I honestly don't know if this will so much be a review of a playthrough in progress - subject to change as I make my way towards endgame, or will essentially outline the problems I'll continue have with the game indefinitely going forward. For some dubious reason it’s managed to sink its hooks in me and I’m keen to see where things go. (update: i give up lol. they refuse to upgrade their EU servers and this game is simply not worth the 6-hour queue time. eat my entire shit)
Lost Ark features one of the most dripless, uncharismatic settings and stories I've ever seen, it's fascinating how ungrounded it manages to feel throughout, no matter how many varied locales and beats it drags me through. On top of a frankly dire localisation, there really is just no theming here to ground anything. It's not even just that it's ultra-generic fantasy, as you leave the starting zone to begin exploring other islands and continents, settings vary wildly. From a Chinese xianxia-inspired gladiatorial island, tropical island where you drink an Arthur and the Invisibles shrinking potion, and I've arrived at a mecha desert continent with a city that is essentially MIdgar. The variety is definitely here, and there are instances that make good use of them in the sense that presentation here is generally top-notch. The camera will make cinematic movements through dungeons at points as grandiose setpieces do their thing in the background, it does a pretty good job at pretending it isn’t a top-down ARPG-inspired joint. One of the highlights so far has been one of the dungeons in the shrunken zone, where you’re walking across tables in a pirate camp as they stab their maps and spill bottles. The problem really is that I’m 100% certain the director is just copying One Piece and forgot to implement any levity or even pathos (it’s very funny when a painfully unconvincing “sad” sequence happens and the main story quest won’t progress until you stand in a certain spot and use a /cry emote). It just hurtles at a noticeably disinterested pace through its own ideas, introducing you to hundreds of characters that are all written like shit and exist to open doors for you to the next toy the director will eventually throw out of the pram.
I chose the Bard for my class, because by the game’s own admission it’s apparently the most difficult to play of the suite of guys. ARPGs are a genre I’ve always struggled with, especially Diablo-likes where you just click on swarms of approaching hitboxes until they turn into red mist forever as their health values slowly increase in perfect sync with your gear’s damage output, I was hoping the mechanical difficulty of a slightly gubbed support class and the general sense that I’m skinner boxing in a world filled with other rats in the same maze would help me out. In a sense, it is - it’s nice to look at the world chat and see emote spam, people notifying the zone that a world boss called Willi Willi has respawned by dryly saying “Willi up”, as well as that trademark EU data center racism. The combat here is functional I guess, my bard has about twenty skills for me to choose from, complete with Diablo 3-esque runes for me to alter certain properties, but I’ve done fine sticking to a handful that turn the hoards into mulch with low effort. Dungeons have the most boring kind of modular, numerical difficulty options for better gear, but I wouldn’t roll out of bed for that if it was on fire. I know for sure I’m not getting the most out of the game mechanically because the localisation does a frankly dogshit job at explaining its systems well. After a certain point in the story it dumps a ton of gear nuances and crafting mechanics on you all at once and it nearly drove me insane reading its indecipherable prattle.
Ultimately this just feels like a souped-up Ragnarok Online. The Korean MMO hallmarks are all here, the spectre of inevitable grind looms over so many unhideable UI elements - bars to fill and percentages to tick up (this thing even has the nerve to hide Korok seeds out of geometry). My modern MMO experience is squarely on FFXIV but I really only appreciate how that game doesn’t have a glowing shopping cart button onscreen at all times when you play essentially any other MMO - Lost Ark is a casino and a skinner box first and foremost, a game second. It boggles the fucking mind how this game essentially demands you to level up alts with its oh-so-generous server-wide “roster” buff system. The levelling process here is painstakingly railroaded - killing enemies gives 1/10000 of the exp of a quest, of which you’re completing in a choreographed straight line through a continent every few minutes. There is no player expression or true variety, and the exploration is pure smoke & mirrors. You’re here for one reason and one reason only, constantly trickle in money so you can Boost through the tedium. There’s not even one lost ark, there are like seven..
When Guild Wars 2 was in early development, ArenaNet considered not having "leveling" at all--just no concept of "level" in the game whatsoever. Looking at GW2 as it is now, it's easy to see how that could've worked. You'd explore the world to get skill points to unlock your skills and traits, but you wouldn't have to worry about filling your EXP bar to hit arbitrary milestones that make your numbers go up. And given how GW2 now throws full level-up books and level boosts at you these days, honestly I think they should've stuck with that idea. It's hard for me not to look at Lost Ark with a similar lens. The levelling experience doesn't seem to accomplish anything (you even start at level 10, and immediately choose your advanced role). The levelling system works in a game with fixed classes and a strong narrative thrust like FFXIV, but Lost Ark is a game that promises a seafaring adventure, that instead has its levels arbitrarily introduce the world for you. I want to strip numbers out of games so fucking bad dude.
Lost Ark features one of the most dripless, uncharismatic settings and stories I've ever seen, it's fascinating how ungrounded it manages to feel throughout, no matter how many varied locales and beats it drags me through. On top of a frankly dire localisation, there really is just no theming here to ground anything. It's not even just that it's ultra-generic fantasy, as you leave the starting zone to begin exploring other islands and continents, settings vary wildly. From a Chinese xianxia-inspired gladiatorial island, tropical island where you drink an Arthur and the Invisibles shrinking potion, and I've arrived at a mecha desert continent with a city that is essentially MIdgar. The variety is definitely here, and there are instances that make good use of them in the sense that presentation here is generally top-notch. The camera will make cinematic movements through dungeons at points as grandiose setpieces do their thing in the background, it does a pretty good job at pretending it isn’t a top-down ARPG-inspired joint. One of the highlights so far has been one of the dungeons in the shrunken zone, where you’re walking across tables in a pirate camp as they stab their maps and spill bottles. The problem really is that I’m 100% certain the director is just copying One Piece and forgot to implement any levity or even pathos (it’s very funny when a painfully unconvincing “sad” sequence happens and the main story quest won’t progress until you stand in a certain spot and use a /cry emote). It just hurtles at a noticeably disinterested pace through its own ideas, introducing you to hundreds of characters that are all written like shit and exist to open doors for you to the next toy the director will eventually throw out of the pram.
I chose the Bard for my class, because by the game’s own admission it’s apparently the most difficult to play of the suite of guys. ARPGs are a genre I’ve always struggled with, especially Diablo-likes where you just click on swarms of approaching hitboxes until they turn into red mist forever as their health values slowly increase in perfect sync with your gear’s damage output, I was hoping the mechanical difficulty of a slightly gubbed support class and the general sense that I’m skinner boxing in a world filled with other rats in the same maze would help me out. In a sense, it is - it’s nice to look at the world chat and see emote spam, people notifying the zone that a world boss called Willi Willi has respawned by dryly saying “Willi up”, as well as that trademark EU data center racism. The combat here is functional I guess, my bard has about twenty skills for me to choose from, complete with Diablo 3-esque runes for me to alter certain properties, but I’ve done fine sticking to a handful that turn the hoards into mulch with low effort. Dungeons have the most boring kind of modular, numerical difficulty options for better gear, but I wouldn’t roll out of bed for that if it was on fire. I know for sure I’m not getting the most out of the game mechanically because the localisation does a frankly dogshit job at explaining its systems well. After a certain point in the story it dumps a ton of gear nuances and crafting mechanics on you all at once and it nearly drove me insane reading its indecipherable prattle.
Ultimately this just feels like a souped-up Ragnarok Online. The Korean MMO hallmarks are all here, the spectre of inevitable grind looms over so many unhideable UI elements - bars to fill and percentages to tick up (this thing even has the nerve to hide Korok seeds out of geometry). My modern MMO experience is squarely on FFXIV but I really only appreciate how that game doesn’t have a glowing shopping cart button onscreen at all times when you play essentially any other MMO - Lost Ark is a casino and a skinner box first and foremost, a game second. It boggles the fucking mind how this game essentially demands you to level up alts with its oh-so-generous server-wide “roster” buff system. The levelling process here is painstakingly railroaded - killing enemies gives 1/10000 of the exp of a quest, of which you’re completing in a choreographed straight line through a continent every few minutes. There is no player expression or true variety, and the exploration is pure smoke & mirrors. You’re here for one reason and one reason only, constantly trickle in money so you can Boost through the tedium. There’s not even one lost ark, there are like seven..
When Guild Wars 2 was in early development, ArenaNet considered not having "leveling" at all--just no concept of "level" in the game whatsoever. Looking at GW2 as it is now, it's easy to see how that could've worked. You'd explore the world to get skill points to unlock your skills and traits, but you wouldn't have to worry about filling your EXP bar to hit arbitrary milestones that make your numbers go up. And given how GW2 now throws full level-up books and level boosts at you these days, honestly I think they should've stuck with that idea. It's hard for me not to look at Lost Ark with a similar lens. The levelling experience doesn't seem to accomplish anything (you even start at level 10, and immediately choose your advanced role). The levelling system works in a game with fixed classes and a strong narrative thrust like FFXIV, but Lost Ark is a game that promises a seafaring adventure, that instead has its levels arbitrarily introduce the world for you. I want to strip numbers out of games so fucking bad dude.
shoutout to everyone who played this game once only for amazon to hand out steam bans to all inactive users. yes it shows up on your steam profile, silly.
Where it Shines:
Overpowered Combat - 7/10
Fun Spells - 7/10
Character Creator - 6/10
The Good:
Lost Ark surprised me. The combat from the get go, rather than gatekeeping you behind a few spells, just loads you to the tits with tons of fun abilities. Every spell is overpowered to the point of being ridiculous, and you consistently will one hit kill enemies and even bosses early one. I put in about 20~ hours so I didn't get into late game where it no doubt gets grindy, but those hours I put in where fun for the most part.
The Bad:
I mean, it's F2P hell. Tons of stupid events and gacha garbage and overpriced cosmetics and other nonsense constantly cluttering up the UI and your experience.
And as much as I just praised the combat, it's way, way, WAY too easy. I kept waiting for it to get a little more interesting, but it was just a one hit KO fest the entire 20 hours, which is a shame, because it is fun to use the abilities, but if it's too easy it becomes sort of pointless as you feel like you're just playing with cheats on.
There's also way too much dialogue. Every fucking character and their uncle has some story to tell you that goes on for several minutes that after a while you just start spamming skip because the story is basic and uninteresting anyway, and the NPC quests are even more so. Typical "Oh no I lost someone/something in this area, go get it for me" repeated ad infinitum.
Summary:
What I played of it was fun, but I think the most unfortunate part about this game is that it could have been a really, really cool experience if not dragged down by it's overly easy difficulty, verbose quests, and gacha garbage. If this was a proper diablo competitor and was around $30 without all the other crap dragging it down, it may have been a balanced and fun experience, and one of my top games of the year. But as it stands, I can't really recommend it over literally anything else in the genre.
Note on my ratings:
Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.
1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
Overpowered Combat - 7/10
Fun Spells - 7/10
Character Creator - 6/10
The Good:
Lost Ark surprised me. The combat from the get go, rather than gatekeeping you behind a few spells, just loads you to the tits with tons of fun abilities. Every spell is overpowered to the point of being ridiculous, and you consistently will one hit kill enemies and even bosses early one. I put in about 20~ hours so I didn't get into late game where it no doubt gets grindy, but those hours I put in where fun for the most part.
The Bad:
I mean, it's F2P hell. Tons of stupid events and gacha garbage and overpriced cosmetics and other nonsense constantly cluttering up the UI and your experience.
And as much as I just praised the combat, it's way, way, WAY too easy. I kept waiting for it to get a little more interesting, but it was just a one hit KO fest the entire 20 hours, which is a shame, because it is fun to use the abilities, but if it's too easy it becomes sort of pointless as you feel like you're just playing with cheats on.
There's also way too much dialogue. Every fucking character and their uncle has some story to tell you that goes on for several minutes that after a while you just start spamming skip because the story is basic and uninteresting anyway, and the NPC quests are even more so. Typical "Oh no I lost someone/something in this area, go get it for me" repeated ad infinitum.
Summary:
What I played of it was fun, but I think the most unfortunate part about this game is that it could have been a really, really cool experience if not dragged down by it's overly easy difficulty, verbose quests, and gacha garbage. If this was a proper diablo competitor and was around $30 without all the other crap dragging it down, it may have been a balanced and fun experience, and one of my top games of the year. But as it stands, I can't really recommend it over literally anything else in the genre.
Note on my ratings:
Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.
1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
Another fun game fallen into the tribulations of the modern monetizations of the gaming world
When most people think of Lost Ark, they probably think of an over-marketed Amazon MMO with proven success in other regions and they would be mostly right. I also feel like this game doesn't get enough credit for what it does despite a lot of what it does wrong. As I have hit Tier 3 of the game after playing for 165 hours, It's hard to tell whether I enjoyed the time or hated it despite me still playing it as much as I have.
Let's start with what this game does right: The combat. It's hard not to make comparisons but compared to other MMOs, it's honestly the most fun I've had actually playing an MMO. The combat is frantic, the animations and buttons feels satisfying to press, each skill has specific perks you can choose that completely augment and change how the skill acts like turning a one press button into a combo button and vice versa. The engraving system also gives you a lot of customization here with your playstyle like specific risk and reward perks or class specific ones that change the way you play your class completely. After spending almost 8,000 hours in FFXIV, 200 hours in WoW, can't even count the amount of time I've spent in OSRS, I can safely say Lost Ark wins in combat here. It keeps your attention and has an insane amount of customization with your skills with more ways to augment them later on. The content on launch here is almost overwhelming at times, the western launch essentially launched with years of updates along with the base game here considering this game isn't completely new to the world. It always feels like there's way to progress your character here and you're never really limited to doing a specific one either, you have the traditional rifts which are called Chaos Dungeons here which is mostly aimless slaughtering of enemies with minimal difficulty, Guardian Raids which consists of hunting a boss in an open map akin to a Monster Hunter hunt with the team sharing three lives and the boss running away after a specific point of damage, the next tier of content you can do is Abyssal Dungeons which consists of the first instance of responsibility in the game considering each boss mostly only have one or two mechanics that will wipe the whole party if you screw up. There's a lot of other endgame excursions like the Tower, The Cube and even a gathering dungeon called the Platinum Fields and this is just the tip of the iceberg here. You can also do questing and explore some islands to get some resources to improve your power. The game does a pretty good job of letting you know what to do and when something specific you want is up which I wish more MMOs had at this point.
Lost Ark sadly doesn't completely reinvent the genre if at all here though. The leveling process to get to the "fun" part is bordering on atrocious especially when the main appeal of the marketing and the game itself is what you can do once you hit the soft level cap here. We're talking 20-40 hours of some of the most basic generic fantasy you can think of here with the localization team bringing a lot of spell errors as well. The Lost Ark leveling experience will consist of questing and the awful MMO quest design it brings: killing x amount of monster, collecting x amount of resource, head to x spot. It's all very basic with very few times that there's something different and even the few times it manages to do something different, it sorta flounders and overstays its welcome such as the stealth segments here which consists of just avoiding an enemy's AOE while they are walking around for a long period of time with no checkpoints so if you get caught once, you're screwed and gotta replay it all again. I can easily see how someone can get bored by this and I don't blame anyone quitting the game before even reaching the endgame which again is what is the best part about this game. I also now want to talk about the elephant in the room with this game in general: the shop. Let me explain how gearing in Lost Ark works in brief detail: you do chaos dungeons/abyssal dungeons to get armor pierces for your tier, in order to improve your power, you need specific resources that you can get from a multitude of endgame activities and "hone" your gear, you do this until you hit a high enough power to continue the main quest which will involve 2-3 hours of questing and then you have to hit another milestone in power until you can do it again and that's essentially how a tier works. The honing system is how you improve your stats and power and at the final points of the power of a tier, it can be extremely frustrating with luck being the only factor unless you spend gold on items that improve your odds. The final honing for the tier will be an incredible expensive resource hog and at the base value will give you a 40% of actually being successful. Now if you run out of resources here, this is where the shop comes into play. You can buy these resources for honing on the shop on a rotational basis and if you really want, you can completely skip a tier this way without doing any endgame activities and just using your gold or credit card to buy these instead. Paying money in this game will make you progress faster in essentially what it does from a gameplay stance. The shop also has the usual suspects here including skins, mounts, pets, the premium aura which acts like a sub more than anything, some potion packs you can buy with crystals which you can buy with gold and that's really it. I think the best approach to playing this game is just doing a few of your dailies since this game actually has a lot of dailies and one for an alt so you can transfer those resources to your main to power it up but I feel like that's just asking too much from a person in this day and age. Last but not least, the social aspect is pretty neutered here. You have your own housing but no real roleplay tools or ways to play with your friends easily here not to mention the characters having no face animations when they emote which is kinda creepy.
If you aren't into MMOs or grindy games in general, Lost Ark won't change your mind. The combat is fun but it requires your time if you want to play it for free, the time investment isn't too bad but I still think it's too much to get the dopamine rush of getting progress. Even now despite the time I've put into this game whether I enjoyed it or not, I played it but I felt more of an obligation more than anything at one point. If you're really into MMOs and really enjoy Diablo's combat then I would suggest giving this one a shot, if you aren't then you won't enjoy this game and better spend the time elsewhere.
When most people think of Lost Ark, they probably think of an over-marketed Amazon MMO with proven success in other regions and they would be mostly right. I also feel like this game doesn't get enough credit for what it does despite a lot of what it does wrong. As I have hit Tier 3 of the game after playing for 165 hours, It's hard to tell whether I enjoyed the time or hated it despite me still playing it as much as I have.
Let's start with what this game does right: The combat. It's hard not to make comparisons but compared to other MMOs, it's honestly the most fun I've had actually playing an MMO. The combat is frantic, the animations and buttons feels satisfying to press, each skill has specific perks you can choose that completely augment and change how the skill acts like turning a one press button into a combo button and vice versa. The engraving system also gives you a lot of customization here with your playstyle like specific risk and reward perks or class specific ones that change the way you play your class completely. After spending almost 8,000 hours in FFXIV, 200 hours in WoW, can't even count the amount of time I've spent in OSRS, I can safely say Lost Ark wins in combat here. It keeps your attention and has an insane amount of customization with your skills with more ways to augment them later on. The content on launch here is almost overwhelming at times, the western launch essentially launched with years of updates along with the base game here considering this game isn't completely new to the world. It always feels like there's way to progress your character here and you're never really limited to doing a specific one either, you have the traditional rifts which are called Chaos Dungeons here which is mostly aimless slaughtering of enemies with minimal difficulty, Guardian Raids which consists of hunting a boss in an open map akin to a Monster Hunter hunt with the team sharing three lives and the boss running away after a specific point of damage, the next tier of content you can do is Abyssal Dungeons which consists of the first instance of responsibility in the game considering each boss mostly only have one or two mechanics that will wipe the whole party if you screw up. There's a lot of other endgame excursions like the Tower, The Cube and even a gathering dungeon called the Platinum Fields and this is just the tip of the iceberg here. You can also do questing and explore some islands to get some resources to improve your power. The game does a pretty good job of letting you know what to do and when something specific you want is up which I wish more MMOs had at this point.
Lost Ark sadly doesn't completely reinvent the genre if at all here though. The leveling process to get to the "fun" part is bordering on atrocious especially when the main appeal of the marketing and the game itself is what you can do once you hit the soft level cap here. We're talking 20-40 hours of some of the most basic generic fantasy you can think of here with the localization team bringing a lot of spell errors as well. The Lost Ark leveling experience will consist of questing and the awful MMO quest design it brings: killing x amount of monster, collecting x amount of resource, head to x spot. It's all very basic with very few times that there's something different and even the few times it manages to do something different, it sorta flounders and overstays its welcome such as the stealth segments here which consists of just avoiding an enemy's AOE while they are walking around for a long period of time with no checkpoints so if you get caught once, you're screwed and gotta replay it all again. I can easily see how someone can get bored by this and I don't blame anyone quitting the game before even reaching the endgame which again is what is the best part about this game. I also now want to talk about the elephant in the room with this game in general: the shop. Let me explain how gearing in Lost Ark works in brief detail: you do chaos dungeons/abyssal dungeons to get armor pierces for your tier, in order to improve your power, you need specific resources that you can get from a multitude of endgame activities and "hone" your gear, you do this until you hit a high enough power to continue the main quest which will involve 2-3 hours of questing and then you have to hit another milestone in power until you can do it again and that's essentially how a tier works. The honing system is how you improve your stats and power and at the final points of the power of a tier, it can be extremely frustrating with luck being the only factor unless you spend gold on items that improve your odds. The final honing for the tier will be an incredible expensive resource hog and at the base value will give you a 40% of actually being successful. Now if you run out of resources here, this is where the shop comes into play. You can buy these resources for honing on the shop on a rotational basis and if you really want, you can completely skip a tier this way without doing any endgame activities and just using your gold or credit card to buy these instead. Paying money in this game will make you progress faster in essentially what it does from a gameplay stance. The shop also has the usual suspects here including skins, mounts, pets, the premium aura which acts like a sub more than anything, some potion packs you can buy with crystals which you can buy with gold and that's really it. I think the best approach to playing this game is just doing a few of your dailies since this game actually has a lot of dailies and one for an alt so you can transfer those resources to your main to power it up but I feel like that's just asking too much from a person in this day and age. Last but not least, the social aspect is pretty neutered here. You have your own housing but no real roleplay tools or ways to play with your friends easily here not to mention the characters having no face animations when they emote which is kinda creepy.
If you aren't into MMOs or grindy games in general, Lost Ark won't change your mind. The combat is fun but it requires your time if you want to play it for free, the time investment isn't too bad but I still think it's too much to get the dopamine rush of getting progress. Even now despite the time I've put into this game whether I enjoyed it or not, I played it but I felt more of an obligation more than anything at one point. If you're really into MMOs and really enjoy Diablo's combat then I would suggest giving this one a shot, if you aren't then you won't enjoy this game and better spend the time elsewhere.
"it's eat or be eaten in this cruel world" ~lost ark (2022)
you faced down the darkness living within you, but you never backed down. you overcame your inner darkness and protected your true self... now go forth and deliver these flowers for the local guard. we're counting on you
when you're done with that, feel free to mash your keyboard and dish out a variety of attacks that all feel exactly the same. will you press "w", or "q"? the possibilities are simply endless
currently redownloading path of exile
you faced down the darkness living within you, but you never backed down. you overcame your inner darkness and protected your true self... now go forth and deliver these flowers for the local guard. we're counting on you
when you're done with that, feel free to mash your keyboard and dish out a variety of attacks that all feel exactly the same. will you press "w", or "q"? the possibilities are simply endless
currently redownloading path of exile
nevermind, i can't deal with this anymore. i think the people that oversee the designs of these kinds of games and who represent the corporate interests behind them should be thrown in prison for life but not executed because that would be too far
Character 1: Bard lvl.23 (I think)
Character 2: Berserker lvl.50(maybe 51?) item lvl. 500 (I had the means to a higher item level, but I already felt too powerful in the main story and didn't want to overkill)
Definitely fulfilled the itch I had to play a grind game. I played in a near perfectionist style, that had me leaving most regions with upwards of 80% adventure tome completion. The top-down MMORPG was refreshing and the attacks very cool. This might be able to save you from the unfortunate problem of not having many players, and seeing bots almost 50x as much as players. I'm sure I went through entire continents seeing 1-3 players and 50-100 bots. This becomes a problem when trying to play any co-op required portions of the game. Most of the time, it's simply not going to happen. That being said, many of the community that I had met was relatively nice and welcoming. I did enjoy talking to them, but there was this overwhelming consensus that it is tough to impossible to catch up to other players. The amount of grinding in this game becomes very apparent, very fast. I had also joined multiple guilds just for 95% of the guild to be nonexistent in game. I'm still unsure of the benefit of joining one aside from acquiring Sylmael Bloodstones for another merchant.
One thing is that the pacing gets very thrown off once you reach North Vern, and there's already too many seemingly pointless quests by this time. With the introduction of Chaos Dungeons and Guardian Raids, the main story becomes a chore rather than interesting. Every area has some new "talk to 5 different people" quest that will have you mounting and dismounting to run around as fast as possible. My fire for the game fizzled out around item lvl. 500.
While not exactly pay to win, I did start to feel the effects of a free to play game. It first came in when I realized you have to pay for more card slots. Not being able to acquire every card without paying was the first point, where I was starting to be turned away I think. Next up would be the grind as a FtP player on finding gold. I was able to make enough progress to participate in the Mokoko Seed event for approximately a week and generate 5400 gold. Otherwise, you will find yourself grinding out continent collection items to sell on the market making max 10g per piece.
Combat:
It was a somewhat generic "beat hordes of enemies" type of game for most of my time. I would say that the majority of the time, I would just use one of my stronger abilities to one shot a group and move on over using weaker attacks or autos. Some bosses are pretty cool, but the aforementioned "use big ability" would often one-shot many non end-of-dungeon bosses. I found myself quite bored once the novelty of how cool the attacks looked wore off. Even limiting myself to not using the heavy hitting attacks would lead to somewhat lackluster fights at times. As I mentioned earlier, I do think the beauty and variety are there and interesting. I wish the game was a little more interactive when playing with friends. There are many solo experiences that should allow you to play with others if partied up. Limiting interaction to Dungeons and Raids, many of the good ones, mind you, are locked by minimum 25-30 hours of gameplay (Chaos Dungeon, Guardian Raid, etc.) was a major turnoff to cooperative gamplay.
World:
I love the world. I think the entire system is somewhat well done. I think I have two main concerns.
- It's on rails
- Travel time
Being a top down MMORPG is cool and all, but the collisions with walls kinda sucked. The movement of the game is solid, but you have to take guided routes around everywhere. Many of the enemies are more of a nuisance than anything else, and I found myself hopping on my mount and dashing past 80% of everything I encountered. The "on rails" part refers to this in how you can't exactly just go wherever you want and explore until you have a boat. Even at this point, you are still forced to follow somewhat direct routes. This leads to the next point, travel time. Especially on boat, it is tough when you realize you gotta go get something from Shushire when you're in Rethramis. At this point, you just set the travel and leave for 15 minutes, just to learn you didn't equip Sturmbrecher and have to travel down to North Vern to switch and back up again. The travel is just an arbitrary time sink.
Stronghold:
I don't think I can express the dislike I had for this. The systems felt arbitrary and unneeded. I understand it would be used much more in the far late game, but I found stretches of tens of hours, where I could not realistically make progress in the stronghold. On top of this, we run into a similar problem of something like the boats or clash of clans. Why do I have to wait 24 hours for a tiny upgrade to finish?
Overall: 6/10
I still think the game deserves props for what it does well. It is really fun for a while and addicting for a time. I can understand why some player may continue one past where I did, but my concerns outweighed the benefits at this point where I was. I don't think I will return to this game, but I did have fun. In my final days, I felt more as though I was handling a chore playing. That is why I finally uninstalled.
Character 2: Berserker lvl.50(maybe 51?) item lvl. 500 (I had the means to a higher item level, but I already felt too powerful in the main story and didn't want to overkill)
Definitely fulfilled the itch I had to play a grind game. I played in a near perfectionist style, that had me leaving most regions with upwards of 80% adventure tome completion. The top-down MMORPG was refreshing and the attacks very cool. This might be able to save you from the unfortunate problem of not having many players, and seeing bots almost 50x as much as players. I'm sure I went through entire continents seeing 1-3 players and 50-100 bots. This becomes a problem when trying to play any co-op required portions of the game. Most of the time, it's simply not going to happen. That being said, many of the community that I had met was relatively nice and welcoming. I did enjoy talking to them, but there was this overwhelming consensus that it is tough to impossible to catch up to other players. The amount of grinding in this game becomes very apparent, very fast. I had also joined multiple guilds just for 95% of the guild to be nonexistent in game. I'm still unsure of the benefit of joining one aside from acquiring Sylmael Bloodstones for another merchant.
One thing is that the pacing gets very thrown off once you reach North Vern, and there's already too many seemingly pointless quests by this time. With the introduction of Chaos Dungeons and Guardian Raids, the main story becomes a chore rather than interesting. Every area has some new "talk to 5 different people" quest that will have you mounting and dismounting to run around as fast as possible. My fire for the game fizzled out around item lvl. 500.
While not exactly pay to win, I did start to feel the effects of a free to play game. It first came in when I realized you have to pay for more card slots. Not being able to acquire every card without paying was the first point, where I was starting to be turned away I think. Next up would be the grind as a FtP player on finding gold. I was able to make enough progress to participate in the Mokoko Seed event for approximately a week and generate 5400 gold. Otherwise, you will find yourself grinding out continent collection items to sell on the market making max 10g per piece.
Combat:
It was a somewhat generic "beat hordes of enemies" type of game for most of my time. I would say that the majority of the time, I would just use one of my stronger abilities to one shot a group and move on over using weaker attacks or autos. Some bosses are pretty cool, but the aforementioned "use big ability" would often one-shot many non end-of-dungeon bosses. I found myself quite bored once the novelty of how cool the attacks looked wore off. Even limiting myself to not using the heavy hitting attacks would lead to somewhat lackluster fights at times. As I mentioned earlier, I do think the beauty and variety are there and interesting. I wish the game was a little more interactive when playing with friends. There are many solo experiences that should allow you to play with others if partied up. Limiting interaction to Dungeons and Raids, many of the good ones, mind you, are locked by minimum 25-30 hours of gameplay (Chaos Dungeon, Guardian Raid, etc.) was a major turnoff to cooperative gamplay.
World:
I love the world. I think the entire system is somewhat well done. I think I have two main concerns.
- It's on rails
- Travel time
Being a top down MMORPG is cool and all, but the collisions with walls kinda sucked. The movement of the game is solid, but you have to take guided routes around everywhere. Many of the enemies are more of a nuisance than anything else, and I found myself hopping on my mount and dashing past 80% of everything I encountered. The "on rails" part refers to this in how you can't exactly just go wherever you want and explore until you have a boat. Even at this point, you are still forced to follow somewhat direct routes. This leads to the next point, travel time. Especially on boat, it is tough when you realize you gotta go get something from Shushire when you're in Rethramis. At this point, you just set the travel and leave for 15 minutes, just to learn you didn't equip Sturmbrecher and have to travel down to North Vern to switch and back up again. The travel is just an arbitrary time sink.
Stronghold:
I don't think I can express the dislike I had for this. The systems felt arbitrary and unneeded. I understand it would be used much more in the far late game, but I found stretches of tens of hours, where I could not realistically make progress in the stronghold. On top of this, we run into a similar problem of something like the boats or clash of clans. Why do I have to wait 24 hours for a tiny upgrade to finish?
Overall: 6/10
I still think the game deserves props for what it does well. It is really fun for a while and addicting for a time. I can understand why some player may continue one past where I did, but my concerns outweighed the benefits at this point where I was. I don't think I will return to this game, but I did have fun. In my final days, I felt more as though I was handling a chore playing. That is why I finally uninstalled.
skipped to endgame raiding with these new jumpstart servers. game's presumably dying hard, so they're giving new/returning players stuff valued somewhere around $30-50 (having quickly glanced at its ingame store). there's some rly neat raid design here, unfortunately stuck in a game structured to make you not only hate playing it but ur fellow man.. you at least can ignore that (sort of) if you can get some friends together for this one occasion
it's fun to see amazon repeatedly acknowledge how bad the situation is. i feel for them a bit -- fixing it would require reengineering almost the entire game, which is not at all in their control. all they can do is reapply the same few mitigation tactics they have, which are increasingly becoming desperate
it's fun to see amazon repeatedly acknowledge how bad the situation is. i feel for them a bit -- fixing it would require reengineering almost the entire game, which is not at all in their control. all they can do is reapply the same few mitigation tactics they have, which are increasingly becoming desperate
as a person who plays games I'm genuinely embarassed over how this is somehow one of the most played games ever on steam
One of the most fun mmo's ever made out there, used to play it at RU and had a blast.
Unfortunately amazon had to buy it lol
coping hard rn
Unfortunately amazon had to buy it lol
coping hard rn
I've played this for like three hours straight, looking for any semblance of challenge, good visuals, loot systems, or interesting enemies, and all came back null. The combat is pretty sweet, but nothing in the game really supports it, and it bombards you with skills right from the beginning which doesn't allow you to develop any idea of how your character should be played, and your playstyle or build are just chimeras. Whatever, man
probably the first MMO I've played where all quests are exactly in my way and don't take more than 5 minutes to complete
Yikes.
O combate do jogo, que parece ser a coisa mais apelativa pra ele, é interessante o suficiente pra te manter engajado se você é fã de jogos como Diablo 3/PoE. Mas você é PUNIDO por querer combate. Inimigos te dão uma xp pateticamente baixa enquanto quests (as PIORES QUESTS QUE EU JÁ VI NA MINHA VIDA) que são literalmente só andar alguns poucos metros e conversar com NPCs te recompensam com dezenas de milhares de pontos.
Eu simplesmente não consigo entender de onde as pessoas tiraram que esse é um bom jogo. É um timesink massivo e sem qualquer tipo de recompensa com uma loja pateticamente cheia das microtransações mais toscas que eu já vi. Uma grande perda de tempo.
O combate do jogo, que parece ser a coisa mais apelativa pra ele, é interessante o suficiente pra te manter engajado se você é fã de jogos como Diablo 3/PoE. Mas você é PUNIDO por querer combate. Inimigos te dão uma xp pateticamente baixa enquanto quests (as PIORES QUESTS QUE EU JÁ VI NA MINHA VIDA) que são literalmente só andar alguns poucos metros e conversar com NPCs te recompensam com dezenas de milhares de pontos.
Eu simplesmente não consigo entender de onde as pessoas tiraram que esse é um bom jogo. É um timesink massivo e sem qualquer tipo de recompensa com uma loja pateticamente cheia das microtransações mais toscas que eu já vi. Uma grande perda de tempo.
u can only pick girl assasin =D
Fun, but MMO bro.
As someone who's rather curious about Diablo-likes I was very interested in trying this at least to see how it felt, even if a lot of the surrounding elements would end up rather tame and very standard. Unfortunately, we as a people seem to be unable to untether ourselves from formless milquetoast stock fantasy. I just needed a crumb of inspired, not specifically original, but earnestly inspired culture here. Fucking something
second job, no payment
there is no way this game was not created by an AI to be the most brainless game ever created
Maybe there is a video game hidden somewhere in here eventually, but it's under a pile of shitty unrebindable controls and unskippable annoying cutscenes and bullshit mmo story.
More like lost fart
- I can unreservedly say that the environments in this game look gorgeous, but animations in the world vary wildly between being 1. unnecessarily detailed for a top-down MMO played at this level of zoom, and 2. absolutely horrendous, like they were legitimately only half completed
- The big setpiece battles look incredible! The rendered scale of battles here shits all over the battles in Diablo 3 (and similar battles in other Diablo clones). It's the only time during the main campaign where you feel like your character is as powerful as the story says they are. I'm level 40, why am I still killing six boars at a time? Spawn more enemies please.
- Loads of classic MMO bullshit. Classes locked to a certain gender, painfully over-acted dialogue (even for an MMO), horrendously horny animations and armor for any female subclass. I tend to play as female characters in most games and I think this is the first time I've ever been outright embarrassed about it. I've got a fairly high tolerance for it but when I equip all the new, strong armor I get after a dungeon and see my character is wearing dolphin shorts and a... uh... cheongsam crop top(?) it's gonna get an eye roll from me.
- For an MMO it's actually kinda hard to play with your friends? You can party up but you have to go back to the friends list to see where on the map they are, you don't get to see what quest they're doing or where their objective is, but if their objective is "eliminate 10 rats" or w/e you can contribute to that without being aware of it at all. If someone who isn't the party leader tries to start a dungeon it just laughs at you and doesn't notify the party leader at all, so you've gotta tell the party leader what waypoint is closest to you (if they're not on the same map) and have them manually run all the way to the dungeon to start it. Maybe endgame content is easier to coordinate, but boy did they make the main campaign a pain.
- Classes are actually fairly interesting overall, and the ability to modify each skill as you level it provides an opportunity for build variety among each subclass (although not to the same degree as D3). The specialty skills are my favorite part of this system, as it offers you a sort of gameplay "anchor" to build around. Personal favorites are the gunslingers' gun-swapping, the soulfist's 3-tiered damage amp, and the gunlancer's shielding/status immunity.
- I'm not at endgame yet but I've enjoyed my time with it so far. There's a lot of bullshit "mash G until the quest is complete" nonsense mixed in here but fighting stuff is enough of a treat that I'm hoping for something like the rifts from Reaper of Souls once I clear the story. There are a lot of systems here that I haven't had to engage with yet (or don't care to, e.g. housing) but unless this game takes a hard left turn before endgame I'll probably continue to put time into this for a couple more weeks. I can't really see myself coming back to this long-term, though. We'll see if that changes - right now I'm biding my time until I can see what this game looks like once you're truly finished with the story.
- The big setpiece battles look incredible! The rendered scale of battles here shits all over the battles in Diablo 3 (and similar battles in other Diablo clones). It's the only time during the main campaign where you feel like your character is as powerful as the story says they are. I'm level 40, why am I still killing six boars at a time? Spawn more enemies please.
- Loads of classic MMO bullshit. Classes locked to a certain gender, painfully over-acted dialogue (even for an MMO), horrendously horny animations and armor for any female subclass. I tend to play as female characters in most games and I think this is the first time I've ever been outright embarrassed about it. I've got a fairly high tolerance for it but when I equip all the new, strong armor I get after a dungeon and see my character is wearing dolphin shorts and a... uh... cheongsam crop top(?) it's gonna get an eye roll from me.
- For an MMO it's actually kinda hard to play with your friends? You can party up but you have to go back to the friends list to see where on the map they are, you don't get to see what quest they're doing or where their objective is, but if their objective is "eliminate 10 rats" or w/e you can contribute to that without being aware of it at all. If someone who isn't the party leader tries to start a dungeon it just laughs at you and doesn't notify the party leader at all, so you've gotta tell the party leader what waypoint is closest to you (if they're not on the same map) and have them manually run all the way to the dungeon to start it. Maybe endgame content is easier to coordinate, but boy did they make the main campaign a pain.
- Classes are actually fairly interesting overall, and the ability to modify each skill as you level it provides an opportunity for build variety among each subclass (although not to the same degree as D3). The specialty skills are my favorite part of this system, as it offers you a sort of gameplay "anchor" to build around. Personal favorites are the gunslingers' gun-swapping, the soulfist's 3-tiered damage amp, and the gunlancer's shielding/status immunity.
- I'm not at endgame yet but I've enjoyed my time with it so far. There's a lot of bullshit "mash G until the quest is complete" nonsense mixed in here but fighting stuff is enough of a treat that I'm hoping for something like the rifts from Reaper of Souls once I clear the story. There are a lot of systems here that I haven't had to engage with yet (or don't care to, e.g. housing) but unless this game takes a hard left turn before endgame I'll probably continue to put time into this for a couple more weeks. I can't really see myself coming back to this long-term, though. We'll see if that changes - right now I'm biding my time until I can see what this game looks like once you're truly finished with the story.
lost ark is like what if we took the minute to minute combat of diablo 3, cut about 75% of it and filled the rest up with fetch quests where you deliver like a basket of eggs to 5 townspeople, took the soulless and entirely embarrassing story and writing from d3 and decided this is actually too profound lets dumb it down somehow, then threw in a bunch of pay to win mechanics in for good measure.
its so aggressively mediocre that i cant help but assume the reason its so popular is amazon is running a covert ad campaign so powerful the likes of which have historically been reserved for when the cia is prepping to coup a small middle south american country, if only to keep the foreboding sense of doom i feel over the popularity of this game at bay.
there is little here to appreciate but a carefully crafted dopamine shotgun intended to leave the player bleeding from a dozen holes in the skull, with a conveniently placed cash shop with whatever you need to plug them. want to make this experience we have stretched out across hundreds of hours less painful? only 20$ per wound.
its so aggressively mediocre that i cant help but assume the reason its so popular is amazon is running a covert ad campaign so powerful the likes of which have historically been reserved for when the cia is prepping to coup a small middle south american country, if only to keep the foreboding sense of doom i feel over the popularity of this game at bay.
there is little here to appreciate but a carefully crafted dopamine shotgun intended to leave the player bleeding from a dozen holes in the skull, with a conveniently placed cash shop with whatever you need to plug them. want to make this experience we have stretched out across hundreds of hours less painful? only 20$ per wound.
What's the point of making a hack 'n slash game but you have to grind for 15 hours before you actually unlock the main gameplay? You'll have to spend a lot of time doing boring fetch quests asking you to kill one or two monsters before you get to any dungeon with real challenges and enough enemies not to be boring.
I'm not exaggerating, the game really expects you to just farm levels on the overworld while killing pointless critters that are in groups of maybe 4-5 at most and which pose no challenge at all. The gameplay feels satisfying but there's no way I'm wasting the time it asks me to.
I'm not exaggerating, the game really expects you to just farm levels on the overworld while killing pointless critters that are in groups of maybe 4-5 at most and which pose no challenge at all. The gameplay feels satisfying but there's no way I'm wasting the time it asks me to.
Terminally dull MMO grindfest for chronic masturbators.
had no friends to play with
endgame is boring alone
endgame is boring alone
Incredibly frustrating game. The core combat here is a ton of fun, and going through dungeons is a blast. The combat system really makes mowing down dozens of mobs at a time addicting.
The issue, however, is that these combat opportunities are drip fed to you over the course of the most generic, trite fantasy story possible that gets bogged down even further by the virtue of wanting to be an MMO. I just handled 40+ enemies at once in this dungeon, why is the next quest objective "Kill 4 bandits" or "Pick 3 flowers?"
I hear end game is where this games shines, and I'd believe it. When you can just do all the fun stuff without 90% filler? Yeah, that sounds great. But I won't see it because I can't imagine wasting anymore time delivering apples or some garbage.
The issue, however, is that these combat opportunities are drip fed to you over the course of the most generic, trite fantasy story possible that gets bogged down even further by the virtue of wanting to be an MMO. I just handled 40+ enemies at once in this dungeon, why is the next quest objective "Kill 4 bandits" or "Pick 3 flowers?"
I hear end game is where this games shines, and I'd believe it. When you can just do all the fun stuff without 90% filler? Yeah, that sounds great. But I won't see it because I can't imagine wasting anymore time delivering apples or some garbage.
bro i dont even know what to say
if you just want to relax and listen to some music or watch a video on youtube this is the perfect game for you i guess
if you just want to relax and listen to some music or watch a video on youtube this is the perfect game for you i guess
"La mayor parte del tiempo es muy tedioso, pero si le dedicas unas horas al día accedes a cosas chulas que puedes disfrutar cada cierto tiempo."
Hermano, ¿esto es un juego o un trabajo?
Hermano, ¿esto es un juego o un trabajo?
had the homie watching football
known this foo for 11 years
he does not watch football
known this foo for 11 years
he does not watch football
I honestly can't see the appeal of this MMO, it literally has no substance.
The story is totally forgettable and not good at all. The characters are your stereotypes and are just there for the sake of fetch quests. Oh yeah, the whole game is just a fetch quest cause you go from A to B in every area. The areas exist for the sole purpose of wasting your time and get exp by doing quests.
The only good aspect of this game is the combat but even the combat doesn't have any depth. You start at level 10, immediately choose your sub class and you unlock abilities over time. Unfortunately the abilities only do damage and have no other factors.
The main reason I play MMORPGs is the social factor. This game has no social factor at all. Guilds are the only thing that is social but they are just useless. It basically feels like a very cheap copy of Diablo and it's not even good.
Also in this game there are around 4 different outfits. If you want more, pay some real money. I think that's why I really dislike korean MMOs in general, Black Desert did the same.
All in all, it's a waste of time. Please just play a good MMORPG.
The story is totally forgettable and not good at all. The characters are your stereotypes and are just there for the sake of fetch quests. Oh yeah, the whole game is just a fetch quest cause you go from A to B in every area. The areas exist for the sole purpose of wasting your time and get exp by doing quests.
The only good aspect of this game is the combat but even the combat doesn't have any depth. You start at level 10, immediately choose your sub class and you unlock abilities over time. Unfortunately the abilities only do damage and have no other factors.
The main reason I play MMORPGs is the social factor. This game has no social factor at all. Guilds are the only thing that is social but they are just useless. It basically feels like a very cheap copy of Diablo and it's not even good.
Also in this game there are around 4 different outfits. If you want more, pay some real money. I think that's why I really dislike korean MMOs in general, Black Desert did the same.
All in all, it's a waste of time. Please just play a good MMORPG.