So Path of Exile. A free-to-play MMORPG made by Grinding Gear Games and set in a land of exiles, criminals and morally ambiguous types of all sorts. It’s been out for a little while in Beta and became available on Steam a little while ago and so I thought I’d give it a try.

Before I start, I’ll say that I’m not greatly experienced in this genre of game. MMORPGs to me were always about being really damn good in parties of players and I just never had the time or attention span to grind high enough. However PoE, with its dark world and touches of lore scattered about the world, has me hooked.

The character creation screen is the first bit of the game a new player will see, and immediately it sets up the scene with a voice-over announcement reminding all passengers that they’re on a one-way trip to the exile’s land of Wraeclast to reflect on their crimes against whatever rulers or gods are worshipped back home. There are six different class choices to choose from originally, aligned around three attributes: Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence. The classes to be chosen from are Ranger (Dex), Marauder (Str), Witch (Int), Duellist (Str/Dex), Shadow (Dex/Int) and Templar (Str/Int) with there being a quest-unlockable seventh class called the Scion that has equal ability in all three attributes. However, besides being able to change the League you play your character in (which has an effect on mob levels and who you play with) there isn’t a lot more customisation you can do at this point; although this can be excused as the game is still in Beta at time of writing.

However there is customisation available to you by way of items, skill gems you can fit into the sockets on items and through choosing to spend the skill points you acquire through leveling-up on one of the largest skill trees I’ve seen. As you level up, you can choose to unlock bonuses such as more life or dex which will in turn unlock better, stronger skills higher up the tree. I’ve only played to a few levels with my Ranger character, but I’ve seen other more experienced players talking about the best ‘builds’ of classes. Whether to go for speed or for health, or maybe both equally. Forward planning to build a character skill-wise is certainly something I could get interested in.

Items as well will be different from character to character because mobs don’t always drop something and when they do, it’s random what they drop. If you pick up armour too and don’t already have an item of that sort equipped already it will auto-equip your character too, which is useful in the midst of battle with seven cannibals at once. However you won’t have better stuff equipped if you’ve already got something in that slot so it does pay to check your stuff against your Inventory every now and then. The other thing about items in this game is that given the environment of Wraeclast, gold and silver coins are not available. You can instead trade things with other players and certain NPCs for other items that can do everything from revealing unknown properties of some items to refining them to transforming them into something else random (not that I was ever brave enough to try that last one). You can also ‘Stash’ items in a special chest that you want to keep but don’t want taking up room in your limited inventory space. Extra stash space is one of the few micro-transactions I’m aware of in this game, and from what I can tell, probably the most popular of them.

Like most MMORPGs you can choose to form parties and guilds in-game, with guilds coming with their own Stash chests for items to be shared about. I joined Lone in game for about an hour or so and while I do wish we’d had voice options in-game (there might be some, I just didn’t find them) it was quite fun to team up and have a health bar so I could see how my team-mate was doing. Especially as we were on equal footing, with Lone being melee and myself being range we had a good monster fighting balance.

Overall then, PoE is quite a good game, especially as being a free-to-play means it’s good value. If nothing else, it’s made me who usually avoids this game genre want to keep on playing. And that’s got to mean something.