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

Reviewed on Apr 11, 2024


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