I’ve got over 200 hours in Path of Exile 2 and I’m still intimidated by it. I pick up loot and have no idea if it’s good or not, the gigantic skill tree gives me chills, and I couldn’t tell you anything about the lore. I’m willing to endure the most prickly parts of PoE 2 because the campaign is excellent—and it just got better.
The latest update adds a new act that has me fully on board with Grinding Gear Games’ vision for an action RPG campaign that might be as ambitious as the version of Diablo 2 that exists in people’s memories. I’m too young to have had my mind blown by Blizzard 25 years ago, but right now, in 2025, I’m not sure anyone is doing it like GGG.
I’m so impressed by the new act that I’ll forgive the pacing issues in the rest of the campaign. After all, that’s what releasing your game in early access is for, right? Part of me sympathizes with PoE 1 players who hate spending 30 hours getting torn apart by regular old skeletons when all they want to do is charge straight to the endgame.
The endless mazes in act 3 test my patience every time I replay it, but now that I’ve seen what lies beyond that, I trust GGG to find a good balance of soulslike pacing and action RPG blasting as it continues to work on the game.
I knew from the moment I was dragging my character through water as ocean waves crashed through the crumbling walls of a prison that act 4 was different. I almost forgot I was playing a loot game as I ran to high ground and waited for the waves to recede, picking off shambling skeletons along the way.
And this came after brawling with a land shark and stepping into the dreamlike domain of a god just a few hours earlier. Act 4 is a buffet of imaginative set piece moments that don’t require having a particularly good understanding of the advanced mechanics in PoE 2.
And those boss fights! Nobody told me GGG was cooking up some of the most creative boss encounters I’ve ever seen. I survived a sorcerer who unearths an obstacle course of rocks that you have to sprint through before getting disintegrated by a seismic blast, and a monkey man who freezes time and surrounds you with clones of himself. There’s a FromSoftware-like quality to the way the bosses surprise you with monstrous transformations halfway through or attacks that need to be solved like puzzles.
Unlike the linear structure of acts 1 through 3, act 4 has you sailing to different islands looking for a way to stop the apocalyptic beast you’ve been chasing from the start. You can visit them in any order and each one has a self-contained theme and mini storyline. Act 4 is a welcome palate cleanser after several hours of bulldozing through long maps looking for the next boss.
Each island is like an episode of a TV series with their own twists and turns and what some may argue is goofy filler in a pretty dour story. But I really don’t mind having a little fun on the way if it means getting to beat up giant starfish and stumbling into a gladiator pit surrounded by an audience of goblins.
As you ping pong between the islands there are optional bosses and challenges that’ll reward you with skill points and other passive bonuses. Usually my instinct is to clear everything out in one go, but I decided to only hit what I naturally run into. Now there’s an excuse to go back and see what I missed when I’m a little bored of clearing maps in the endgame. And let me tell you, I missed quite a lot, which has only made me more impressed with how many different areas GGG has packed into each island.
Spelunking with spirits
My favorite section has you descending through a cave and completing trials to gain an audience with the goddess of death. Your quest starts out with you standing over your own corpse and only gets weirder from there. You don’t need to know the lore to be creeped out by this place and all the nasty spiritual monsters within.
The tight hallways and shrines where you take on each trial don’t feel like random set dressing for a game about mowing down monsters. There’s a real sense of progression as you descend deeper into the zone and the damp caves gradually transition into stone hallways with otherworldly designs.
This entire section reminded me a lot of the underground areas in Elden Ring. While not nearly as expansive, act 4 is a peek into the ancient history of the Wraeclast that is sitting right underneath the surface. It’s mysterious and foreboding in all the right ways and makes the earlier acts seem like child’s play. Act 4 ends on a bit of a cliffhanger that won’t be resolved until GGG adds the next act in a future update, but I’m very excited to see where things go from here.
Getting somewhere
PoE 2’s campaign desperately needed something to contrast the earlier acts where you’re mostly fighting apes and spiders. Not that act 4 doesn’t have its fair share of goofy scenarios—the land shark boss fight rules—but I don’t think I could handle going through another desert or manor to kill an evil king.
Because each island only takes a couple hours to finish, nothing drags on too long. It’s a lot like the game’s endgame mapping system where you jump from location to location on your way to corrupted parts of the map. As you check off each area, the difficulty increases until a final confrontation with some kind of Lovecraftian monster with a big health bar.
I’m on my fourth playthrough of PoE 2’s campaign now and I wasn’t sure if I could do it again before this update. Act 4 gives me hope that GGG has more surprises up its sleeves for how it wants the story to end and how it’s going to get us there. Act 4 is not only eminently replayable for future leagues to come, but it’s also a taste of what GGG is capable of when it can focus on making a tremendous campaign that doesn’t feel like homework before the real game starts like in PoE 1. PoE 2’s campaign is the game and I suspect I’ll be talking my friends into playing it whether they care about the endgame grind or not.
