BATTLEFIELD IS BACK LFG

It tickled the autism in the most captivating way imaginable. This ♥♥♥♥ stun-locked my brain for like 3 weeks. I don't know how much money I paid for this game and I don't care, it was worth it.

This game is way too promising to miss this many marks. To start, if your PC (specifically CPU) is too weak (I'm on an i7 11700K @ 5.0Ghz, which I wouldn't call "weak"), and it sits at 100% during loading screens for just a little too long, the game will completely crash the whole PC. Not even a blue screen, a full kernel hang until it shuts itself off at the BIOS level. It is incredible that this can even happen in modern Windows but here we are. My laptop on the other hand, i9-13900H literally never has an issue, so YMMV.

Gameplay wise, the bosses are so incredibly unfun to play against, so many bugs to the point of being unplayable. They are way too overtuned (difficult, in simple terms). There is a lot of variability and cool move sets visually and mechanically however there are so many bugs and stupid mechanics. Do you want to fight a boss that is literally just a DPS check with a time limit, or a boss that will clip you outside of the arena and then float out into the unclip area in a T pose completely breaking the encounter so you have to restart, or perhaps you would like a boss that even if you dodge roll away, will rubber band you back into an insta-kill hammer swing, or maybe you want to fight a boss that will shoot a 360 spinning laser array at you, and unless you have buffed movement speed it's a guaranteed death? Well, this game is for you! Not to mention the constant lag spikes where you absolutely will get 1 shot in the half second you lose control of your character for some unknown reason, that's definitely my favorite. That or important voice line indicators just going completely missing in boss fight if some other SFX are playing, so you will unexpectedly get vaporized out of nowhere with no indicator from a boss off screen.

If I wanted to pick up a game where I get the same experience as putting my hands in vices and watching my computer blue screen over and over, then this game would be perfect.

The veteran community relies on heavily busted "build" superiority complexes where any struggle with a boss is met with "fix your build". The game literally will become unplayable if you don't stay within the confines of what the developers tuned the game for. There is absolutely an intended way to play the game, and if you deviate from that you either will get punished by the game itself OR the developers will literally patch out unintentionally "good" builds because they are too strong. This has now turned into it's own meme where if you find a good build you are told to shut up and keep quiet about it so the devs don't disable your fun. So, the "expansive skill tree" is an absolute meme because unless you stick to the status quo for your class you will get rofl stomped. There is basically zero opportunity for actual creativity unless you are planning to respec constantly or crazy over-level to keep up.

I like to play Warrior, melee build, and it is an absolutely atrocious experience at all levels. You are constantly too slow in movement and attack, effective builds rely on basically game breaking stat boosting where you basically just have to disable the boss to beat, there really is no middle ground. Otherwise you are going to be fighting for your life for 10 minutes an attempt sweating your tail off while other classes just hang out casting infinite lighting bolts and beat bosses in sub 60-seconds. The only people that play warrior anymore are sadistic freaks and must be studied.

I wish this game was good. I wish I could enjoy it like I did the little time I played PoE 1. I wish this game didn't suffer from a community and dev induced build superiority complex and constant punishment for veering from the "correct" build tree. I wish the game didn't crash every 3 loading screens. I wish I could sit down after work and enjoy playing this game while running over waves of enemies and dunking on bosses, but I don't. It's way too much of a chore, it isn't even fulfilling on progression, the only thing I feel is mild relief after any milestone that it's over.

https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929

Democracy wins again

Great initial release of content, a great show of effort by all the developers

This game is actually so good for being free, it's actually so well done. There is a few small desync issues that can creep up between the server host and clients where things aren't matching between players that tend to get worse the longer the match goes. I however have a lot of faith in the developers on fixing these issues over time, they have been very committed so far to making the game better in leaps and bounds.