The idea behind Bestiary league is an interesting one. Or at least, it was interesting when Pokemon did it. Now it’s a bit played out but that doesn’t mean there isn’t new things that can be brought to the genre. As implied, this league is essentially Pokemon. You run into beasts, throw nets at them and catch them. You have to time it so that they are low health, and you have a Pokedex – err, Bestiary that records each unique beast you capture.
Clunky
Right off the bat, this new system was clunky. Throwing nets took a lot of time and, more often than not, the beasts would break out instantly. The breaking out was because, despite saying you’d have an allotted amount of time to kill them after throwing the net, GGG decided to make that allotted amount of time 0.2 seconds for Bestiary-modded beasts. I’m not exaggerating, it was literally 0.2 seconds. The idea was you’d either have them at a low enough threshold to catch straight out, or you’d have to get them there within the time it took for the net to travel. Saying it was clunky is a massive understatement.
Build Issues
This league’s mechanics are prohibitive to a massive number of builds. First off, now that you are given three seconds to kill the mob from the time you throw the net, tanky builds are much worse off than dps builds. DPS can just throw the net when the mob is full health, then explode them. Tanks have to whittle them down, deal with all the adds they spawn, and make sure they time their net perfectly. It’s a pain and caters to the clearspeed meta champs greatly.
But there are builds that have it far worse than just being slow. I myself have had frustrations with two, and I’ve only made three characters (the third of which was a tank – I’m not having much luck). My own issues have been totems and spectres.
Spectres in particular are horrible for capturing beasts. They one-shot anything that isn’t a legendary beast before you can even identify it to throw your net. Then, when you do encounter a legendary beast, you get it to about half, throw your net and your spectres bugger off and go attack something else just long enough for the legendary beast to enrage. Then, of course, they kill it before you can throw another net.
Totems are the same way, they focus down the beast perfectly until you throw the net, then they lose focus and you lose the beast. Obviously it’s nothing nefarious, just bad luck, but it’s frustrating and frequent.
Slayers had it worst before the changes. Beasts would break out in 0.2 seconds unless they were at about 5% life, and Slayers cull them at 20%. There were mechanics in this league that just clearly weren’t thought out well. Sure the fixes are coming in, but it didn’t feel good when your lovingly crafted build was shafted by the league mechanics.
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Grinding Gear Games developed their own engine that works well but that's not the important thing. What really matters is the artistic aspect of the game. When you get into dungeons, or cathedrals, or temples and so on, all levels have been designed with a maniacal care for details and some awesome art such as mosaics, paintings and so on. It is simply amusing to walk through randomly generated maps that give such fine compositions. It is very important to take the time to level up at the beginning of the game. Whenever you need to buy chaos orbs, you can turn to U4GM for help. We has cheap poe items for sale.
Anyways, Lots of art can be found in any other aspects, from the passive skill tree screen, to cards, or items you will find all the time. Definitely good talents have been working on this game.
Soundtarck. Themes and Accompaniments.
Yes, soundtrack is incredible too. I can't believe how inspiring and epic it can get, with most of the title tracks (changed through time, from expansion pack to pack), and other themes you can hear along dungeons or various locations. They all fit the atmosphere with music mostly made by arcs, choirs and other particular instruments such as sitar. This convinced me to purchase the soundtrack as well and this happens rarely.
Pros
1. FREE. Honestly, this is the very first reason you must love and worship this game and their developers. This title is simply put "well developed" in all its aspect and it's immense. It's not a pay to win and you will end up buying stuff on your own will to support developers because they did an immense job and definitely deserve it.
2. SUPPORT. I started playing this game in 2014 when it barely had 3 acts, now in 2017 it has 10 acts and an infinite map system that expands the game further. How can you hate a game that constantly expands... For free?
3. DIABLO ON STEROIDS. If you love Diablo and other isometric ARPG this is the definitive game for you. Base mechanics are always the same, but here everything is expanded way beyond your imagination. If you love text books with stories and lore, here you can find books as well around the maps, not to mention all discussions with NPCs in towns.
4. COOP. There's only one thing that makes this game even better: coop. You can play all the story with your friends, make a guild and go around. You can also challenge other players, there are public events, giving even more variety to the multiplayer and social aspect of the game, but I didn't try them as I only care about coop.
As we are the best location online to poe buy orbs, we also like to keep a close eye on what is happening in the world of Path of Exile. I enjoy a good Action-RPG, but the first thing I noticed when I started playing was that there was a bit of a learning curve regarding the gameplay mechanics. Skill and Support Gems, Currencies, Rare and Unique items, Passive Skills, you name it; there were a lot of new terminologies that I had to acquaint myself with.
I also had to learn how each of these mechanics would affect my chosen character, which took a bit of time and some trial and error to figure out. On top of that, I also felt that POE’s vast character customization options, with the Passive Tree, Support Gems and currencies that can modify item stats as well as effects, were quite daunting.
Difficulties and Act Progression
Grinding Gear Games implemented a story progression feature that I’ve never seen in any game that I’ve played thus far: to advance to the post-game content beyond Act Four, one must first replay the first four acts in Cruel difficulty and then again in Merciless difficulty. To enter each difficulty, the character must reach a certain level.
The Massive Passive Skill Tree
I’m not kidding when I say this thing is massive. A central thought that went through my head when I first saw the tree was “Where do I go?” The size alone can discourage even the most determined players. Each segment of the skill tree corresponds to the six character classes that exist in the game. The idea behind it was to give players the ability to grow beyond your class, like having a Witch with the Marauder’s strength skills, or a Templar with the Ranger’s dexterity skills.
The Economy
One factor that made things difficult for me to get into the game initially was the understanding of how the economy in Path of Exile works. There is no gold or monetary currency in Wraeclast; instead, items are used in their place. Not just certain items, but just about any and every item you can find can be used to purchase new items from vendors or traded to other players.
So Why is Now the Best Time to Start?
I’ll tell you one main reason why: an expansion released in March called The Bestiary Challenge, which has completely revamped the game for the better. Grinding Gear Games added in a ton of new features, made improvements to the existing infrastructure and tweaked the storyline into something that makes much more sense.