Recent reviews by Cantankerous

This is a great game, and I highly recommend it. I have SOME suggestions/criticisms, but as its still in development and they're relatively simple I don't think they warrant any real negativity:

1) Loot variety. Loot feels good, but honestly? It needs to be MORE RNG. That may sound crazy to you, but I really don't think it is. Loot is always either high armour low health, or high health low armour, or in the middle, and then the longer you play the longer you realise you're just getting the exact same stat configurations over and over again but with slightly different values. I think loot should be completely balls to the walls random.

2) Loot power; after being able to run max difficulty act 2, your characters are already pretty damn insane. It just feels like it will be difficult for subsequent acts to jump up the difficulty and implement new tiers of items. I have so many banishes, rerolls etc. that the "random" nature of god powers is an afterthought now, because I can basically just immediately cycle through gods and pick exactly the ones I want straight away. My Merris can suck up experience from off the screen. My Kront can deal 100k damage with his jump power and I can clear 100 difficulty Act 2.

3) Act 1 becomes irrelevant the moment you can do even 1 boss in act 2. Act 2 drops a tier above what Act 1 can, and there is no scaling for loot, even with the difficulty modifications. Act 2 bosses also drop more skill points; beating the first boss of act 2 is equivalent of beating both the first and 2nd boss in Act 1 (so literally doubly as efficient, 7 mins vs 14 minutes). This is a shame because I actually much prefer Act 1.

4) Character balance. Lets face it, some characters are just so much better than others that its obscene. Some of the skills in the talent trees are just so obviously incredibly underwhelming compared to others that its a bit of a joke. Anyone who has played the game for a couple of hours can see this, so it feels odd that its the case.

5) Summoning needs more abilities, because if you try and play a summon based build right now, almost every single run will be the same (wanting necromancy, increased summon duration, increased summon damage, and ideally also fire elementals)

Put simply: the game just isn't very good.

I have hundreds of hours in D2 (I only played later in life), thousands in GD and POE, and honestly, Last Epoch just isn't very good or special.

The skill trees are actually pretty limited, and there's no way of making weird interactions like in PoE, or changing them too much via itemisation like in Grim Dawn.

Crafting is even more RNG and unforgiving than POE; at least in POE, if you mess up a craft, you can wipe the slate clean and start over. Not so in LE; forging potential exists and is irreversibly lost. There is literally no reason to care about finding a good raw base item, because it would always be better to find a good base item rare to build off. You can quite literally never get as good an item via crafting alone than you can get through looting and THEN crafting.

Graphics? Not great. I'm not a graphics ♥♥♥♥♥ but the game is just ugly to me. I also don't like the animations.

Its ostensibly close to 1.0 and they still don't have all the classes in the game.

Its incredibly difficult to actually see what buffs you and your minions have, and what debuffs enemies have.

Attacks whiff constantly (outside the dodge mechanics)

Enemies respawn in the same session (town portal > town > back to map? enemies have respawned and fog of war is back)

The in-game wiki is pretty useless

Really, its just not very good. There's a lot more I could get into but its just not a fun or engaging experience.

You'll notice I didn't even mention RMT. That's because I gave up on the game long before that was an issue. Even without RMT, you wouldn't want to play the game.

Loved the game, enjoyed the story, the music is great, and I totally recommend people buy it. Totally worth the price.

However, there are a few points I'd like to raise. PLEASE do not let these put you off buying the game; its a very enjoyable adventure and totally worth it. But just be aware that, at least if you're like me, this won't be a pokemon replacement:

1) Elemental weaknesses aren't great

Put bluntly, they're incredibly imbalanced. For an example, an astral type being hit by poison means the astral type can only use damaging moves. Okay. But a fire type hitting an air type means that the air type gets a wall that blocks all attacks against it. How is that remotely balanced? On top of this, most of the time you can just ignore the type matchups. It doesn't matter. Just put a different element sticker on your tape and use that. I can safely say I ignored type matchups about 90% of the time. I'm legitimately trying to think of scenarios I had to switch beasts based on type... And the only one I can think of is fire against air or poison against fire.

2) NPC placement is REALLY weird in terms of progression

This is a minor one, because it doesn't ultimately matter, but I was struggling to find NPCs that are supposed to be early game, while having found loads of later game NPCs. The 2nd partner character you meet, very early in the game, only really becomes relevant just before you complete the main story. Its open world so it doesn't matter as much, but none of it really feels logical.

3) There's no real strategy

Even less than pokemon, ultimately. Yes, there is some thought about what beast to attack (almost all battles are multi battles), but other than that... Not much? You can pick 2 beasts you like and just use them the entire game in lieu of everything else. I barely ever switched beasts. Literally half my team never got used. You can min max your character's stats, which influence beast stats, so I just reduced melee attack as low as possible, buffed my speed slightly and range attack massively, and just steamrolled the game. Recovery moves for beasts are weak, statuses only last 3 turns by default. Yes, it is sort of interesting that they stick around between beasts, but it either just feels unfair, or something you don't care about at all. I can remember times in pokemon where I was constantly switching around my whole party and only surviving by the skin of my teeth. That happened maybe once in this game, when I just started playing.

4) AP system is ultimately shallow

The more I played the more of a nuisance I found AP. Its almost always better to just use a 2 AP move that does 60 damage twice rather than a 1ap move for 30 and a 3ap move that does 90 damage (so its literally the same damage) or a 4ap move that does 120 but with a negative effect (lower accuracy, damages you too, etc.). You also get 4ap a turn when fused so it trivialises the system anyway. Status moves are low accuracy and a gamble, and I honestly never used them. There was no need. There's no real strategy here.

5) Fusions are meh

Once you find a good fusion, the game becomes trivial, even with high enemy scaling and AI intelligence. You can easily guarantee your fusion meter is maxed for every relevant encounter. Even Archangels are trivialised with this. Here's What I did; a beast with huge ranged attack but middling other stats (Robindam) with Galagor (huge HP and defense, medium ranged attack, but low speed). The fusion gets the stats of both beasts. So you end up with an A++ Ranged, A+ Health, A+ defences, and A speed. Nothing in the game can stand up against you. Also, you have to reach an arbitrary story point with companion characters to get to use fusion. For most, this is just after meeting them, which is fine. But for Eugene, literally the 2nd one you meet, you have to wait until near the end of the story to fuse with, so if you like him you're out of luck.

Like I said, I LOVED THE GAME. But the above points mean that after completing the story, I really wasn't interested in any post-game content.

Absolutely fantastic game. Even if its early access, for the price it offers an almost complete experience. Its not so difficult that it feels unfair, but difficult enough that you will rage at yourself for messing up.

10/10

First of all, if you have the base game, this is only about a 400kb file. Sketchy as hell. Secondly, neither this nor the base game actually let me log in. Thirdly, the games also REFUSE to stop running; even killing the processes in task manager don't do the trick, and you have to restart your PC.

I absolutely love this game.

Firstly, this game is NOT a souls clone. Its a hack and slash with a stamina management system (ki), yes, but honestly it does more to develop the genre than SoulsBorne ever did. The combat is fast, brutal, and much more technical than in any Souls game. Secondly, its also got a diablo-style grind/loot system, with levels, many, many stats and effects, different rarities, etc. etc.

The enemies are limited in variety, yet every single enemy in this game is dangerous and is fun to fight. The bosses are great and if you're used to Soulsborne you will get crushed for a while before figuring out how to play the game properly. I'm 24 hours in and roughly halfway through the game, and then after that there's several NG pluses down the line that each increase substantially in difficulty and item power.

If you're expecting a slow, relaxed game where you can explore an open world at will, this is not for you. Levels are split into missions and sub missions. Levels do repeat quite often, which is a legitimate criticism, but they're pretty well designed.

Basically, do not buy this if you just want dark souls. Buy this game if youo want a hack and slash with great combat and insane loot, with amazing grinding potential.

I have sleep deprivation and am falling behind at work because of this 10/10 generation defining Hideo Kojima game.