FAIR WARNING, THIS IS VERY LONG, AND IT EXPLAINS A LARGE PORTION OF THE CHANGES MADE TO OUR VERSION OF LOST ARK, AS WELL AS MY OPINION ON THE GAME ON TOP.

Allow me to preface this by saying that Lost Ark is an Amazing (yes, with capital A), game. In fact, I encourage you to try it out regardless of the mutilation inflicted upon it - you will not regret it. This review refers only, AND ONLY, to Amazon's version of the game. If I were reviewing the Korean or Russian client I'd be giving it the highest score possible on every website, and even beyond that. It's a product of love, full of soul and showing the dedication of the Korean dev team which crafted it. It's a one of a kind experience which cannot be compared to any other game purely due to how unique it is. I played this game on RU for two years (a little over), and have nearly 40 hours as a plat founder on West. The gameplay is the literal nectar of the gods, the combat bordering flawless. It's one of the few games of today which are an actual "joy" and true pleasure to play, at least in my opinion. The aesthetics of the original, the soul of the game, the feel of it - everything is created with utmost love and care, by people who treasure their creation and want it to be the best it possibly can be - and it shows.

Now, why I give this a negative review? Well, that's simple. AGS took it upon themselves to force "westernization" (let's call them as such for the sake of argument, bear with me) changes into this version of the game. Changes which are outright downgrades rather than positives and which, to my knowledge, no one asked for.


For little to no reason, starter outfits have been censored and uglified (only for female characters of course). Every single starter outfit has been swapped out for a full body cover, often a ridiculously ugly one as in the case of the Martial Artist. From a woman practising martial arts she, apparently, turned into a mercenary straight out of Lion's Landing in GoT, with some brown, full body leathers covering her. It's actually cringe to even look at, because not only is it there with the evident intention to just censor the female body, not only does it look like a RIDICULOUSLY low quality reskin (it legit sticks out like a sore thumb and doesn't fit the game aesthetic at all), but they didn't even bother matching the class fantasy - that's how low effort it is.

This is perhaps the one thing which pisses me off most. Comparing translations from KR and RU reveals that many quests which had a sexual theme or a not-very-politically-correct topic such as guards discussing going to brothels and dwarves talking about dying in their beds with elf girls next to them have been changed to much less "problematic", ahem, topics for our version - which often make zero sense, by the way, and simply sound watered down and diluted. Not only that, but many of the translations which aren't directly "toned down" for """"obvious"""" western sensitivities, simply make almost no sense in regards to the situation. They feel soulless, rushed and without even the slightest feel or effort to them. The voice actors sound half-assed most of the time, voices don't match, many voice lines are outright missing. The English used is utmost basic and stripped down of any fantasy or "epic", realistic feel to it. Even the Russian translators made everything sound more epic than this - considerably so. There are numerous, numerous examples of quests being watered down in order to be more "politically correct" and ensure they don't offend anyone, with the sense of some of them entirely changed, lines removed. Many of the side stories have been literally sterilized, and not only sterilized, but also done so in a ridiculously lazy way which immediately breaks immersion and puts a person paying attention to the lore and story off.

And not only that, but even the quests which aren't "problematic" have been skimmed through. Terrible translations often being completely inaccurate or misrepresenting the NPC or the situation, basic and bland. I don't know who translated this game, but the Russians translating from Korean have done unironically a 10 times better job. Entire lines of your character and choices have been stripped. Another example, the martial arts tournament in anich (Anikka here), the guy you speak to before every fight begins has a specific line and discussion for every single different fighter before you face them and he speaks to you about it before the fight. Here, he just repeats the same thing over and over again. "SHOW US WHAT YOU"RE CAPABLE OF. (???)

And even further, Asian presets in the character creator have been outright deleted, only to be replaced by presets of black characters which seem to, for most classes, hold an almost 50 / 50 ratio with the whites (?), with little to no Asian presets whatsoever left. Not only this, but already well-established quest NPCs from the other versions of the game have had their skin color altered just for the sake of some sort of strange, quota fitting diversity to have half of the population of Arkesia look black. Blackwashing or whatever it is you call it. This normally wouldn't be an issue if not for the point about the asian presets and what I've written in the paragraph below. "Diversity" is not necessarily a bad thing, but when it's taken THIS far, it starts looking out of place. I guess swapping asian for blacks is fine as far as diversity is concerned?

At first I didn't mind the blackwashing (diversity of skin color for the west actually makes sense, even to purists), but then I had a deeper look. There are places which unironically have a 80% black NPC ratio, it's like Arkesia turned into Africa overnight. Go to Lakebar, there are 2-3 white NPCs and everyone else is black (?). It's actually bordering on the insanity in some places, it looks literally unnatural and even a person who has never played Lost Ark in the other regions can see something is off and call it out, simply because it looks so out of place with the amount of black NPCs around. Some locations have had their asians / whites exterminated apparently? Not only this, but the blackwashing itself is done in extremely poor and lazy fashion - black skin literally slapped on NPCs with asian or Caucasian facial features, making the comedic tragedy even deeper.

No amount of amazing gameplay can carry a game if you strip away it's soul, I'm sorry. It's very clear that AGS aim to just draw in people who ignore everything else in the game and do nothing but spam chaos dungeons, guardian and legion raids in end game. And there is just SO MUCH more to the actual game than this. Lost Ark West has been stripped down of any flavor, with the excuse of "GaMePlay iS ThE SaME". A soulless reskin.

There are many more alterations, but I simply can't fit them in the review due to the limit.

TLDR:

The western version is partially censored, altered stylistically and sterilized in favor of political correctness. Gameplay elements such as some leveling dungeons have been altered. All in all, it feels like a lesser, cheap reskin of the real thing. The work put into it reeks of laziness and lack of effort and love for the product. I have never seen a more heavily-handed altered eastern game deployed in the west. Translations are a poor and soulless, politically correct, lazy mess. Almost everything related to localization is a severe downgrade in comparison to the original. It screams of low effort and questionable politics injected in it.

[b]FAIR WARNING, THIS IS VERY LONG, AND IT EXPLAINS A LARGE PORTION OF THE CHANGES MADE TO OUR VERSION OF LOST ARK, AS WELL AS MY OPINION ON THE GAME ON TOP. [/b] Allow me to preface this by saying that Lost Ark is an Amazing (yes, with capital A), game. In fact, I encourage you to try it out regardless of the mutilation inflicted upon it - you will not regret it. This review refers only, AND ONLY, to Amazon's version of the game. If I were reviewing the Korean or Russian client I'd be giving it the highest score possible on every website, and even beyond that. It's a product of love, full of soul and showing the dedication of the Korean dev team which crafted it. It's a one of a kind experience which cannot be compared to any other game purely due to how unique it is. I played this game on RU for two years (a little over), and have nearly 40 hours as a plat founder on West. The gameplay is the literal nectar of the gods, the combat bordering flawless. It's one of the few games of today which are an actual "joy" and true pleasure to play, at least in my opinion. The aesthetics of the original, the soul of the game, the feel of it - everything is created with utmost love and care, by people who treasure their creation and want it to be the best it possibly can be - and it shows. Now, why I give this a negative review? Well, that's simple. AGS took it upon themselves to force "westernization" (let's call them as such for the sake of argument, bear with me) changes into this version of the game. Changes which are outright downgrades rather than positives and which, to my knowledge, no one asked for. [h1] EDIT: As of today, further censorship (direct lies from AGS) has been exposed. The promise of nothing else being censored is false, Queen Azena (white form) is censored in our version. And that's just one of the things I found out. Not just censorship, but potentially false advertisement as well. [/h1] [h1]STARTING OUTFITS CENSORSHIP:[/h1] For little to no reason, starter outfits have been censored and uglified (only for female characters of course). Every single starter outfit has been swapped out for a full body cover, often a ridiculously ugly one as in the case of the Martial Artist. From a woman practising martial arts she, apparently, turned into a mercenary straight out of Lion's Landing in GoT, with some brown, full body leathers covering her. It's actually cringe to even look at, because not only is it there with the evident intention to just censor the female body, not only does it look like a RIDICULOUSLY low quality reskin (it legit sticks out like a sore thumb and doesn't fit the game aesthetic at all), but they didn't even bother matching the class fantasy - that's how low effort it is. [h1]TRANSLATIONS KR to EN:[/h1] This is perhaps the one thing which pisses me off most. Comparing translations from KR and RU reveals that many quests which had a sexual theme or a not-very-politically-correct topic such as guards discussing going to brothels and dwarves talking about dying in their beds with elf girls next to them have been changed to much less "problematic", ahem, topics for our version - which often make zero sense, by the way, and simply sound watered down and diluted. Not only that, but many of the translations which aren't directly "toned down" for """"obvious"""" western sensitivities, simply make almost no sense in regards to the situation. They feel soulless, rushed and without even the slightest feel or effort to them. The voice actors sound half-assed most of the time, voices don't match, many voice lines are outright missing. The English used is utmost basic and stripped down of any fantasy or "epic", realistic feel to it. Even the Russian translators made everything sound more epic than this - considerably so. There are numerous, numerous examples of quests being watered down in order to be more "politically correct" and ensure they don't offend anyone, with the sense of some of them entirely changed, lines removed. Many of the side stories have been literally sterilized, and not only sterilized, but also done so in a ridiculously lazy way which immediately breaks immersion and puts a person paying attention to the lore and story off. And not only that, but even the quests which aren't "problematic" have been skimmed through. Terrible translations often being completely inaccurate or misrepresenting the NPC or the situation, basic and bland. I don't know who translated this game, but the Russians translating from Korean have done unironically a 10 times better job. Entire lines of your character and choices have been stripped. Another example, the martial arts tournament in anich (Anikka here), the guy you speak to before every fight begins has a specific line and discussion for every single different fighter before you face them and he speaks to you about it before the fight. Here, he just repeats the same thing over and over again. "SHOW US WHAT YOU"RE CAPABLE OF. (???) [h1]BLACKWASHING / DELETING PRESETS:[/h1] And even further, Asian presets in the character creator have been outright deleted, only to be replaced by presets of black characters which seem to, for most classes, hold an almost 50 / 50 ratio with the whites (?), with little to no Asian presets whatsoever left. Not only this, but already well-established quest NPCs from the other versions of the game have had their skin color altered just for the sake of some sort of strange, quota fitting diversity to have half of the population of Arkesia look black. Blackwashing or whatever it is you call it. This normally wouldn't be an issue if not for the point about the asian presets and what I've written in the paragraph below. "Diversity" is not necessarily a bad thing, but when it's taken THIS far, it starts looking out of place. I guess swapping asian for blacks is fine as far as diversity is concerned? At first I didn't mind the blackwashing (diversity of skin color for the west actually makes sense, even to purists), but then I had a deeper look. There are places which unironically have a 80% black NPC ratio, it's like Arkesia turned into Africa overnight. Go to Lakebar, there are 2-3 white NPCs and everyone else is black (?). It's actually bordering on the insanity in some places, it looks literally unnatural and even a person who has never played Lost Ark in the other regions can see something is off and call it out, simply because it looks so out of place with the amount of black NPCs around. Some locations have had their asians / whites exterminated apparently? Not only this, but the blackwashing itself is done in extremely poor and lazy fashion - black skin literally slapped on NPCs with asian or Caucasian facial features, making the comedic tragedy even deeper. No amount of amazing gameplay can carry a game if you strip away it's soul, I'm sorry. It's very clear that AGS aim to just draw in people who ignore everything else in the game and do nothing but spam chaos dungeons, guardian and legion raids in end game. And there is just SO MUCH more to the actual game than this. Lost Ark West has been stripped down of any flavor, with the excuse of "GaMePlay iS ThE SaME". A soulless reskin. [b] There are many more alterations, but I simply can't fit them in the review due to the limit. [h1]TLDR: [/h1] The western version is partially censored, altered stylistically and sterilized in favor of political correctness. Gameplay elements such as some leveling dungeons have been altered. All in all, it feels like a lesser, cheap reskin of the real thing. The work put into it reeks of laziness and lack of effort and love for the product. I have never seen a more heavily-handed altered eastern game deployed in the west. Translations are a poor and soulless, politically correct, lazy mess. Almost everything related to localization is a severe downgrade in comparison to the original. It screams of low effort and questionable politics injected in it.