My nicely leveled-up Templar is in his second playthrough of the first two Acts of Path of Exile.

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They are also used to heal your character while in the game zones and persist as currency stockpiled from playthrough to playthrough.

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The first real boss is actually designed to be killed by a team, making my playthrough pretty difficult since everyone kept running away.

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Each playthrough will be unique depending on which skills you choose.

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The new content is the same across PC, Xbox 360, and PS3, though the screenshots here are taken from my playthrough of the PC version of the game.

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Once the basics are acquired, and granted those basics are not very basic at all compared to most modern-day offerings, players can then learn a bit more each playthrough through trial, error, and experimentation.

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You discover the world and its past through the opening cinematic, through brief snatches of dialogue with NPCs (some of whom you may never encounter on your first playthrough) and in item and spell descriptions.

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Essentially, the results of a player's in-game choices are used to populate a post-game comic book-style story -- progress, character info, settings, dialogue, achievements and screenshots are all pumped into an algorithm alongside the results of said variables, metrics from your playthrough, and your performance therein.

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The linearity of the core story becomes clear during a second playthrough, but here the relatively short duration of each episode is a strength: it is possible to take different sides and pick different fights to elicit different responses over the episode without finding the situational repetition tedious over these short stretches.

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