I had looked at Melvor Idle on mobile a while back, and while finding the core ideas of the game interesting, I had been left disappointed by the mechanics locked behind in-app purchases and mostly by the game’s too open pacing, where the player was bombarded with things they could do with very little logical progression or path they could logically take to get stronger. The PC version, being a premium title, does away with the in-app purchases, but does not change the core of the game much, so it left me with the same overwhelming feeling than the mobile version. Needless to say, I dropped it quickly.
The latest Grim Dawn expansion didn't fix everything that bothered me about the action RPG; I still don't like how skills and masteries synergize with each other and the two new classes - Necromancer and Inquisitor - don't fix that much. They add some interesting mechanics to the game, but otherwise it still feels like a slog to play. I managed to get through the new story content, but I'm not chomping at the bits to go back to more Grim Dawn.
I've always enjoyed my time with Path Of Exile, but I also always felt that it's a game better played in your mind; Figuring out builds, trying to create good characters using the skill tree planner, looking at gems on the wiki and thinking about what would work to get you to the end, and then some. Sometimes, you can also look at Builds Of The Week on their forum as well to get inspiration. In reality tho, I get bored kinda quickly, either my characters die all the time, or they can't do anything, or they're just not fun to play. Fall Of Oriath adds loads of content on top of the original PoE experience, but I couldn't see it more than once.
Does anyone remember what D3 was like when it came out? What a shame, what a bunch of wasted potential. I vividly remember not being unable to complete any kind of end-game fight since enemies overpowered me by a huge difference. There was also no good loot to find, everything 'nice' I had at that point was bought at the Auction House using gold. Also enemies regenerated when you died, so fights were terribly boring. There was nothing to do except run the story over and over... Heck, I remember when hanging around Tyrael in Act 3 and leave him kill stuff was a viable strategy! The diablo 3 expansion fixed most of these problems, and 2.3 is just another step in a path of greatness.
In this latest PoE expansion, a few things change, a few are added and much is left as-is. It's still a good occasion to come back and play some more Path of Exile and I'm having a good time with it, but PoE:A doesn't solve all my problems with this game. In the crowded realm of action RPGs, it's very hard to strike a good balance between complexity and fun and I feel that PoE is leaning too much on complexity while keeping the game a bit too obtuse and difficult to fully enjoy.
Path of Exile is always being updated with new stuff but the Forsaken Masters update had me try it again and more content always makes for a better game. I hadn't seen the Vaal Gems - corrupted gems that require enemy kills before you can use them - yet nor the randomly placed random dungeons, so there's a lot of stuff in there to digest for me. That being said, I'm having a blast by playing it again.
Diablo 3 was pretty okay, but I didn’t play it much before the expansion came out. Now it’s all I play, more or less. In simple terms, the expansion added Loot 2.0, new difficulty levels, act 5, the crusader class and adventure mode. These things work together in unison to make a damn good game that I’ll play a bunch.
The last time I reviewed Marvel Heroes, the Marvel Universe action RPG, I wasn’t impressed. There wasn’t much to hook me to play more and I found a bunch of things that bothered me. There are still a few of these, but 220 hours later, I think I can safely say that I had a great time with this updated version of MH.
While I already wrote some words on Path of Exile a while ago, its recent re-release on Steam had me curious and I went back and tried it. I was supposed to write about Risk of Rain, but I spent most of this week and last week playing PoE. They've added some things, fixed others, and left most of it like it was before. My issue number one with the game - how floaty and unresponsive it felt - isn't a problem anymore...