Top X reason why I love PoE as a game:
1) Aside from story, it takes the best aspect of FFVII and puts it into an action RPG setting. Linked socketted items with Coloured skill gems that level as you use them in combat. If you liked the Materia system from FFVII, then this is the closest you can get to finding the same system in an updated game.
2) The skill tree is immense. At first it looks quite daunting. Then as you realise that it is a lot of highways, with important scenic points along the way. You simply have to decide which scenic points are your target, and find the most efficient path between them.
3) The number of skills in the game is pretty damn good, especially the way you can modify them to be more aoe focused, or more single target focused, by simply combining them with different support gems.
4) The items lore is surprisingly rich, for those of us that enjoy a bit of backstory and history to our game world.
5) The trolling builds..... Let me just say, that when wanting to replay the game with a build that seems completely outlandish, PoE lets you do some awesome things. Like deciding to build a passifist. There are enough counterattack skills in the game that you can literally build a passive dmg tank for fun. He wont have the clear speeds of those active builds, but the fact that you can build this way, quite respectably, is awesome.
6) Resistances are D2'esqu. Far easier to understand. If I have 100 resistance to an element, I take no damage from it. 75 Resist = a quarter dmg and so on. It means that if you find a fantastic item with max resistance rolls in 3 resistances, you have more wiggle room in your other gear items to get different stats. VS the current D3 model which is basically. Get the highest numbers possible, on everything, for everything, because the dmg you recieve just keeps scaling in a strange way vs your 2395 Fire resistance..... It makes gearing far more 3 dimensional and much more rewarding.
7) GGG (Grinding Gear Games). This is perhaps one for the people that started out back in the early Beta days. But GGG started as a small group of guys that loved D2 and the action RPG genre, and wanted to make a game to pay homage to the classics. They found a way to make a fantastic game, on very little budget, that they released for free, on the most amazing F2P model you will find anywhere. You pay for cosmetics, that is just about it. The only thing of consequence that you may have to fork out some money for is a few extra stash tabs. But that cost vs what a game of this calibre is worth, is next to nothing.