I've only just hit the end game of Lost Ark, so this is the sort of review that might not track with how I feel about the game in a month. Lost Ark is fun but I think, for me, a lot of that fun comes from it being the flavor of the month. Will Lost Ark be as fun in a month or two when the playerbase is cut in half...or more? Because it certainly will be. There's a lot to do in Lost Ark and also simply not that much to do.

A sort of Diablo/Path of Exile-inspired ARPG MMO, Lost Ark is an odd duck. It is infinitely soloable but there are people all around you. Tackling content in multiplayer trivializes most content but that content is generally pretty darn easy solo anyway. The combat isn't too engaging, it's somewhere between Diablo and League of Legends at times but is mostly pretty thoughtless outside of pvp. The loot treadmill is odd, you don't get much usable loot during the normal campaign. The loot is identical at your given item level so a lot of the times drops are not only useless but they aren't even any different.

But while the combat isn't very engaging, it is enjoyable. It's pretty Diablo 3-esque in that way. It's a little braindead, but it is really just fun to kill hordes and hordes of enemies. Soloing a dungeon of two hundred enemies by grouping them up and smashing through them with a couple skills is fun. And it's fun every time you do it. It never stops being fun. Even if it's not usually very hard. Later in the game and against certain bosses you'll need to prioritize understanding your combos and rotations but mainly you can just click some keys and clear dungeons. The story is absolute garbage so you won't spend a lot of time paying attention to that. You will spend your time mowing down enemies. And that's where the gameplay is.

....and that's genuinely about all there is to it. It's a soloable game that you can multiplayer if you like. It plays like Diablo. That's really it. The campaign is garbage, the end game seems promising but repetitive. The auction house is kinda trash and the game as tons of microtransaction stuff (makes sense since it's F2P). But where it thrives is that the genuinely basic gameplay is just fun. It's something I'll play less and less of, as there aren't enough hooks or carrots or anything to maintain my interest very much. But I really did enjoy my jaunt through the game (and the map is friggin' huge!). To their credit, I would've probably spent $15-$20 to buy this and been happy anyway. So it's really a ton of fun for free and that also probably influences my review a bit (the bar was really low).

It should be mentioned that the game has pretty strong audio and the visuals are absolutely BEAUTIFUL. The character creator is wildly in depth and the game is really detailed. You can zoom in and see details in everything. It makes for a gorgeous wallpaper generator. A drawback here though is sometimes things aren't so clear. Especially with lots of stuff on the screen. Think of the difference between DOTA and LoL. Where DOTA is clearly a lot prettier but somehow some of the UI can seem muddier than LoL which is literally a mud colored cartoon game. The lack of highly stylized cartoon art style means sometimes things blend in odd ways or don't stand out the way you want. Even to the point where in certain crowds of mods against certain environments you may not even realize what direction your character is actually facing.

It is fun though. I can see lots of appeal in farming for mounts and pets. Though I do imagine most of that will be moneygated. The main driver for me in end game FFXIV was mount farming. Lost Ark doesn't appear to have exactly the same sort of goal and I don't know that I care much for its gear treadmill. Still. A fun free to play experience, would recommend especially as the servers cool off.