show up. Likewise, if I search for something like poison resist, everything with vitality also shows because the mod extended description has those words. This makes searching (especially general idols) very inconvenient.
21- Both inventory and stashes need more sorting options. Stuff like sort by recent, by level, by size, etc. Most relevant to me, so far, would be sorting by level.
22- I know that shards are being looked into, but I should mention that, as they are now, they’re just annoying. Most of the time I’ll see shards on the ground and not bother picking them up unless they’re red ones. Sometimes it’s even a group of 5 and it’s still not worth it. And definitely not worth picking when it just drops 1, which still happens a lot. I end up mostly picking up from shrines and the chest reward. Currently it just clutters the screen without having any incentive to pick them up. Especially because they’re not autotransfered. I can see the point the devs make about making a choice to pick them up, but I don’t see the point in them cluttering the inventory, messing with the organization of the rest of the items.
23- Spire echoes are annoying. Especially if we have to leave to get the door or rush to the bathroom. I know we can portal out and start all over, but it’s still annoying comparing to other echoes (I’m leaving out arena echoes because they have a separate issue for me and will be part of a suggestion, though they suffer from this issues as well) where you just need to find a clear space and can park there and not lose progress. Minor annoyance but worth mentioning.
24- Some quests in the campaign don’t track correctly. What I mean is that when you click on a quest it will zoom to the correct place of the map to complete it. But some don’t do that properly. I’ve noticed that this seems to happen mostly when the quests are in different clusters in the same timeline. Especially when you decide to do the one that takes you to the Sanctum in the ruined coast. Also, if you go into monos early and then continue the campaign, the mono quest tracks to the first timeline rather than the end of time.
25- Very minor thing which I know is already being looked at, but you currently cannot unassign skills in the hotbar. This is only relevant when you’re trying to sort them out in the first few levels, so it’s not a big deal.
26- I’ve placed this one apart because it’s not a bad thing, it’s a matter of personal preference. I like to have multiple skills available (like in D2 and PoE) rather than being stuck with just 5 or 6. Though in D2 you end up mostly just using 2-4 and in PoE you end up just using also a few and the rest are auras, I still like the option to use different solutions for each situation. But I understand that this is the system that has been designed for LE and I can live with it just fine.
Now for some suggestions for improvement:
27- Some alternate to the campaign. I understand that dungeons are also meant to skip parts of the campaign, but it would be nice to have the option to level up completely outside of it. Maybe make it so that the first character has to do the campaign but further characters can skip it. The campaign, in my opinion, has the issue that it’s always the same, the maps are always the same and it becomes a chore. If you can level up in dungeons or mono-like system that would be much more enjoyable. Also a way to get the passives/idol rewards outside of it. I know that it feels bad when there’s so much effort placed into creating the campaign just so you can skip it, but I think the gameplay would improve if you could skip this, at least for later characters. The most annoying part of PoE is doing the campaign over and over on each new character.
28- Show the echo objective when selecting them. Some objectives are annoying to do with some builds. For example, I’m using a wraith build which uses abomination with dread shade, where I just leave it at the start. But when I’m doing an arena echo, I just know that it will die right away and I have to find some corner to protect it. That takes away a lot of firepower and survivabilty. If I knew that node was an arena echo I would just skip it on that build.
29- On that last note, it would be nice to have some sort of system for changing nodes on the fly. Maybe gold or some sort of currency-like drop to change the node. Not the node reward, but to basically reroll the mods and echo type (spire/arena/etc)
30- Already mentioned as an aside up there, but having beacons for the filter would be great. I know this has a performence impact so maybe we could start with a limit of just a few to start with?
31- Runic invocation is a great skill and very unique, but the list of possible combos is huge. You end up just memorizing 2-3 you mostly use and ignore the rest. Or in the case of hydra build, just memorize that one combo. This kinda detracts from the skill and makes it feel like modern beat’em ups where you have a huge combo list but only end up using a few. I’m not sure how you’d go about it, but having some way to incentivize using different combos would be great, IMO.
32- I know that sets are being looked into but right now they feel mostly like D2 sets: you mostly ignore them. Sometimes you use a piece on an endgame build but that’s rare. You end up only using a few for leveling. It would be great if they could compete with uniques/exalted for endgame. What I would suggest is that sets make a significant change to builds that you can’t get from other sources. Changing how skills work, giving you access to skills you normally couldn’t use (like D2 tal rasha’s giving you fireball for necro) or even changing the way your character looks (again like D2 tal rasha turning you into a wraith), something like that. It’s a complicated issue and difficult to balance, but having sets being mostly ignored feels kinda bad.
33- It would be really fun to have some class that could combine masteries. Something like a shapeshifter or an artificer that can pick masteries from other classes so you can combine skills and passive trees. It would be really hard to balance, but it seems like a really fun idea.
34- This just occurred to me: one way to make the campaign feel better when you’re running it for the nth time is if you unlocked waypoints account-wide. So when you’re running yet another character in the campaign you can just skip 1-3 areas by porting to them and speeding up the process.
Well, that’s mostly it. I’m sure there are a few points I forgot about, but if I did then they weren’t too important nor that impactful on my appreciation for the game.
Overall, I love LE. It feels very unique and player focused. It has a great community that is helpful and overall isn’t negative or aggressive. I have yet to see some flame war on this forum. The dev feedback is great and they actually take the time to reply to us and explain things. This is extremely healthy and, the way I see it, one of the key factors for LE being as good as it is at this point.
I don’t know if I can place it as my favorite ARPG (D2 will forever hold that spot for me. I’ve played it for over 20 years and to this day I always return to it regularly), but I can certainly place it in the top 3. I think it has a better base than PoE (for my preference, of course) and while it doesn’t have as much content as PoE does right now, it certainly has more than PoE had on launch.
Gameplay feels great, the occasional bug or inconvenience isn’t too aggravating (and almost always is being fixed/looked at). Builds are diverse but, more imporantly, they’re mostly viable, meaning that most builds can do most of the content properly.
Visually the game feels good. I never really cared much about graphics, which is why I keep returning to D2, but LE’s feel more than good enough for the gameplay. It’s not as polished as D4 or maybe even PoE, but the gameplay more than makes up for it.
I have no thoughts about the soundtrack because I always turn it off in most games. I listen to music while I play and the soundtrack gets in the way. Sorry
Anyway, no regrets so far in buying the game and I don’t expect to have them. Even if I stopped playing right now I already feel like I got my money’s worth out of the game. Keep up the great work