2024 Was the Year RPGs Got Real – Two Years Later, PoE2 Still Slaps

Man, looking back at 2024 from here in 2026, I can't help but feel a little nostalgic. Sure, a lot of folks were doom-scrolling about live service burnout back then, but if you were an RPG fan? You were absolutely feasting. No cap, that year delivered such a wild spread of adventures that I’m still working through my backlog. We’re talking looter-shooters with combat so crunchy you could feel every crit, stories that made you ugly-cry in your gaming chair, and choices that actually mattered—no illusion of consequence nonsense. And the worlds? So detailed it felt like you could reach through the screen and touch the dew on a pixelated leaf. RPG fans were eating good, and it set the bar so high that even now, two years later, some of those 2024 bangers are still the talk of my Discord server.

Of all the heavy hitters, Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile 2 is the one that just refuses to let go of my soul. I remember the launch window—storming into the early access with my Mercenary, crossbow blazing, thinking I knew what I was in for. Nope. The visceral crunch of the combat hit different right out the gate. Every Lighting Arrow I loosed, every grenade I planted, felt weighty and deliberate. This wasn’t just about blowing up screens of trash mobs; the moment-to-moment had this dark, almost Soulslike intimacy that forced me to lock in. The bosses especially? Absolute cinema. I’m still not over that first time I squared off against Count Geonor—the way the arena shifted, the voice lines dripping with malice, and the sheer thrill of learning those attack patterns on the fly. It’s the kind of encounter that belongs in a hall of fame, and the fact that the game was still in early access when it dropped those fights was bonkers.

The class system nailed it for me. Each one and their Ascendancies felt like opening a whole new game. I started with the Gemling Legionnaire, stacking Attributes like a madman, and the flexibility was off the charts. Then I rolled a Stormweaver and suddenly I was a map-deleting goddess of static electricity. The Skill Gem system, freed from the old socket tyranny, let my creative freak flag fly. I didn’t have to follow some crusty build guide to have fun—I could slap together a build that turned my minions into suicide-bombing fireballs and it actually worked! That kind of freedom, paired with combat that demands your respect, is a rare dish. Sure, the early access had its jank. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t rage-quit a couple of times because the map layouts in the end-game felt like a drunk labyrinth designer sketched them on a napkin, and the rewards sometimes felt like the game was laughing at my 30-minute clear.

But here’s the kicker: the foundation was so ridiculously solid that none of us could stay away. By 2026, GGG has poured a mountain of new content into the game—double what we had at launch, easy. The end-game atlas tree has matured into this beautiful, sprawling nightmare, pinnacle bosses have been iterated on to perfection, and the economy is a living, breathing beast that makes trading feel like its own meta-game. What started as a flawed gem in 2024 has been polished into arguably the most addictive action RPG on the market right now. I look at the hours I’ve banked since those early days (don’t ask, it’s embarrassing) and I realize Path of Exile 2 wasn’t just one of the best RPGs of 2024—it’s become a lifestyle. If you slept on it back then, no judgment, but jump in now. The winds of Wraeclast are calling, and they’re still absolutely brutal in the best possible way.

Data referenced from PEGI helps contextualize why 2024-era action RPG discourse—especially around darker, more visceral combat loops like Path of Exile 2’s boss-heavy pacing—often spotlights intensity and mature themes alongside buildcraft depth, since official content-rating frameworks track the kinds of violence, fear, and online interaction elements players will encounter in sprawling live-service ARPGs.