I recently started to have an interest in Diablo 4 and that is what lead to me accidentally purchasing an add on thinking it was the core game. Because I was a bit disappointed that I wouldn't be getting my Diablo-like fix, I saw that POE2 was still installed on my PS5 so I figured I would jump back in and see if my opinion about the game being just odd with the difficulty spikes and network issues had changed.
While some improvements have been made I was still done with the game 30 minutes later.
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I know that people are going to shout at me and say that I am wrong for criticizing this game yet again but before I continue on my tirade I want to say in the 30 minutes to an hour that I played last night, I only encountered network hiccups ONCE. This is an amazing improvement from when I walked away previously because back then it was happening constantly. Like it was very rare that I wasn't rubber-banding or having the game auto-pause every 10 seconds or so. So, kudos to you GGG for addressing this very serious design flaw.
I never saw this screen during my second try at the game with my now level 7 sorceress and only noticed a bit of slowdown during one particular sequence. What I DID notice though, was all the other things I had been complaining about before I rage quit the last time. I was in the Red Vale, an early area where you have to seek out a few totems and complete the things they have you do there in order to accomplish a mission that I started ages ago.
These were exceptionally easy and nobody on the entire map gave me even a tiny bit of challenge.... it was boring... no strategy at all was necessary.
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Then, at the 3rd one, you end up summoning the boss of the map, whose name I do not recall. He has some attacks that aren't very difficult to dodge but also summons a dozen or so undead warriors to sort of prevent your movement and dodging. This was when I quickly remembered what I hated most about this game.
SO I am throwing everything I have at this guy, keeping distance, doing a pretty good job of dodging his attacks but made a small mistake when I was worried about his adds surrounding me when he hit me with an attack and wiped out 90% of my health in one single hit.
It's this sort of BS that made me want to leave the game the first time. If an area is difficult then just let it be difficult! If I am struggling to get through the thing in its entirety it encourages me to be resourceful with my attacks or maybe even grind somewhere else in order to level up. But when you make an entire map so easy that I honestly didn't need to have a strategy at all up to that point and then reveal a boss that damn near one-shots me right away, that isn't fun, nor is it indicative or relative to the area that said boss is contained in.
Had I dOnE mY rEsEaRcH! I would have found that he is vulnerable to lightning and my fire attacks being my main method of attacking would have obviously been the wrong way to go. But how the hell am I supposed to figure that out if I don't look on the internet for a guide before each boss? If it indicates on screen I haven't noticed it because I am too concerned with the constant rolling around I have to do in order to avoid being insta-killed.
This isn't the main issue though. In my mind the main issue is that this game has PC players in mind wit the interface.
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This isn't the best visual example of my main gripe but it is still a gripe. If you are selecting something in your inventory, the stats for that item pop up over it there by blocking all the things around it in the inventory. You can't easily keep track of what you are selecting or even what else you have in your bag because of this. With a mouse I suppose this isn't a big deal, but when using a controller it makes inventory management such a pain in the ass that I don't even bother.
I chugged out the one area for a bit longer and then decided that it was just making me mad, especially since I already know that later on in the game that the difficulty spikes become much worse than the Rust King that I defeated on my first try by way of spam drinking healing potions.
I'm not going to play this game anymore but it also kind of opened my eyes to the very real possibility that Diablo 4 might have the same issues. Perhaps I will just hold off on both of them and play HellDivers 2 instead.
What do you think?