my review for Lost Ark

[Caligator]

considering it seems theyre blocking reviews on the actual store page now, I figure I'll just post it here :)

So, first of all; this is not a blanket NO for everyone, this is just a no for the folks who like me, thought this game was gonna be a comfy diablo-like with cutscenes and pretty visuals.

Lost Ark is pretty much a cookie cutter Korean MMO from a fixed perspective. it has some neat ideas, but if you (like me) do not like KMMO's, this will make your teeth itch.

its honestly a real shame, I had been looking forward to this game since the announcement trailer-- a hack and slash adventure with slick visuals and an actual decent narrative; its been something I've been dying for. Lost Ark advertised itself as this, but... dang. it doesnt just fall short, its a day late and asking to borrow cab fare to catch a bus cross town.

its combat is serviceable, but its very much clunky. you need to run QWER + ASDF + G + SPACE for the basic commands, with number keys for combat items and F keys for special items (which includes HP Potions for some reason). all the while you control your character with one mouse button, and basic attack with the other. it feels a lot like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. it doesnt feel organic, especially for an action combat system (god forbid youre playing monk like I was.). I dont know what keyboard they designed this for, but frankly, even coming from a guy who plays fighting games a lot, this did not work out functional. there is a lot of fumbling commands and trying to brain through stuff while struggling to read enemy hitboxes so you dont get clapped by a fast charging super attack. the dodge for some reason, actually has a massively long cooldown.

it should be noted however that the classes seem to be either broken or incomplete. some classes are gender locked and others who have gender variants do not have all of their base's advanced class paths available to their off-gender choice. some classes just do not have any other advanced class path choices period; monk, again, has only the striker class path, where as the fighter has barbarian, gunlance, and paladin. the game feels really under baked in this regard, and theres not even controller support that I could find. its like they rushed it out the door with most of the working parts still sitting on the shop floor. I could have stomached them just cutting it to the 3 classes that actually have upgrade paths; that would have been fine. Instead we get something that feels like an alpha in places. I worked for New World's dev as an QC/alpha tester some years back, and even that bug bin didnt feel this incomplete, which is shocking considering their devs were totally incompetent half the time, and their second closed beta actually bricked peoples video cards... . I know game dev is not easy; its a difficult labor of love, and deadlines are the beast that comes for your firstborn on passover, but this... is a rough sell even in my giving the most charitable of eye.

I suppose on the bright side, the character customization isnt bad... though not near as deep as most of these kinds of MMO, though said customization is basically 'what flavor of k-pop idol do wish to sink 140 hours into?'. you cant make many solid variations, and most of your hard work is gonna be covered by a litany of pokey armor, masks, and god knows what other gaudy accessories.

story wise, the dialogue awful; its riddled with typos, run-ons, and what seem to be actual design doc notes just copy pasted in for lore and dialogue dumps. when talking with characters, the first line of conversations will often be voice acted and then the rest is just dry dull text, which really begins to grate for pace. they need to choose one or the other; full voice acting like ESO with dramatic pauses and inflection, or decently written dialogue so you can read it at your own pace. As a result, its really soulless and any of the quests I found outside of the main questline (because post tutorial, it becomes really easy to get lost so youre bound to hit a lot of these looking for the next main quest breadcrumb) are extra shallow. youre expected to go from point a to point b and poke a context marker with a timer bar that fills up, and then just collect a reward. lather, rinse, repeat. I think one of the other reviews I saw put it best; "I love the quest where you pick a thing up and then put it back down again". this is the shameful majority of side content it seems, which is sad considering LOST ARK does have potential; the cutscenes do TRY to be cinematic and the visuals are not bad-- theres AMBITION, but holy heck man, the MMO jank & stank just often kills it, as does some of the poorer, exposition heavy, and weird writing. the stake is further driven home by things like:
the nonsequiters,
the bland copy-paste generic fantasy paint-by-numbers guff,
the haphazard and often confused mix of tone,
And just the litany of plain internal contradictions.

all in all, if you like things like Blade & Soul or other KMMO's, this game will probably be fine. buggy and chunky, but fine (that is, if youre currently bored with your BDO/B&S/Terra/current KMMO meth addition). if youre looking for a diablo-like narrative driven RPG with great action combat? look elsewhere. try maybe torchlight, or the incredible adventures of van hellsing.

:c I really wish the devs had communicated this more accurately in the adverts. also it disappoints me greatly to see them blocking reviews on the game.

TLDR; THIS GAME IS NOT LIKE ITS TRAILERS AT ALL, this is a very generic MMO with a very rough control scheme, and bad writing.

[Based Duffle Bag Boi]

yawn too long bro

[GameRickster]

Can someone read it for me please? JK.. how much do they pay you to type all a book?

[Kashra Fall]

"You don't know what keyboard they designed this for." Sorry, what?

League of legends, move with left or right, attack with left or right, skills on QWER, consumables on 1-whichever, F,D for summoner abilities.

This is standard control of an isometric game. If it isn't your type of game? Then that is fine, but this standard design.

[sunnyyy]

bro you have 1.8 hours, which is enough to open the game, queue up, choose a class, and get through the prologue. wtf are you talking about?

[Whiskeydust]

Originalmente postado por Red-Star-Alchemy:

considering it seems theyre blocking reviews on the actual store page now, I figure I'll just post it here :)

So, first of all; this is not a blanket NO for everyone, this is just a no for the folks who like me, thought this game was gonna be a comfy diablo-like with cutscenes and pretty visuals.

Lost Ark is pretty much a cookie cutter Korean MMO from a fixed perspective. it has some neat ideas, but if you (like me) do not like KMMO's, this will make your teeth itch.

its honestly a real shame, I had been looking forward to this game since the announcement trailer-- a hack and slash adventure with slick visuals and an actual decent narrative; its been something I've been dying for. Lost Ark advertised itself as this, but... dang. it doesnt just fall short, its a day late and asking to borrow cab fare to catch a bus cross town.

its combat is serviceable, but its very much clunky. you need to run QWER + ASDF + G + SPACE for the basic commands, with number keys for combat items and F keys for special items (which includes HP Potions for some reason). all the while you control your character with one mouse button, and basic attack with the other. it feels a lot like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. it doesnt feel organic, especially for an action combat system (god forbid youre playing monk like I was.). I dont know what keyboard they designed this for, but frankly, even coming from a guy who plays fighting games a lot, this did not work out functional. there is a lot of fumbling commands and trying to brain through stuff while struggling to read enemy hitboxes so you dont get clapped by a fast charging super attack. the dodge for some reason, actually has a massively long cooldown.

it should be noted however that the classes seem to be either broken or incomplete. some classes are gender locked and others who have gender variants do not have all of their base's advanced class paths available to their off-gender choice. some classes just do not have any other advanced class path choices period; monk, again, has only the striker class path, where as the fighter has barbarian, gunlance, and paladin. the game feels really under baked in this regard, and theres not even controller support that I could find. its like they rushed it out the door with most of the working parts still sitting on the shop floor. I could have stomached them just cutting it to the 3 classes that actually have upgrade paths; that would have been fine. Instead we get something that feels like an alpha in places. I worked for New World's dev as an QC/alpha tester some years back, and even that bug bin didnt feel this incomplete, which is shocking considering their devs were totally incompetent half the time, and their second closed beta actually bricked peoples video cards... . I know game dev is not easy; its a difficult labor of love, and deadlines are the beast that comes for your firstborn on passover, but this... is a rough sell even in my giving the most charitable of eye.

I suppose on the bright side, the character customization isnt bad... though not near as deep as most of these kinds of MMO, though said customization is basically 'what flavor of k-pop idol do wish to sink 140 hours into?'. you cant make many solid variations, and most of your hard work is gonna be covered by a litany of pokey armor, masks, and god knows what other gaudy accessories.

story wise, the dialogue awful; its riddled with typos, run-ons, and what seem to be actual design doc notes just copy pasted in for lore and dialogue dumps. when talking with characters, the first line of conversations will often be voice acted and then the rest is just dry dull text, which really begins to grate for pace. they need to choose one or the other; full voice acting like ESO with dramatic pauses and inflection, or decently written dialogue so you can read it at your own pace. As a result, its really soulless and any of the quests I found outside of the main questline (because post tutorial, it becomes really easy to get lost so youre bound to hit a lot of these looking for the next main quest breadcrumb) are extra shallow. youre expected to go from point a to point b and poke a context marker with a timer bar that fills up, and then just collect a reward. lather, rinse, repeat. I think one of the other reviews I saw put it best; "I love the quest where you pick a thing up and then put it back down again". this is the shameful majority of side content it seems, which is sad considering LOST ARK does have potential; the cutscenes do TRY to be cinematic and the visuals are not bad-- theres AMBITION, but holy heck man, the MMO jank & stank just often kills it, as does some of the poorer, exposition heavy, and weird writing. the stake is further driven home by things like:
the nonsequiters,
the bland copy-paste generic fantasy paint-by-numbers guff,
the haphazard and often confused mix of tone,
And just the litany of plain internal contradictions.

all in all, if you like things like Blade & Soul or other KMMO's, this game will probably be fine. buggy and chunky, but fine (that is, if youre currently bored with your BDO/B&S/Terra/current KMMO meth addition). if youre looking for a diablo-like narrative driven RPG with great action combat? look elsewhere. try maybe torchlight, or the incredible adventures of van hellsing.

:c I really wish the devs had communicated this more accurately in the adverts. also it disappoints me greatly to see them blocking reviews on the game.

TLDR; THIS GAME IS NOT LIKE ITS TRAILERS AT ALL, this is a very generic MMO with a very rough control scheme, and bad writing.

Go away. You played 1.8 hours you trolling POS!

[Morteon Eternity's Knight]

Hi i played the game for a fraction of a fraction of the time it takes to even begin to understand what it has to offer. My opinion matters 111Oneoneone!! because im an entitled millenial and listen to me.

Go away.

[Brady4444]

If they would allow us to remap all the keys, it would be more fluid for me to play. I am having a hard time actually playing Lost Arc because I can't map the keys to binds I like.

[Flatulence Florence]

Originalmente postado por unironically 4'11:

bro you have 1.8 hours, which is enough to open the game, queue up, choose a class, and get through the prologue. wtf are you talking about?

This

[theartofscience]

I just clicked on your portrait, saw that you played 1.8 hours of an mmo and deemed yourself savvy enough at the game to post a "review", and thus saved myself the time of having to read any of that wall of text.

If you bounce off of it that is fine, just uninstall it. Thinking you know enough about the game to say anything remotely insightful is highly naive of you.

[CBASS]

3 Achievements unlocked at 1.8hrs. Get good kid.

[Alyx]

1.8 hours and posts reviews as a means too get attention instead of posting reviews where they go... Lol...

[Neo]

You haven't even played the game for 2 hours.

[Kiru]

This is literally a comfy diablo esque game for a whole lot of hours. Also classes are gender locked, not "incomplete". The classes in the western release were just renamed.. for reasons I don't know.
If I had one complaint, then that gear is super boring. But the gameplay is (so far) good enough to make up for it. It also does a bunch of really neat things you probably won't see in other A-Rpgs. (the siege, some of the boss fight ideas, the rather different settings for the arcs like somethings that feels ghibli inspired and so on)

There ARE a bunch of things I'm shocked to see in a game that's not new though. Notably:
-Enemy aggro range is INSANELY big. Both in terms of when they aggro on you and how far you gotta run away till they give up.

-random raid world bosses have the habit of running too far away from their spawn -> get back full HP as a result (seriously, why do they even HAVE a range like that?)

-when talking to people for quests, you can't really read stuff because you always have to fear those ultra far away aggroed enemies disrupting you. Why can't they just make you invincible when talking? Btw, you can take damage while loading into an area as well. Great stuff.

-Due to the insanely fast respawn of everything (maybe just for launch?) gathering and interacting with collectibles or quest objectives can be a massive pain. Here it would help to give respawned stuff the "doesn't aggro unless attacked" flag for a minute. Given that some enemies do not aggro on you unless attacked, it should exist already. Also it feels like they kinda have it for like 3 seconds or so... which isn't helping the cause. It should be much longer.


Easy to fix things really. Why are they still like that I really have no idea. Should be incredibly obvious problems as well.

[tmaddox]

Originalmente postado por Red-Star-Alchemy:

considering it seems theyre blocking reviews on the actual store page now, I figure I'll just post it here :)

How are they blocking reviews?

If they are then they are doing a really bad job of it

I just glanced at recent reviews and there is one negative review with 12 minutes played. No way that can be valid.

[DFiZZiL]

They Do have controller support although it does need some fixes like my cursor disappears making menu nave difficult at best