Betrayal Opening Weekend Has Been My Best Gaming Experience Ever. Here's Why. After many, many (too many) hours over the weekend + getting into the mid-level map grind, I think I've played enough to write why I think Betrayal's opening weekend may be the best video game experience I've ever had.
1. Wraeclast feels the biggest and most populated it's ever felt.
In every previous iteration of PoE, Wraeclast felt pretty sparsely populated, both with respect to monsters and NPCs. Aside from the player, nothing was going on. You rushed yourself through the campaign to get to the atlas, where you (and Zana) were an island to Wraeclast.
In Betrayal, that's changed completely -- When I met Einhar in Act 2, the town felt bustling, and the activity in the Western Forests made the area feel teeming with life -- good and evil. Betrayal is basically Richard Scarry's "What Do People Do All Day" if the town was in a hellish continent where the dead roamed the earth.
2. The Immortal Syndicate is a Worthy Opponent.
In many previous leagues, league-specific encounters were hectic, or tricky, or required some practice -- but they've never really been hard. Once we learend to run from the Abyss Bats, or not to face tank Red Besitary Beasts, we were able to skate through those league mechanics until you faced a league boss or some other special encounter.
No so in Betrayal. The Syndicate is tough - They hit hard, they upgrade in meaningful ways, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. For the first time in my 2 year PoE career, I go into a league fight as early as Act 2 or Act 3 ready to go -- using all my key binds, changing my strategy depending on who portals in or what faction it is, and feeling really good about wiping them out. It feels awesome to have an opponent which is this difficult, and required real thought on how to win from an early stage in the game. The Syndicate made dying feel justified; In fact, they made it really fun - there are encounters that are neck and neck, and where you can't manually dodge a Haku Screen-wide AoE slam, and you laugh as you RIP through 5,500 HP. Pushing the limits with your build outside of deep delves feels very good, and very rewarding.
I've said it in previous posts, but for the first time ever I soaked up the entire campaign. It was a blast. I wanted to live in the environment that you created for a long time -- I'd get to mapping when my fun was over. I didn't think I could feel surprised or grabbed by the campaign given the number of times I've been through it, but GGG succeeded in riveting me this league.
3. Einhar (and Alva... and Niko, Zana and Jun) is my new best friend.
GGG hit it out of the park with the new Masters. The last year of expansions were so amazing and sprawling that it's hard to imagine that they would occupy the same small portion of our game play that the previous masters did. Instead, the new masters comprise ALL of my play time -- I spend almost all my time advancing some quest or objective for them which makes their presence feel important and impactful.
Consider the change - I used to run right past Catarina, or Vorici, or Eleron... or Haku. And mostly Vagan, too. They were an afterthought to Zana and the Atlas. Now? I make a bee line towards Einhar. I sprint towards Alva. I love finding sulphite in my maps, and delving feels like such a nice counterpoint to the Atlas system.
4. Crafting is Bae.
The sidecar to the masters rework is the crafting rework, which again takes it from an archaic, non-obvious afterthought to a central component of the game, integrally connected to your progression in Incursions, Delves, and the Atlas.
The UI makes x1000 more sense, but more importantly GGG placed crafted in the middle of all the content. It's yet another lure into the masters system, and highlights their importance to the core game. They're our friends, and crafting is the benefit.
I realize that this sub has been filled with glorious and PoE currency terrible hyperbole -- such is opening weekend. But I've played A LOT since Friday -- probably more than I should admit. While I still have much to go, I can't help but be thrilled for the next 13 weeks. The scope of the unexplored, unseen, uncompleted depths of the PoE end game has me excited in a way that no game has ever done.