If anything, Path of Exile 2 is going to become even more of a theory crafter's dream come true.

Return to Wraeclast
Path of Exile 2 feels like a big improvement over the original.

Set 20 years after the events of the original campaign, Path of Exile 2 is the story of a society trying to rebuild after the original cast of player characters killed every single god in existence and used their power to POE currency trade murder an even bigger god. Now all the gods are dead and humankind is left to clean up the corpses (there's a lot) and try and move forward.

Path of Exile 2, Wilson tells me, is Grinding Gear Games' chance to preset the reset button on Path of Exile and tell a smaller-scale story that isn't about apocalyptic world-ending threats. You play as an entirely new exile who narrowly escapes their execution and washes up on the shores of Wraeclast again. Though it wasn't immediately clear from the early quests I completed, your goal is to investigate the Duke who sentenced you to die and the paranormal mysteries that surround him. Like Path of Exile's original campaign, that means clicking on enemies until they explode and good loot (hopefully) falls out of their dismembered corpses.

Even in the first minutes of this adventure, Path of Exile 2 feels like a big improvement over the original. The original three acts of Path of Exile are now seven years old and their age is shown most in how one dimensional much of boss fights are. More often than not, you're standing in place clicking on a big monster until it stops moving. And after beating those bosses dozens of times, the lack of challenge is grating. Path of Exile 2's bosses clearly benefit from years of figuring out what makes these fights fun.

One early quest tasked me with killing The Devourer, a monstrous worm living in an underground passage cheap POE divine orbs . Path of Exile's first bosses are usually pretty simple but The Devourer was a surprising challenge.