Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire

1. BillyHerrington

   Sep 25, 2017

   10

   Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg toBest mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play. Best mmorpg to play.… Expand

   • 8 of 19 users found this helpful
2. lkilian

   Sep 27, 2017

   10

   An amazing expansion for an amazing game. Visuals are incredible, mounts feel like actual mounts and not a speed boost, and the story isAn amazing expansion for an amazing game. Visuals are incredible, mounts feel like actual mounts and not a speed boost, and the story is probably the best since the game's launch.
   
   If right now I had to say which has been my favourite gaming experience ever, I would probably say the launch days of Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire.
   
   If there is a reason I give this expansion a 10, it is the same as the vanilla game: It is absolutely worth every penny.… Expand

   • 10 of 20 users found this helpful
4. TehOwn

   Sep 22, 2017

   10

   Path of Fire reminds us of what MMORPGs are all about. Exploration, discovery and joy. It takes us out of the dungeons and into a diverse,Path of Fire reminds us of what MMORPGs are all about. Exploration, discovery and joy. It takes us out of the dungeons and into a diverse, exciting and challenging world.
   
   Mounts are designed to be the main feature and it shows. Each mount is unique and maps are designed specifically with their strengths and weaknesses in mind. Swapping between them is a joy and as you unlock their abilities, you discover new places you can reach.
   
   The maps are filled to the brim with locations to explore and enemies to fight. Diverse combinations of enemies can pose varying risks depending on your skill choices and some are their own little puzzle.
   
   Path of Fire unlocks the joy within a game that was already vastly improved under new design direction and marks what I can only hope is a golden age ahead. Now is the time to dive headlong into the world of Tyria. TO VABBI!
   
   12/10… Expand

   • 26 of 42 users found this helpful
5. zqooq

   Sep 25, 2017

   9

   Guild Wars 2 has absolutely nailed how to expand the game. I absolutely love it.
   
   Heart of Thorns (HoT), the first Guild Wars 2 expansions,Guild Wars 2 has absolutely nailed how to expand the game. I absolutely love it.
   
   Heart of Thorns (HoT), the first Guild Wars 2 expansions, was pretty good in my opinion. It got some things right, and a number of things wrong. For Path of Fire (PoF), the developers successfully identified the aspects of Heart of Thorns that made it fun for players, and they have amplified those aspects for this new expansion:
   
   [1] Mobility & Exploration. Gliding was hands down the best part of Heart of Thorns. It was a new way to approach exploration, which has always been a key part of the core game with vistas, points of interests and hearts, diving points, jumping puzzles, and more to find. For Path of Fire, they chose to increase mobility & exploration with mounts. Mounts in PoF do even more than gliding did. There is a mount for crossing large gaps in terrain (raptor), scaling cliff-sides (springer), hovering over water and other ground material, and more. There is even a hidden mount that is essentially a much improved form of gliding.
   
   [2] Elite Specializations. With any major expansion you have to add more combat mechanics. Heart of Thorns did quite well with elite specializations, but again, Path of Fire just does it again and better. For example the Daredevil in HoT only essentially gave you a staff abilities, an extra dodge, and the standard few extra skills. In PoF, the Deadeye give you a new profession skill, new stolen profession skills, rifle abilities, secondary rifle abilities (when you are crouched), a secondary resource meter, and the standard abilities. They just made the elite specialization do more to change your characters and make them unique.
   
   [3] Maps and re-doable content. Heart of Thorns added little adventures that you can do repeatedly around it's maps. This was a great idea. But the maps themselves are rather tedious to traverse with so much vertical and branching paths. Path of Fire's maps are much more standard (they are mach easier to traverse) and they expanded on the re-doing of objectives. If you already beat a hero point mini-boss, but you see someone else doing it, you can go help them and you will still get a reward even though you already did it. Rewards (however small) are great for repeating previous content, and it helps keep places around the world populated. They also added Bounties, which is essentially a way of triggering a mini-boss. This feature is GREAT for small groups of friends, because it allows them to do bosses on their own time and not wait for things to spawn and such.
   
   Although I really like Path of Fire, there are a few drawbacks/short-falls of the expansion:
   
   [1] Possibly the biggest one for me is the lack of new armor sets. Guild Wars two has never really had a major push of new armor sets, and it is understandable why. Armor in GW2 effects multiple races, and you have hundreds of dyes that need to effect armor colors, so adding armor is a major chore for the development team.
   
   [2] World versus World (WvW). This mode has pretty much always been an afterthought since the beginning of the game. There are numerous flaws with the fundamental design of the game mode (as everyone is well aware), but it is still fun for what it is if you learn the ropes of how to be effective. Yes you can use the elite specializations of the expansion in WvW, but much of WvW revolves around moving through a map and taking side objectives from enemy teams. WvW never got a map that was designed around gliding, and it did not get a new map (at least so far) designed around using mounts in Path of Fire. They tried to make a new map with the desert WvW map, but that was a disaster from the ground up. I still think WvW could be an amazing game mode, but it would require some fundamental re-works (such as team selection rather than server-based teams), and it would require new maps that take advantage of the advanced movement options in the expansions.
   
   [3] Underwater combat. Underwater combat is like WvW in that it has kinda been an afterthought since the game released. It is slower paced than ground combat with less options due to skill restrictions and lack of weapon sets. HOWEVER, mounts could finally provide a solution to make underwater combat more fun. But sadly there are no underwater mounts in the game yet, and there is even a mount designed to float over water so you don't even have to swim. I personally hope the next expansions for Guild Wars 2 involves the water elder dragon, and it adds underwater mounts that will vastly change underwater combat for the better. (PLEEEASE Arena net. That would be so cool)
   
   Summary... I love this expansion, and it shows that Guild Wars 2 is not a dying MMO. It has a lot of life left in it, and now is the best time there has ever been to start playing. I can't wait to see what they do in the future with the game.… Expand

   • 10 of 22 users found this helpful
6. turin

   Sep 25, 2017

   8

   These are generally early impressions since i have not finished all the expansion has to offer. But everything seems really high qualityThese are generally early impressions since i have not finished all the expansion has to offer. But everything seems really high quality overall. Almost everything that had community acceptance can be seen in PoF. The maps are beautiful, the music amazing, the content really dense after the 1st map and mounts are probably one of the greatest features to be added in game. Exploring these maps are a treat. PoF is the kind of expansion that gets every little thing completely right. Even the story, albeit a bit short, is of high quality, rewarding for lore buffs and well presented as opposed to HoT story that has been a bit problematic. Elites are also fun to play but it is too early to really give a critic on them. Overall PoF seems to worth every penny.
   
   My only two issues with the expansion is the lack of guild content. Guild missions need an update as they have been saturated and buggy for years and PoF would have been a great time to refresh them. Also I am a bit worried about the lack of map-wide meta events in the new maps. HoT maps metas are amazing experiences. It was really problematic that all of the maps were meta-wide maps. Thus reducing them and make PoF maps closer to core Gw2 is a good decision. But not even adding one such map-wide meta is the extreme on the other side. The ideal would be to have such an epic encounter only on one last map representing the peak of the story and lore process just like DS has done with HoT. Hopefully they will add such encounters in the future (LS4 should be coming soon) as they are one of the unique highpoints of the open PvE in the game.… Expand

   • 11 of 22 users found this helpful
7. ZeftheWicked

   Dec 12, 2017

   6

   A step backward.
   
   Unlike what most reviews here would have you believe Path of Fire is not the new best in MMORPG gameplay, heck itA step backward.
   
   Unlike what most reviews here would have you believe Path of Fire is not the new best in MMORPG gameplay, heck it struggles to be "new" at all.
   
   Love it or hate it, previous expansion delivered tons of innovation both to the franchise and the genre true to it's Guild Wars 2 legacy.
   
   Gliders, amazing multidimensional maps you could get lost in, mastery system to slowly turn uphill battle with hostile jungle maps into memorable moments when you traverse half of map in a blink of an eye or soar above cloud levels ignoring any danger you previously had to face...
   
   There was new WvW borderland, new sPvP map, new profession and ofc introduction of elite specs. New approach to events (outposts) and the huge replay value with massive amount of collections turned the definition of GW2 experience on it's head. And i loved it.
   
   Not all was golden, but it was there, and my biggest gripe at the time was the sales and marketing policies, not the product itself.
   
   And now? Path of Fire not only brings extremely little to the table in terms of novelty (and this is an expac of series that rose on innovating!), it even goes as far as to cut back on previous systems rather then expanding!
   
   The "big new" (and the only one so far) are mounts. I won't lie, they are extremely practical, and useful. But it's mounts ppl...feature every damn MMORPG out there already has...
   
   Mastery system got reduced, it's smaller here then it was in HoT. Basically just mount masteries, nothing more. No new profession. No new content for sPvP or WvW. Elite specs are hit and miss with the core mindset being "a role" rather then "playstyle" as it was in previous expansion. A decision i grealty detest. Gone are the outposts(!!) which were a great way for event-driven story telling and getting players to group together for later stages of map meta. Why was this great idea axed??
   
   Maps got back to being flat, something between HoT and core Tyria, but much more skewed to the latter's style.
   A lot of ppl are happy about it, beats me why. Every other mmo out there can muster flat maps with slight verticality. It was GW2 and HoT that gave us something new, unique and challenging.
   
   Lastly the replay value is also...well...nowhere near HoT, let's be honest.
   
   Where this xpac does shine are the areas where previous one struggled - smooth launch, good pricing, no sales or marketing ploys, steady content updates with no huge breaks before and after launch, and much more casual friendly.
   
   But to me that's not enough. It's predecessor at launch was really rough around the edges in many ways, but it went in there, innovated and turned GW2 (and general) mmorpg experience on it's head as it should, given it's legacy.
   
   While here i feel i'm getting "Core Tyria +", something that even if it was launched before HoT, would still feel as a very safe bet. Let alone after groundbreaking Heart of Thorns.
   
   The xpac itself is nice and well designed. But "nice" is not what i want or expect from this franchise. I expect daring and groundbreaking, because it's Guild Wars 2. This meek and apologetic approach that indirectly tries to pretend HoT didn't happen disgusts me, and leaves me with no more mercy for it then a 6 outta 10.… Expand

   • 6 of 10 users found this helpful
8. Drakis

   Dec 12, 2019

   0

   story missions are the most boring and buggiest thing in the worlddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful

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