Titanic fiery skeletons, bionic ancient statues given life, and lasers. Cultists empowered by a literal artificial sun and massive four-armed gorillas wielding chunky columns. Path of Exile 2's boss design is varied, deep, and compelling, with this ridiculously high-quality boss content setting it up to become the premier ARPG on the market. The 100-plus bosses the game shall launch Early Access with, I posit, stand on three powerful pillars: passion, engagement, and accessibility. We'll revisit these in depth later in the video. Standing proudly at these three primary pillars, the unbelievably free-to-play Path of Exile 2 shall easily compete with the other big action RPGs out there, particularly The Big Three: Diablo 4, Path of Exile, and Last Epoch. Which makes it right for comparison to these three well-established action role-playing games titles, even if it might stoke a few flames. This totally is not Asmongold bait, I swear. Oh yeah, that's right, we're going to do some spicy side-by-side.

breakdowns in this video. This is a pinnacle endgame boss in Diablo I, and this is an Act One area boss in Path of Exile 2. [Laughter] You serious? This right here is but a glimpse of what's to come. Yes, yes, yes. Diablo 4 is getting better season by season. Last Epoch is finding its footing. Path of Exile just had its highest peak concurrent users of all time on day one of Settlers of Calgar. But all those games can clearly learn from what Path of Exile 2 is doing with its bosses. Talamo Moana Exiles, welcome to my most controversial and brave video series of all time, comparing Path of Exile 2 with other ARPGs, particularly Diablo 4. Yeah, PE2 is not yet released, but we've seen and played so much PE2 bossing content over the past 5 years and heard about the philosophy behind boss design. I feel entirely comfortable hitting not only PE2 and Diablo 4.

against each other, but PE2 against PE1 and last Epoch bosses too. We need to talk about this. The disparity is wild, just like the difference in quality between shirts from Into the AM and other brands. Into the AM is a fantastic online clothing store company that sells comfortable floral shirts, slick graphic tees, sleek plain tees, and more. For the past 6 months, we've had a wonderful partnership with every single piece of clothing that they've sent my way, including this shirt, going through the absolute ringer, whether on arduous four-mile runs, rigorous relaxation sessions at home, blasting maps in Path of Exile, attending both Path of Exile 2 events, or any other number of activities both you and I do right now. They've reintroduced a set of classic and beloved shirts back into their collection due to popular demand, including the shirt I'm wearing right now. You can pick up any of these shirts on screen right now by visiting my link below and using my code TALKATIVE TRY for a 10% discount. The offer applies to

everything on their site, so if something else speaks to you, like the Zeus shirt I wear constantly, you can grab that instead. As always, huge thanks to Into the AM for being a consistently awesome sponsor of the channel, and thank you, the Exile, for not skipping the ad. Now, let's delve on into the video proper. We're going to start out with some raw numbers. As seen in Diablo I and as quoted over and over by Grinding Your Games about PU2, Diablo 4 presently has about a total of 62 bosses, including campaign, dungeon, stronghold, world, and Uber bosses. After five full seasons of content, Path of Exile 2 Early Access launch beginning November 15, 2024, will have over 100 in just the campaign itself, with many more to come, according to game director Mark Roberts. Diablo 4's bosses often repeat, whether it's in a dungeon, the endgame pit system, the campaign, or the open world. For example, the final campaign boss, Lilith, is also the hardest boss in the game, the Echo of Hatred, mostly with bigger numbers, larger areas of effect on

her ability and questionable hit boxes. Every single one of p2's bosses in the campaign is unique, built from the ground up. The design, animation, environment, and all. Presently, we know they will repeat in endgame as well, but will be changed or upgraded for endgame. Pinnacle bosses will not be reused; they will be brand new. Diablo 4's opening intro boss, zaal the scarred Baron, has five attacks, including his basic attack, which is actually a L for a Diablo boss. We've all seen Zack RAR cosplaying as the fall or one of his many endgame versions. p2's opening intro boss, on the other hand, the bloated Miller, also has six attacks, which is not a lot for a P2 boss. From what we've seen, I'll not lie, his slam hurts more than I thought it would. Now, this is Diablo 4's second non-optional boss, venard, and this is PU 2's second non-optional boss, the Devourer, which happens about two levels left the

bloated Miller. When you are level four, the dichotomy is shocking, isn't it? I claim outside of the first boss Encounter of each game. Path of Exile 2 smashes Diablo I into Smithereens in this department, to be frank, though it smashes every other ARPG in this department too, including Path of Exile 1. Please go now to the comments and tell me if it isn't so. If it is, you know what to do, as my favorite DotA stats man used to say: stats don't lie, and the basic stats on Raw bosses and their mechanics alone are far in the favor of Path of Exile 2, which is bizarre. Yes, they are definitely leaning heavily into the boss fighting good angle, which is a sometimes controversial choice. We'll discuss later in this video, but still, should they be curb stomping Diablo I this hard in terms of the actual boss design? Diablo 4 has been getting better, but I believe this is one area where a team of Veteran game designers with massive

funding should be able to spar with Grinding Gear Games, yet they don't. They don't come close. And this is when we return to those three pillars: passion, engagement, and accessibility. To truly express the bizarre differences between Path of Exile 2 and other games, we need to pull up some more actual footage side by side. Let's make our first boss-to-boss comparison with a focus on pillar one: passion. On the left, we have Diablo 4's Asteroth, the final boss of Act Two. On the right, we have Path of Exile 2's The Colossus, a random area boss in Act Two. What the heck is passion, might you ask? Well, it's the stark difference between input in any random POE2 bosses, The Colossus in this example, and any Diablo 4 boss, Asteroth in this example. The POE2 devs set aside a significant amount of time and effort for every boss they make. Every single asset is made from scratch for their bosses, with no reuse being done in the base game for

bosses, all the effects, both visual and sound, are unique, and the balance iteration is almost endless. When one piece of balance in the game changes, the devs often comb over every boss to ensure they still feel right. All of this is simply showcased in this Colossus fight: the bionic sound effects, the varied skill effects, the stunning animations, the Epic Arena, the obvious intention behind every movement. It all molds together stunningly well, and it's not by accident. It's because the developers behind this boss are passionate. Unsurprisingly, Asteroth, who is supposed to be a climactic act boss, pales in comparison. Sure, the cinematic leading up to him is well done, but the fight itself is a bore, and it's almost basic. You expect all the moves from him; you don't expect the Colossus to slam his sword into the platform and blast the entire arena with Crimson energy. You don't expect him to shoot a beam of energy into the ceiling, breaking it and causing massive pillars to fall on the platform and break it. I used to think

Asteroth was a good fight, but after fighting him multiple times and seeing other boss fights in other games, that love has faded entirely, and all I see is a shell of what could have been. The Colossus fight doesn't even have music yet, but it still rocks audio-wise. It will have its own music, as every single boss in Path of Exile 2 has a unique track composed by music legend Camille Orman Janowski. Now, that's a huge batch of audio. Compare this to the same few tracks used for D4 bosses and how almost all of them are silent or don't have unique sound effects for their abilities. The Grinding Gear Games Team obviously learns constantly from their decade-plus run of crafting PU1 and over a thousand bosses. Then they funnel all that passion into these excellent PE2 bosses. The same sadly cannot be said for Blizzard in comparison. D4's bosses feel passionless, almost cold. I'd posit the only boss that oo's passion is the Season 3 boss fight, Malthus, Keeper of the

vaults. It has a compelling arena, multiple mechanics to juggle, an interesting story, and great sound effects. Unfortunately, he was removed with season three and has not been added back to the game. Before we hop into the next boss comparison, a quick aside on the biggest part of D4 I think is lacking when it comes to boss visual acuity. It's the animations. It is quite obvious P2 has invested a ton in the animation department, and alongside the crisp visual effects and horrifying monster design, it's looking to set a standard that's truly hard to beat for any competition out there. I'm not sure how exactly D4 is crafted in terms of animations, but bosses, especially bosses, look janky. They're not ragdolls, but the animations are choppy, almost like they are missing frames in between them. I'm not sure if this bothers other people as much as it bothers me, but it sticks out like an absolute hot pepper in a fruit salad. Now let's get a little spicy and talk about engagement with another boss comparison. On the left, we have P2's

the Devourer, the second non-optional boss found in act one. On the right, we have Uber Durial, often seen as one of Diablo 4's pinnacle endgame boss encounters. It drops the best items in the game, and this is what it looks like compared to the second earliest encounter in Path of Exile 2. In the P2 fight, the Devourer has different attacks if you're at range or in melee. It has a poison barrage, a poison spray, and its tail becomes sentient partway through the fight as it springs from the ground. It also has a huge AOE emergence in the center of the room that is almost always followed by one of the two poison attacks. You can use its wormlike body to block some of its more powerful attacks, and there are little grubs constantly spawning during the fight. Now let's look at this pinnacle Diablo 4 encounter. He has a frontal melee attack, boulders fall from above, and little poison holes appear in the ground throughout the

fight at 50% Uber durial. Burrows spawn said poison holes, and some monsters spawn throughout the room. Additionally, he periodically charges and tries to push players against the wall of the Arena. That's the fight of the two, which sounds more engaging. Both have also been on screen for the past bit, which looks more engaging. Mind you, the devour is a boss you fight around level four. Uber dual is fought at max level, level 100 in Diablo 4, with a far simpler and super random appearance in the campaign. The engagement required for each boss fight is ridiculously dissimilar, and in Path of Exile 2, it only goes up from there. Now, some people see this as a hindrance, thinking PE2 will always require you to be at the top of your game. I posit this is wrong, and the game director of PE2, Jonathan Rogers, essentially stated this too. As you progress throughout Path of Exile 2, you will eventually gain Godlike status. Fights like this will be trivial thanks to gear and its power. Additionally, once you succeed in this fight 3, 4, 5, 10

50 times it's going to become far, far easier than it looks, but it will remain engaging through muscle memory. Perhaps you'll be able to turn your mind off eventually, but unlike most of Diablo 4's boss fights, your mind will be on those first few successes very quickly. Another extra pillar I didn't think could stand as a huge foundational leg for pee2 is iteration, but we can discuss it before moving to the next side by side. All of Path of Exile 2's bosses have undergone extreme changes from their first showcases to now, and I'm sure there's even more changes behind the scenes. One tremendous example of a change from pee1 to pee2 is boss hit boxes. In pee1, bosses could only have a single square-shaped hit box of a certain maximum size, with Katava being the largest. In Path of Exile 2, there's no size limit, and hit boxes can be shaped however they like. A prime example is Kout, Lord of Kin, a giant whose two hit boxes are his left and right legs.

this means you can hit either of these to deal damage, and you can only collide with those. So, you can run or roll right underneath his swinging rucksack. Yes, Grinding Gear Games does seem to house a bunch of perfectionists, but most of the time, this only serves to benefit us, the players. The fact that they're unafraid to continue changing animations, adding abilities, or straight-up adding more bosses to the game until they're satisfied is impressive. Now, it's time to take a step back and look at something very important in any RPG: accessibility to good content. In this case, we're talking bossing content. On the left, we have Aest the Gold Cursed, an open-world boss in Diablo I. On the right, we have Zikado, Warden of the Core, an area boss in Path of Exile 2's third act, Avarus. Like the two other open-world bosses currently in Diablo 4, Avarus appears on a very specific timer. Zikado is a campaign boss and a boss that will likely repeat in the endgame of Path of Exile 2. Both

bosses look cool, appear engaging, and are designed well, but only one of them is readily available whenever you'd like to fight or surpass it: zaddle. The barrier for entry in many ARPG to fight cool bosses, including Path of Exile, one is too high in Diablo 4, per and last Epoch, as we'll visit soon in this video, require materials to summon their Pinnacle bosses, and all other boss fights are well far poorer quality in comparison, or in d4's case, some cool bosses are locked behind a timer or in the upcoming basket of hatred expansion, a four-person party. That's not the case in pee2. The developers are immediately flinging you into high-stakes, adrenaline-pumping boss fights and not requiring you to be at a certain place at a certain time or collect seven gold saucers, three blue gems, and a unicorn's horn to enter the Boss Arena and attempt it a few times. They're putting the good bossing content in immediately, and it's showcased here with ziko and all the

other bosses we've been looking at throughout the video. Not only is this a benefit for people who just want cinematic, challenging fights fast, it's also priming them for the endgame content that's to come in Path of Exile 2 as well, which is likely to be a bar higher and require some sort of sync to fight its bosses. Like I led with at the start of the video, Diablo V is getting better for its core player base. I might not ever like the game, but I want it to succeed, and I want it to improve in areas where it desperately needs to, just like itemization before and progression now. I think bossing is a sphere where it can massively build. Unfortunately, with the direction they appear to be going with the basket of hatred and the four-player raid or Co-op dungeon or whatever they would like to call it, I'm not confident they feel the same way, truly. It looks like Diablo I is more and more becoming World of Diablo with every update, which does please quite a few.

people, but it's not something I'd like to see core in Path of Exile 2. Maybe when grinding your games absolutely explodes with pe's release, they'll get enough money to craft a world of Rayclast. Now, that would be an MMO RPG I'd be up to play. All right, Exile, let us Zoom away from Diablo I and perform a comparison between pee2 and its predecessor, Path of Exile 1. This one is going to be hot and focuses on engagement. On the left, we have Draven, a non-optional boss found about midway through one of Path of Exile 2. On the right, we have the Shaper, one of the first true endgame bosses added to pe1 back in the War for the Atlas expansion. I know this is a volcanically hot take, but I think these bosses are on par in terms of engagement. Both have very powerful auto-attack chains, both have arena-altering mechanics, the DG for the Shaper, the Spectre buffs for Draven, both

have huge attacks, the slam for shaper, the Molto projectile slash for Draven. Both have specters that help them out, both spawn ads throughout the fight. Then there's a little fact I've not mentioned thus far: you need to 100 to zero bosses in pee2. You do not get multiple portals or attempts. If you log out, you either log back into town and start from 100% health in the boss fight or log right back in to where you logged out in the boss fight. That ups the engagement needed massively. Yeah, I'm dumping on the shaper. He appears to be on par with engagement for a level 15 boss in pee2. Insane. As I sit here and truly ponder this, I cannot wait to see what's coming with the 70-plus bosses we have not seen yet. This small taste is wild and showcases that many bosses are truly rivaling pee 1's endgame pinnacle encounters in Path of Exile 2. Let's do another direct ARPG comparison with an

endgame last Epoch boss and an early path Exile 2 boss focused on accessibility. On the left, we have aboth, last epoch's first Pinnacle boss ever added in 1.1, harbingers of Ruin, just about 1.5 months ago. On the right, we have tal the defiler, an area boss in act two of Path of Exile too. I actually think aboth is an excellently designed boss. The engagement needed is great, the passion is evident in the mechanics, sound design, atmosphere, and obvious iteration on the fight. And we all know how excited 11 hours games were to add him into last Epoch. However, the pillar of accessibility comes into question. Aboth is by far the best boss in last Epoch, and it's not even close. However, I played around 60 hours of last epoch's 1.1 expansion as an experienced ARPG player, and I didn't even come close to fighting him a single time. That barrier for entry to fight the far in a way sweetest encounter in last Epoch is way

too high. If there were other bosses similar in the wow factor department, I think this would be fine. But since Aboth is all Last Epoch has right now, it feels bad. Extremely bad. I shouldn't need to grind 100 plus hours to face a pinnacle boss on a single character unless there's a repertoire of other cool bosses I can find before them, sort of similar to Path of Exile 1. This Torle the Defiler guy, once again, is just another area boss in PE2, and he's awesome. He's fightable in the campaign and assuredly the end game too. He's a rad boss, and the barrier for entry is nothing. That's for the ridiculously beefed up pinnacle bosses we've not even seen yet in PE2. Here's another one comparing PE2 and PE1, mindful of passion. On the left is Captain Fairgraves, an area boss about midway through Act One of Path of Exile 1. On the right is Ainia, an area boss also about halfway through PE2's Act One.

keeping it brief, this comparison highlights the dichotomy between the passion and depth of knowledge and learning going into pee2 compared to pee1. Captain Fair Graves was acceptable to grinding your games in pee1 back when he was added over a decade ago. Now that caliber of boss would only be accepted by Blizzard. I just, I just, but you get the point. Grinding Gear Games is putting passionate people at the helm of designing epic boss fights for every part of pu2, and it's evident every single time we see a boss encounter. Without a doubt, Path of Exile 2 appears to be setting the standard of designing bosses and args moving forward, but with the extreme dedication, attention to detail, and sheer passion showcased with the 30 of 100 plus bosses in pe2 we've seen thus far. I am skeptical any other development team will be able to match the genius of Mark Roberts and the rest of the Stellar Grinding Gear Games development team. Using the three pillars I've outlined in this video, these bosses

are bound to stand out among the rest. Tell me what you think though. Will this sort of design absolutely doom grinding your games? These bosses are tough. You need to 100 to zero them to win, and many of the ones we've seen here today are not optional. I reckon there's a ton of rage posts and videos coming in the very near future. The difficulty that'll be implicit and explicit in PE2 is apparent, but it's still going to be a shock for many players who end up trying Path of Exile 2, established PE1 players or not. I posit this is a great idea on grinding your game's end. If you would like to aspire to make a godly character, you need godly foes to take down, and you need engaging combat that is fair and well thought out. Every single one of these 100-plus bosses in PE2 is sculpted with all this in mind, and I cannot wait to die to each one of them 20-plus times at the very least. My

fellow Exile, please hit the like button to send happy signals to the YouTube algorithm. And subscribe to talk to try for all things pe2, white track, Reddit, Twitter, Discord, and the like for pe2 Content. When you'll get everything, news, commentary, builds, and all right here, it's free and is the absolute best way to support my channel. Thank you. Thanks for watching this video, my fellow Exile, and thanks to Into the AM for sponsoring it. I'll see you wearing one of their shirts in the next one, Takakura.

We NEED To Talk About Diablo 4 And Path of Exile 2’s ABSURD Boss Disparity!

Path of Exile's most positive and unhinged content creator.

We NEED To Talk About Diablo 4 And Path of Exile 2’s ABSURD Boss Disparity!

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