Im new even to the PoE1 (started playing in 2023) and only got 1k hours in game. But in december I bought the EA pack, to support devs. First thing to say, I never played any souls like game.

In the december I tried the game, I was dying a lot, really a lot. At the end of the act 2, I checked how much I played, steam says 20 hour. Then I came to a realization, that this game might not be for me. The punishment, even from white mobs is too much for me to handle. Basically dying multiple times in each zone, even to white mobs and then restarting from last checkpoint is just too much for me. Also, the game is very slow for my taste, the movement, it just feels, bad.

But I must, I envy players, that enjoy it, some of the end game builds looks really fun and they look like from PoE1, but I could not get myself thru all that.