is the game difficult

[verbtime]

just got the game and was wondering if the game is really hard/tedious (i tried poe2 before and it was too hard)

[DarkSlayer197]

No. The game is very casual friendly with a friendly community.

[SinisterSlay]

Starts super easy.
Easy all the way through to level 80 core Tyria.
If you jump straight to Heart Of Thorns expansion, it feels like walking over a cliff. But you will learn.

The cool thing about the game is no gear treadmill. You, the creature at the keyboard has to get better at the game, not your character.

The game does stray towards tedious near the end game stuff. Legendary gear is an insane grind, but you don't need it. It's not any stronger than ascended equipment.

[ebaG-gamma]

You can experience the entire instance-based story without much difficulty.
If you want to get the full story during the base game and get into doing the story mode dungeons starting at level 40, you'll find some challenge there, but just find two other players and you'll be fine. I would actively advise against any more than that, or they will become boring.

As SinisterSlay also mentioned, if you go directly from the base game story into the first full expansion, Heart of Thorns (which also isn't recommendable due to the game's story structure), you'll face a very sharp and noted increase in difficulty. If by you never stopped to get proper gear for your character, engaged with your skills and specializations and set up an ergonomic control scheme, you might have trouble there.

The good news is, the base game gives you a lot of leeway. Use it to experiment with different weapons, skills and traits, so that when you get to more challenging stuff, you'll know your toolkit. You really don't need to worry about gear too much before you get to level 80. If you keep doing stuff, you'll constantly be showered in new stuff anyway, and if you don't struggle in your encounters, there's no need to have best-in-slot gear in all slots at all levels.

When you get to level 80, I recommend you give this
https://youtu.be/cXGTxJAiEpA
or any other video of the sort a watch. It's an older video, but it's still mostly relevant.

personal note on the video: I do fundamentally disagree on skipping the living world at first, if you are someone who is into story. The video was made when the first season of the Living World, which happens right after the base game and the second season, wasn't playable at all, so it was already disjointed. This has been remedied since, and playing through the story in order is a much better experience. The living world still costs money though; so there's that. I went into how DLCs work for this game in the second half of my guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3335333185

[SinisterSlay]

Originally posted by ebaG-gamma:

The good news is, the base game gives you a lot of leeway. Use it to experiment with different weapons, skills and traits, so that when you get to more challenging stuff, you'll know your toolkit. You really don't need to worry about gear too much before you get to level 80. If you keep doing stuff, you'll constantly be showered in new stuff anyway, and if you don't struggle in your encounters, there's no need to have best-in-slot gear in all slots at all levels.

Yeah this is a good point. I have accidentally taken a character that had level 40 and 60 gear into level 80 areas and only noticed because it seemed oddly slow killing things. I had totally forgotten that my alt had just ran through the story and had just the free equipment that gets thrown at you and nothing else. The game gives a ton of leeway on this. It's not like other games where you if you show up with gear 10 levels under, somehow everything one hit kills you and you do 0-1 damage to everything.
I finally noticed when I was trying to do path of fire hero points and was struggling. That finally made me go take a look at my gear and laugh.

[Greyhawk The Angry]

Originally posted by verbtime:

just got the game and was wondering if the game is really hard/tedious (i tried poe2 before and it was too hard)

Its going to vary.
Like is stated, the first expansion has a has a dramatic increase in difficulty. The seconded one goes a tad easier, and introduces mounts. There are at least a couple small areas in the base game that are somewhat similar (though watered down from their original difficulty, Orr when the game released late 2012 was a bit of a nightmare). And I wouldn't recommend even think about the raids and similar content until you have a firm grasp of the game and Ascended level gear.

Try to see if you can find a guild that teaches which ever type of content interests you, whether its general pve, world bosses, pvp, wvw, raids, etc., etc., etc. This game is rather multi-faceted.

Also, Wooden Potatoes is a false god.

[buffy805]

The strength or numbers of monsters adjust with the number of players around/near the monster, without having to group.

[Eminem]

Originally posted by verbtime:

just got the game and was wondering if the game is really hard/tedious (i tried poe2 before and it was too hard)

roll ranger, newb friendly. start to end game faceroll. The hunt for taming new companions never gets old.

[Harry]

This game is amazing, with a great community and friendly players. We're all active here! Trust me, POE2 doesn’t compare—give it a try! 😄

[Shurpy]

Originally posted by Harry:

This game is amazing, with a great community and friendly players. We're all active here! Trust me, POE2 doesn’t compare—give it a try! 😄

not if u play PvP it's giga toxic

[Jouchebag]

Originally posted by Shurpy:

Originally posted by Harry:

This game is amazing, with a great community and friendly players. We're all active here! Trust me, POE2 doesn’t compare—give it a try! 😄

not if u play PvP it's giga toxic

I feel like that's true of all MMO PvP communities.

[𝑀𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑦𝑙]

GW3 isn't coming to waste my time

[Reeva!]

GW2 is nothing compared to PoE2.

In PvP you will get oneshotted until you master mindgames against enemy thief players, or accept that you can't run and start swinging wildly.

In open world PvE, everything's pretty much a cakewalk, even some group events, depending on your build. All classes can pretty much live forever with the right build, in open world. You can have as many players doing an event as you have players in the map itself, that's like 50+.
In dungeons, some fights are ridiculously difficult by yourself, but with groups you just stomp everything. Mostly 5 man content, some 10 man.
In raids, I only know of 1 class that can solo it, but it is overdue for a nerf, and I reckon we'll be seeing it soon. 10 man content.

In WvW, thief thing is still in effect, but you end up having 50v50 scenarios, where things are utter chaos, so you spam all your AoE abilities into the enemy, and if you don't die instantly, you probably won.

The difficulty is mostly trivial, sometimes hard, and in WvW or PvP things are completely random, and you either oneshot someone or get oneshotted, but that's competitive for you.

[naapsuland]

Originally posted by Maviy:

GW3 isn't coming to waste my time

same already spend too much money and time , i dont care about gw3

[Q]

not at all, one of the easiest mmos around.

[Ranch]

Its pretty easy. When you hit level 80 and starting doing the expansions/living world though i found myself having more "trouble." I played the game up to 80 back in 2022 but never did any of the expac content. Started again early december last year and ive been pretty much everyday playing through all the content in order. Switched classes once or twice but still having a blast. I however hit a point where i decided to briefly skip ahead to unlock the skyscale, and speedrun getting my elite spec maxed. Upon doing that my fun factor jumped up exponentially.