Path of Fire is officially here! Travel across the sandy plains of the Crystal Desert as you chase down the God of War, Balthazar, and do your best to save not only the people of the desert, but the entire world. Path of Fire has launched to a wonderful reception so far from the community, and it brings with it both some amazingly gameplay as well as brilliant quality of life and class improvements. Here are the six biggest wins from Path of Fire so far!
1 – Mounts
Mounts are in a lot of games, in a lot of forms, shapes and sizes. Guild Wars 2 decided that it didn’t just want to bring a faster way to get around, they wanted to bring a whole new feeling to the way you move through the world. Each of the mounts you can acquire gives you a unique ability, from huge horizontal leaps to massive (massive!) vertical jumps in the air. The mounts perform just as well in game as they did on paper, and are an absolute joy to use. For the first time, the masteries you can acquire in game significantly change the areas you can approach as well as how you access older content, boosting your mount abilities to reach unexplored areas. Without a doubt, mounts have completely changed the game, and you can spend hours running in circles on these unique creatures.
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2 – Mastery Accessibility
Heart of Thorns had its fair share of issues, but one of the biggest was the inability for players to access the final tiers of masteries without a large amount of grind that took you out of your usual way of playing. Path of Fire has made masteries a much bigger part of the world, rewarding you as you progress and encouraging you to visit exciting places and take part in various puzzles and mini games. As well as this, there is a much better incentive to go and get the masteries as they really do give you more progression through mounts, as opposed to some trivial masteries from HoT.
3 – Specializations
Maybe it’s a bias, but new builds, new stats, new anything for the classes always makes the game feel fresh and alive for me. The newest set of Elite Specializations has brought new ways for each class to experience the world, mostly in ways that the class has never been able to do before. In a game where the PvP and PvE metas were growing stale, new specs have served to completely shake it up and give everyone a new chance to get involved. The tech behind these latest specs has created some of the most unique and interactive abilities to date, making them a great deal of fun to play regardless of power levels.
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4 – Story
The story leading up to Path of Fire was, to put it lightly, questionable. Episode 6 was received extremely poorly by a great deal of the committed player base, and although it has some awesome Guild Wars 1 throwbacks, the way they were treated was very rushed and just sort of ‘thrown in’. Path of Fire completely changed that, combining the amazing world and story seamlessly, creating a world that advances and changes with you. The story itself was strong, well progressed and very fun to play, with some of the best gameplay inside a story instance not just for Guild Wars 2, but of any MMO that I have been a part of.
5 – The New Maps
The new maps were everything that was promised and more, enormous expanses of content that require you to really get your hands dirty to truly explore. Events that seem trivial ‘defend X NPC’ or ‘gather X’ have all been given facelifts and new mechanics to make them more enjoyable, and many have hidden lore and story additions that are amazing Easter eggs for any of the veteran players. Parts of the map that are originally taken for granted, like cliff faces or walls, are now explorable and usually rewarding places to visit on your new mounts. What really tips it for me is that the new maps are uniquely able to offer both solo content and huge zergs in the same spaces, bringing players together for big bounty bosses before everyone disperses back to their own way of playing.
6 – Artwork
Guild wars 2 is one of the most beautiful MMOs on the market, with a unique art style that draws many players and artist’s eyes. Path of Fire has done plenty to enhance an already impressive portfolio of brilliant visuals, with new desert-scape maps, Oasis, snowy mountains, crystal scars and the Desolation. It all looks stunning, running across a sand dune under a starry night sky on the back of a raptor is an experience that takes your breath away. This gorgeous compilation of visuals makes running through the world and exploring even better, with places that can dazzle you around every corner of the desert.
What were the best parts of Path of Fire for you, and what have you enjoyed so far from the latest expansion? Let us know in the comments, and what you thought of the launch so far.
