This or POE?

[Vors]

I've had very little experience with either, in a vacuum which game would you say is more worthy of your time? thanks

[Raraldor]

You're gonna get a lot of POE hate on this forum, because many people came to this after getting tired of POE, so take that as you will.
Overall POE has far more content, and you'll get a complete but basic story. It has much more room for build creativity but you'll probably find yourself lacking and may even need to reroll if you arent careful. It is free though so you lose nothing by giving it a shot.
Last Epoch isn't done yet, so story wise you won't get a very satisfying experience. Gameplay wise though LE feels much better. You get stronger at a much more satisfying pace compared to POE, and even though you can't go balls to the wall crazy with your builds, every class/build I've played has felt good to play.

If you really don't want to try both to see which one is more fun for you I'd say choose LE, coming from someone with roughly 1k hours in POE

[jV]

PoE is the undisputed ARPG king right now. LE still has a long ways to go, but it looks promising.

[prototype81]

I mean what ever happened to personal preference. They are vastly different in settings. Why not try both isnt poe free? you CAN play both you know.

[TEN]

In order to be able to play POE properly you need to follow a build guide. Personally, I find that extremely annoying. In general I dislike the skill and point system in POE uninteresting. Making a build in Last Epoch however, is very intuitive and you can always respec for very cheap (in POE you need to special shards. which are hard to find)

[Sosii]

If you're more casual just wanna pick up and play and not think too hard, this is perfect. If you like lots and lots of depth, to the point where its too much imo then poe. You will also get much more hours out of PoE than LE so also take that into account. I personally love PoE 10 times more but this game is still developing and Its already veryyyy promising so who knows how I'll feel later.

[kekkuli]

Poe takes way too much googling and reading guides&watching videos to get familiar with. And even then it will probably take you years and years. LE or grim dawn are more easily approachable.

[Lyncher]

In the end you get more out of POE if you are prepared to go through its steep learning curve. If not willing to do that then go for LE that is somewhere between POE complexity and d3 casualness.

[simon]

Its difficult to say. I prefer POE but LE is not finished. POE is a very mature game with years of development. LE is still in beta.

The best way to summarize is POE is much harder and requires much more time and effort to play past the campaign. LE is much more new player friendly and requires less effort from the player to enjoy its content. Also, POE is free but if you want to enjoy it to the full you will need to spend money on inventory tabs.

[Ardenian]

This is a difficult question to answer.

Path of Exile is complex on the surface, as others have said, you need to follow a guide as a beginner player (and probably as an intermediate player as well) to be able to do endgame content and the campaign is, as it is joked in the PoE commmunity, the tutorial of the game. That being said, Path of Exile is heavily built around spending time in the game, being built around addiction. You think to yourself "just another map, just another temple, just another boss, ...", that kind of thing. There is also a lot of gambling, not only when crafting items, such as hitting the modifier that you want on the item, but also through various other in-game mechanics such as enchanting and corrupting items. The game definitely knows how to keep you on your toes and suck as much time as possible from you.

In comparison to Path of Exile, Last Epoch offers a more calm, relaxed experience, similar other ARPG games like Grim Dawn and Torchlight 2. It is Beta and you will feel and notice that in various games, but the game let's you "loose" and try out stuff, the crafting is not as punishing as in other games and overall I got the feeling that Last Epoch tries to waste your time as little as possible, which is refreshing coming from Path of Exile.

Overall, if you have a lot of time and I mean a lot of time, I would give Path of Exile a try since it is free (whether PoE is f2p or p2w due to the opportunity to trade items online mostly being locked behind spending real money is another story) and I would say that the overall gameplay loop, especially in endgame, is a mroe satisfying experience albeit paired with addiction and gambling. If you are looking for a more casual experience that gives you more freedom instead of forcing you to follow build guides, I recommend any other ARPG but Path of Exile, such as Grim Dawn, Torchlight 2 and also Last Epoch.

[Maelan]

If you want a full gambling ARPG and a very bad experience in term of performance, loot, craft, trading, endgame mechanics ; not be able to trade or stuff your char without hundred of hours and several program tiers (poe companion, loot filter, etc) go for PoE, if you want just a normal game, go for this one.

[bacon.]

POE if you want to pull your hair out. I mean, it is a good game, and an even better free one. This isn't closed to finished. Maybe once multiplayer is open it will be worth more time.

[Nakos]

I would say it probably depends on what sort of a gamer you are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types

Personally, I'm an "Explorer".

PoE offers a HUGE amount to explore. The passive tree is massive, and any starting character can make use of any of it (though not ALL of it, a "finished" character won't be able to take more than about 10% of the total nodes (if that)). Skills are completely modular. Support skills are completely modular. Any class can use any weapon. There's a huge amount of potential variety.

And ... that's why people say you need to read a guide. Because it's pretty easy to get lost.

LE on the other hand seems a lot more "structured" (from what I can tell from reading the forum, I haven't personally played it). I'm a bit skeptical if LE will serve my needs as an ARPG vehicle.

(And then of course, there's the whole issue that GGG is now owned by Tencent).

Additionally, you might also want to consider the Torchlight series (TL2 being the best in my opinion). Or Grim Dawn.

[Dreaming Prince]

i think poe is done. it was a good run. shouldent have sold out

[Ardenian]

Originally posted by Nakos:

(...) PoE offers a HUGE amount to explore. The passive tree is massive, and any starting character can make use of any of it (though not ALL of it, a "finished" character won't be able to take more than about 10% of the total nodes (if that)). Skills are completely modular. Support skills are completely modular. Any class can use any weapon. There's a huge amount of potential variety.

And ... that's why people say you need to read a guide. Because it's pretty easy to get lost.

LE on the other hand seems a lot more "structured" (from what I can tell from reading the forum, I haven't personally played it). I'm a bit skeptical if LE will serve my needs as an ARPG vehicle. (...)

To throw my coin in here, PoE is complex because you need to collect experience with different parts of the passive skill tree playing different styles (melee, ranged, caster, aura, curse, ...) and combine that with your knowledge about both skill and support gems to create a character that is viable to play and that's why people have to follow a guide when they are new to the game. A good example is Arcane Surge, a support gem. It gives you a small buff after spending a certain amount of mana that doesn't seem to do much so most new players would skip it, but it is part of every popular caster build because it does do a lot actually, to boost your DPS.

Last Epoch is more generous here as in, you can make most stuff work and get somewhere, but if something doesn't work, you can easily respec within your mastery (=ascendancy in PoE) while in Path of Exile, you have to grind a currency to be able to make changes to your character, As a result, Last Epoch allows you to experiment a lot more, but within less complexity and variety, without fearing consequences too much or literally bricking your character from respec-ing or being unable to fully respec.

[Dorok]

For me PoE doesn't match best Diablo-ilke, before PoE play first:
- Diablo 2 if you never played it before.
- Torchlight 1 as a starter for Diablo like SP. If you don't need that, then TL2. B
- Torchlight 2
- Diablo 3, ignore the hate, still better on many aspects that all other Diablo-like, just weak on how characters are built, but open to a lot of experimentation and discovering and from far the richest for the amount of very different skills available.
- Grim Dawn, much better than PoE if you don't need a polished MP or for SP.

Pas that, ok PoE, and for sure if you don't have money, then PoE as it is free, just give up if it's no fun for you, but don't conclude for the genre.

Even further, it's not anymore Diablo-like, for ARPG no Diablo-ilke but with Diablo influences, I would advise:
- Hades, Victor Vran, Books of Demon, Children of Morta, Eye Divine Cybermancy (shooter), Void Bastards (shooter), Immortal Redneck (shooter), Borderlands 2 (shooter), Ziggurat (shooter), Eldritch (small indie), Delver (small indie)

EDIT:
For LE wait release, play it EA is only for some aficionados of the genre.