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By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Path of Exile review - 2014



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Expect to pay free-to-play, £2 to £15 for cosmetic upgrades Release Out now Developer Grinding Gear Games Publisher In-house Multiplayer Up to 6, co-op Link www.pathofexile.com

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Path of Exile has changed significantly in the time since we published this review. Because of that, we've publisheda new reviewwith up-to-date criticism. We've left this review here as a record of how we originally felt about Path of Exile.

Compulsion is a dubious sort of pleasure, but it's what action-RPGs excel at. With their slow levelling curves, gradually unlocking skills and swelling hordes of foes, Diablo, Titan Quest, Torchlight and now Path of Exile all aim to ensnare rather than instantly delight.

The 15-year-old formula has barely evolved, but is still effective. You must always start in rags, punching zombies with your bare fists in some gloomy town, because any grander beginning would curtail your slow ascent to godhood. A start anywhere more glamorous than a dark field or Path of Exile's grey beach would lessen the triumphant moment 12 hours later when you annihilate a 20-strong giant spider brood and think back to those first moments. Sometimes you'll find folk waiting beneath yellow exclamation marks to give you quests and deliver lore points in tiny boxes of text, but mostly you punch, loot, level up, equip your stolen gains, grow strong and slowly mould your bedraggled vagrant into a killing machine.

It's a character arc of sorts, albeit one plotted to the sound of a thousand repetitive mouse-clicks, but that comes with a quiet satisfaction of its own, a feeling of incremental achievement earned over many hours. If you value that feeling, Path of Exile is the 200-hour time sink you're looking for.


Your adventures take place on the cursed continent of Wraeclast. Each of the immediately playable character classes have been thrown out of their cushy homelands for various unimportant reasons, and must now carve out a new life for themselves, slicing up thousands of monsters in dark dungeons POE goods .