The beta ruined other arpgs for me. I tried going back to Wolcen..but no lol. It's still excellent but Diablo is on another level. Last epoch? Looks so bland and clunky in comparison. It's not a fair comparison given the resources these studios have, but, they knew D4 was coming and they will be kinda screwed for not releasing stuff earlier. Also Wolcen "act 4" is a bunch of random maps with cutscenes and they broke all exiting endgame characters.
I got a good 20 hours of beta that was 100% pure enjoyment repeating the same content with 5 classes. Fractured peaks is only 1/5th of the total map, not including hell zones. Game feels massive, and if they can pull off ramping the grandeur of it all over the campaign it will be incredible. I imagine the later zones will have more interesting bosses, set pieces and quest lines, not they absolutely need to, but I think pacing is something most studios take seriously.
As for the power fantasy, it seems they took each class and all possible skill combinations and augmentations, and distributed then among the skill point system and gear. Really smart, which will make finding gear even more exciting. Yes builds will be highly gear dependent but maybe that just makes the playthrough more special, maybe instead of immediately spec-ing into the meta people will actually optimize their toons based on what they end up with, could actually lead to more variety.
As for the world and exploration, it's pretty nice. It's evident that stuff has to be re-used and there is some repetitiveness, and sure some side quests are quite derivative, but given the scope it's understandable. I was actually surprised by some side quests that were split across multiple instances. And some were quite humorous (MORE!!!). And strongholds are fantastic, exactly hit the exploration and discovery nail on the head. World boss was also fun, but I wish it was possible to trigger it without having to plan your life around the event.
Endgame wise, I'm not sure how it will go. This is where a lot of stuff can get stale. The only game where I wanted to keep doing endgame stuff is outriders. The gameplay was just so incredibly fun and the prospect of finding key set gear to improve the clear time for better rewards felt like a worthy challenge to keep striving for.
I know there are many complaints about this game, but overall it's miles ahead of how D3 launched for its time. They got so much right that the flaws seem like trivial things, mostly quality tweaks. The game will be a huge hit. The thirst for a new good arpg is real (Wolcen hit over 100k concurrent on release day, and it's some obscure indie studio). The only problem I see is if they have major server problems or bad performance. That was one clear downside of the beta on PC, it ran like shit, with stuttering and rubber banding even on good systems (online issues it seems).
Thanks for reading my book.