When comparing Path of Exile vs Gears of War 4, the Slant community recommends Path of Exile for most people. In the question“What are the best games with a co-op campaign on Xbox One?” Path of Exile is ranked 4th while Gears of War 4 is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Path of Exile is:
There's a staggering amount of builds and skills you can try out in Path of Exile. There are 7 classes, 19 subclasses, 194 active skill gems, 107 support gems, and over 1000 skill nodes on the expansive skill tree. As a result, there are hundreds of possible combinations, allowing you to spend hours theory-crafting just to create the perfect build. Even if you don't feel like planning out a build from scratch, you can just look up one of the many guides online and get straight into the action.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Hundreds of possible character builds
There's a staggering amount of builds and skills you can try out in Path of Exile. There are 7 classes, 19 subclasses, 194 active skill gems, 107 support gems, and over 1000 skill nodes on the expansive skill tree. As a result, there are hundreds of possible combinations, allowing you to spend hours theory-crafting just to create the perfect build. Even if you don't feel like planning out a build from scratch, you can just look up one of the many guides online and get straight into the action.
Pro Completely free without pay to win mechanics
You can just download and install the game without any purchases. On top of that, there are no pay-to-win mechanics and the only things locked behind paywalls are cosmetic effects, pets, and additional storage space. You can easily play the game for hundreds of hours without spending a dime.
Pro Regularly updated
Every 4 months or so, Path of Exile has major updates, adding new interesting mechanics, skills, items, and various other content. As a result, every time you come back to Path of Exile after taking a break, it feels like a new game.
Pro Great setting
Path of Exile is set in a dark fantasy world where everything is gradually becoming worse. At the foreground, you have the massive continent of Wraeclast that once was the home to a flourishing empire, but now is a place filled with the undead, evil spirits, ruins, and echoes of the past. To make matters worse, malicious entities from another dimension seek to corrupt the world and its inhabitants, giving birth to disfigured monstrosities that seek to end you. The end result is an immersive setting with dark motifs, body horror, loads of gore, and a very tense atmosphere, which is refreshing in an era dominated by family friendly content.
Pro Feels exhilarating to play
While the gameplay might feel a little slow and clunky in the beginning, it gradually picks up speed as you progress, allowing you to swiftly destroy large groups of monsters with any skills you choose. Whether you're shooting ice arrows with your bow, freezing and shattering every enemy on-screen, or if you're cleaving enemies with a massive axe, causing them to bleed and explode on death, it just feels incredibly satisfying.
Pro Greet Developer
Grinding Gear Games provide a lot of communication and community interaction
Pro Local splitscreen multiplayer
Nowadays, some titles tend to exclude local multiplayer, focusing primarily on online play but Gears of War 4 is an exception. You can play both the campaign and all multiplayer modes with your friends via splitscreen.
Pro Really fun horde mode
Horde mode is a multiplayer co-op mode where up to 5 players try to survive against waves of enemies. It features regular combat and allows you to build fortifications, which you can do by collecting resources from killed enemies and using the fabricator. This allows you to build blockades, sentries, and various other defenses, giving it a very tower defense-esque feel, which is also a lot of fun.
You can also choose between 5 classes with each class being better at something different. For example, the Engineer can build and repair defenses much faster than others and the Heavy uses stronger weapons that allow him to kill large enemies much faster. As a result, teamwork is very important, so when your squad is co-operating like a well-oiled machine, it just feels incredibly satisfying.
Pro Exciting gameplay
In Gears of War you and a squad of several other soldiers fight against the enemies of humanity, using various weapons such as rifles, a shotgun, and even a weapon that fires saw blades. It's very fast paced and a lot of fun, rewarding not only effective use of cover and accurate shooting, but also quick decision making on when to charge your enemy and take them out with your knife or your chainsaw bayonet. This leads to a lot of very intense, sometimes brutal, and always satisfying battles, making Gears of War 4 a really enjoyable ride.
Pro Excellent visuals
Gears of War 4 has some really outstanding visuals with high quality textures, great lighting, and excellent shadow mapping. This makes all of the armored human characters, monstrous lizard-like enemies, and the various lush landscapes filled with ruins look especially good. All of this is turned up a notch with the help of excellent weather effects, such as rain, lighting, and gusts of heavy wind that carry massive objects over your head, giving Gears of War 4 a very cinematic feel.
Cons
Con Anti-experimentation for new players
The game heavily punishes any experimentation for new players. Unless you have near perfect understanding of late game and the various viable build-options you are more or less unable to experiment your way into viable builds (and the options for correcting mistakes are limited at best). So, unless you are fine with having to scrap a bunch of characters for being sub-optimal, you are more or less forced into following player-made guides to learn the game rather than through engaging with the game itself. This may or may not be a problem for you.
Con Very high learning curve
There's quite a lot to learn when starting to play Path of Exile. There are the mechanics, the crafting system, and the skill gem system. However, the most intimidating factor is the massive skill tree with over 1000 skill nodes, 6 classes and 19 subclasses, allowing you to create hundreds of unique builds. Unfortunately, creating a functional build is really difficult, taking hours of theorycrafting, so it might be better to stick to guides as you're starting out, unless you're fine with possibly messing up.
Con Endgame can get really repetitive
It takes an exceptionally long time to get any wealth, useful items, or access to endgame bosses in this game. You endlessly farm the same maps, hoping you'll get lucky with a few good items, but that usually won't be the case, which can be really discouraging to keep playing. This is made worse by the fact that your character progression comes to a grinding halt near the upper 80s of character levels, requiring you to buy insanely expensive items to feel any progression at all. If you don't like grinding, you'll get quickly bored of Path of Exile.
Con Clunky trading system
The western PC version of Path of Exile currently requires using an external site to find deals or sifting through scam attempts in the trade chat. After you find an item you want to buy, you need to message the seller, and if they respond, enter the same area as them to make a direct trade. There is no auction house, no mail, no automated trading posts, and to sell stuff you have to buy a premium stash tab via a microtransaction.
Con One shot fest
This game has an extreme learning curve, meaning you'll invest 100 hours of just reading on the internet before understanding the basic game, plus the endgame is a one dimensional "spam all flasks and one shot everything or get one shot" style of gameplay.
Con Unrewarding
You fight 40 minutes with "uber uber boss" and he drops white items that can be found anywhere in barrels most of the time
whats worse, you have to "farm" "fragments" to start that boss battle, that will take a while too, if you decide to buy the fragments, you will drop nothing and you will lose a lot of currency.
Con Some aspects of the graphics look dated
While the graphics have received updates over time, a lot of the visuals still lack polish you'd see in most AAA games. Some textures are fairly low res, certain character models look weird when they have armor on, and the animations feel somewhat stiff and clunky. You probably won't notice this during active gameplay, but when you stop for a moment to look around it becomes painfully obvious.
Con Poorly done story
The story has some cool moments, but it mostly focuses on pointless drama and issues that end up feeling like filler because they have no real impact on the story or character building. This coupled with a few plot holes will make you want to press the skip button and just get back into the action.