At first, I started playing solely because my friends were interested in this title. Then, I got curious and I jumped into it. And finally, I had to get out of it as soon as possible. Why, you may ask? Don't get me wrong, the game itself has a potential, but I think it got wasted in the end game.


First, what I liked about this game the most - the graphics. For a title that uses isometric POV and doesn't necessarily need this kind of polish, the game looks gorgeous and extremely detailed, down to your character's hair or your mount's mane. They didn't need to add physics to most of the clothing, hair, tree's branches, etc... but they did! And that's awesome.

Next up: the way your skills and your character are animated and the common feel of those skills. You can actually feel an impact when you use a hard hitting skill. You can see that you leave a trail of destruction while using said skill, not to mention the amount of flying your enemies do when they get hit by you. It's purely satisfying and I can feel my brain doing all those happy hormones stuff that makes me want to play some more.

And finally, the amount of customization you have while playing. Well, this part is a double edged sword, really. On one hand, you have a control over your character - you can set up your skill and their passives the way you want to play. That goes to almost all other systems that directly impact your playstyle and stats. However, on the other hand, giving that much freedom almost at the beginning of the game to the player isn't necessarily a good idea. Sure, the game tries to guide you through those systems as you go, but most of those can be skipped during the leveling up process and introduced near max level.


Now, to the negatives.

Despite being an MMO, this game has almost linear progression, where you are carefully guided by hand from one location to another, If you want to explore the map, you can do it, but there is not much to explore since Lost Ark's zones are tailored to be run through, not explored in the true meaning of the word. Players can drop items that can show you some hidden zones, but those are a joke - small caverns or bridges with almost no ground on either side and couple mobs to kill and a potential upgrade for your character. And that's it.

Another thing - character creation. I have nothing against women being bulky warriors or men taking up a job as a sneaky thief. What I don't like is gender locking. I love the female character design, I love womanly curves, but in contrast to my friends, I like to play as a guy. Just because I am a guy myself. In MMOs such as World Of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, etc, where you can see your character up close it is kind of understandable that you may want to look at your char's butt most of the time, but I don't care about that. And I want to have an option to choose not to have my Shadow Hunter character forced upon me as a female (even if she ends up being somewhat gorgeous). Options, people! Do not take them away.

Speaking of options - the ingame settings is quite good, I give it that. But - developers don't give you an option to change the aspect ratio to completely mach your screen's resolution. Right now it is locked to 16:9, whereas my monitor's aspect ratio is 16:10. The resolution is the right one (1920x1200), but it would be more enjoyable to play without having two black bars at the bottom and top of my screen.

Going back to the game itself. It is not very fun experience after a while and it becomes monotonous. After a prologue, you are sent into the world and you jump from one quest hub to another further into the zones available. And almost all of the quests I've experienced have the same collective pattern: talk to X number of NPCs, go kill Y number of mobs, gather Z number of resources, go talk some more. Are you done here? Then move along. You SOMETIMES get an additional quest to go into a dungeon or a training quest to learn about yet another system introduced to the game. But besides those two, quests are basically the same.

Finally, the endgame. If I were to sum it up using one word, it would: grindfest. If you want to achieve anything meaningful, you have to prepare yourself for what is basically another job. I stopped playing WoW for the same reason - it didn't feel as a game I an enjoy after a stressfull day at work. It's another couple hours of a grinding job after I come home from my regular work. It is fun to do some activities in this game once. But on a daily basis, without any real alternatives? No, thank you.
You can skip a grinding process, of course. But it will cost you.

This game is not a Pay 2 Win. It's Pay 2 Progress. If you are into this kind of games - by all means, enjoy it. Because there is content to enjoy. It will just get repetitive really fast, really soon. And those of you who want to have their minds intact - avoid.

So, to end my review, I won't give this title a 0/10. Because it deserves more. I give it a "Press G to continue" / 10.