Path of Exile 2 keeps the same world — Wraeclast and beyond — but resets the clock with a new campaign, new characters, and a fresh disaster to crawl through. It’s still high gothic misery: exiles, cults, forgotten gods, and ruins stacked on ruins. If PoE1 felt like a mad science project that kept growing, PoE2 is the attempt to rebuild that thing with some structure while keeping the cruelty intact.

The class lineup expands to twelve options — one for each STR/DEX/INT pairing — each with their own starting point on the passive tree and signature weapons/skills. You’re still free to go weird, but the identity is stronger out of the gate: spear Huntress, flail Warrior, X-bow Mercenary, Monk, Druid, Sorceress, and so on. Ascendancies are still where the real identity kicks in, but the base class fantasy is clearer and more grounded.

The biggest structural shift is the skill gem system. Active skills sit directly in your gear, and can be modified by up to five support gems that radically change how they behave — more projectiles, different patterns, extra mechanics. It’s still PoE at heart: you’re wiring together a machine made of numbers and interactions, then seeing if it holds under pressure. Weapon-tied skills and more readable sockets make it a little less opaque without dumbing it down.

Endgame in early access is already stacked: mapping-style systems, new bosses, and major league-scale updates like Dawn of the Hunt and The Third Edict, which add new classes, endgame mechanics, acts, and corruption layers on top. Balance is in motion, content is still being added, and the devs have been open that full 1.0 is not locked for 2025 yet — it’s a live lab, not a finished museum piece.

In the Vault, Path of Exile 2 is the “deep end” ARPG. If someone wants to know what happens when you give players absurd freedom and then expect them to handle the consequences, this is where you point.