Recent reviews by Draecho

i would have loved to give this a thumbs up review as it is really an enjoyable game, but the design of the artifacts (as well as the upgrades) are not well thought out.

it reaches a point where enemy damage is unavoidable and the only way to regenerate life consistently is via the artefact vitaminer pills (the artefact that heals you whenever you level up). health regen is slow and trivial, and armor upgrades barely do anything at all. there are red sugars on the map but these heal a fixed amount and don't scale with player health, gear, or enemy damage, and the healing is just utterly pitiful.

apart from the vitaminer pills, all the other artefacts have almost no impact at all. the only strategy to ensure even a chance of winning especially at hazard levels 3 or higher is to get the vitaminer pill artefact as soon as possible.

this is not a call to nerf vitaminer pills. it's just a reflection of how badly designed everything else is. in fact, they know how bad the balance is by specifically banning the vitaminer pill (and only that artefact) when doing masteries. it's so dumb honestly.

Absolutely one of the best roguelite coop gaming experiences at the moment.

This game is a masterclass in disappointment.

It's trying so hard to be the "souls-like" of aRPGs, it has forgotten to be actually fun.

GGG continues to demonstrate that they have not learned from their mistakes in PoE1, or from the mistakes of the Blizzard team working on D4.

- Classes are still gender-locked (it's f*cking 2024, get your sh*t together GGG. Male characters can be spellcasters too).
- Four days of continuous and non-stop nerfs to skills since release. One would think they would've learned from the mistakes of the D4 team, but sadly, no.
- Movement and combat are not as fluid and does not feel as good as D3/D4.
- No actual in game item trading or auction house in a game where gear and economy is extremely crucial.
- Bosses are frustrating, not because they're difficult and you need to be more skillful, but because they add in so much RNG one-shot gimmicks that you either have to grind a lot for gear or over-level the bosses just to survive their "mechanic". It's not interesting at all.
- Survivability is still extremely tied to the most boring stat in this whole genre - elemental resistances. Like, my god, be more creative with this cr*p.
- And finally, in a step back from something that PoE1 does very well, your skills and support gems are now much more restricted in terms of interaction and what they can do and even where you can slot them. It's giving "we're too lazy to actually balance things properly so we'll just nerf everything instead".

If you're a refugee of Diablo 4 looking for a better aRPG experience, let me point you in the direction of Last Epoch instead. That game is not without its flaws but at least its designed much more fairly and intelligently.

The only positive possible thing that I can say about this game is that at least the graphics are a little bit better, the story is a smidge more interesting, and it's still in early access so things may still change for the better on release.

game is supposedly set in the far future of 2184 where faster than light travel is possible but most weapons still need to be reloaded manually and ammo has to be painfully micromanaged. 🙄

everything about this game feels so try hard - from the off-putting cult-like slogans about "democracy" or "liberty" or some similarly cringe bs that your character is constantly spouting, to the synthetic difficulty of just having to press so much buttons to do so little. the HUD and the UI is godawful, guns feel so sluggish and pathetic, your character always seems to move like they just finished eating a bucket of chicken for lunch.

i honestly don't understand what the hype is behind this game. there's so much quality of life lacking here, and just so much tediousness and boredom.

also, wtf can't your character jump? it's so f-ing dumb.

edit 1: mfer-s require linking a PSN account? make it make sense. what a dumb stupid decision.

Turn based gameplay is very fun but I just really cannot stomach the "dating" sim aspect of this game. It's so f-ing boring and annoying. I'd play this game if they included a non-dating sim option.

It's a trap.

First 60 to 70 levels are very fun and can be played without paying for anything. And then the relic and charms system opens up and that's when you realize you've been had and need to shell no less than 150 USD (or more) just to keep abreast of things.

I do recommend trying this out but not to the extent that you pay a single cent for this game. It's a very polished aRPG but the monetization will drain you faster than a coterie of vampires in Transylvania.

This game gets compared to Hades a lot but I think that's an extremely unfair comparison.

The reason for this is that Warm Snow is 10000x better than Hades. This is one of those games that is just pure design genius to play. Extremely fluid combat, very engaging meta system, very rewarding, and just overall one of the best games I've ever played.

Game looks and runs absolutely beautiful. Art style, animation, combat, music, and sound is done really well and is very polished. In fact, I may go as far as to venture saying that combat animation and feel in this game is better than most isometric aRPGs on the market right now.

However, game design and balancing is absolutely horrendous. If you are looking for something to scratch that isometric aRPG itch, STAY AWAY from this game. It looks like Diablo/PoE/TL from gameplay videos and reviews but it's a trap. If you're looking for a fun hack and slash looter, this is NOT the game you're looking for.

I would say that this game is closer to a souls-like game than a hack and slash - but because the game just throws a horde of enemies at you all at one time, the tactical aspect of souls-like games (planning attacks, choosing engagements, countering/parrying/blocking attacks) that makes those games fun and challenging disappear.

This is a challenging game, but not for the right reasons. You only get one dodge every 4 or 5 seconds, healing is extremely sparse, and enemies will hit you for a sizeable chunk out of your life (even on the "barbarian" type character). You cannot face tank enemies in this game. Instead you're forced to play like a scaredy cat and just poke things, and since the single dodge that you get is on such a long timer, none of this feels good. You don't feel like you're weaving in and out of combat. You never feel powerful because the normal mobs are damage sponges. There's no feeling of joy in discovery because even though the game gives you upgrades, all I've seen in my short playthrough were weak or inconsequential. You'll also frequently end up frustrated because the game will spawn enemies on top of you and you will have to eat that damage and you'll find yourself constantly praying to RNGesus that a healing mote will drop.

Having said all this, the game isn't necessarily hard - but instead of feeling like you're being challenged, you just feel like you're being annoyed by poor game design decisions.

The game has a day and light cycle as well that changes how skills behave for some characters but it's extremely superfluous. Like the game could literally do away with it and it will still feel exactly the same. It feels like a very tacked-on mechanic and adds to the annoyance for characters whose skills behave differently between night and day because you just don't get any consistency in the way your character plays and feels.

Another egregious design decision is the timer. After you start engaging enemies, you have 25 minutes to do what you wanna do on the map and then you get whisked off to fight the big baddie. It's so dumb. Like literally why. Just let players explore the map as much as they want - the player's level is capped at 5 anyway (yes, another dumb game design decision where level 5 is the max level). All the timer does is prevent you from taking breaks and taking the time to plan where to go or what upgrade to choose.

It's so disappointing to finally play a game where the combat is so fluid and feels great, but because of how mediocre the core game loop is and how questionable the game design choices are, the game just feels like a tedium simulator.

I can forgive the fact that there's only one boss and one map and there's really no sense of meta progression, the game is in early access after all.

However, the fact that this game is balanced for what I feel like 4 players instead of 1, the fact that monsters are damage sponges and your character is so squishy and weak and have limited tools to either heal or prevent damage, and the godawful timer is what makes this game a thumbs down for me.

Some people will definitely enjoy this game but I was simultaneously annoyed and bored out of my mind within 15 minutes of playing this.

EDIT: Feb 2024

I am now changing my rating for this game to recommended as they have fixed the issue with the force stop key and it works properly now. They have also updated various facets of the game that make it a really good alternative to those sick of the never-ending balance and class issues with D4.

Congrats on the 1.0 to the devs!


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OLD REVIEW:

Gender-locked classes, no force move stop key, and mediocre story. This game tries so hard to be Path of Exile (PoE) but fails in a lot of aspects that make PoE successful.

Bought this a few years ago and was very hyped for this since devs seemed to bring fresh ideas to the table, but Last Epoch is, unfortunately, a lesson to all other devs/publishers of what happens when a game just rots in development hell for the longest time and has failed to keep up with the times.

Sure, they still update the game regularly but it's with content or changes I personally do not care for. The combat and controls are janky and annoying - and this is what makes or breaks an aRPG, and they still cannot get this core component of combat to feel and behave right.

Something as basic as implementing a force move stop key (i.e. holding down left-SHIFT to stand still while attacking/skilling in most other isometric aRPGs) is missing in this game and this really makes the game unplayable for me.

With Diablo IV and PoE 2 on the horizon, I cannot recommend this game in its current and near future state. Maybe I'll revisit this and change my opinion in 2 to 3 years but I am not optimistic that this game will ever see massive or widespread success when it gets out of early access - if it ever does.

Awesome roguelike. Much less complex than Hades but so much better controls for kb+mouse. Game still needs to be optimized a little bit, and it's a little bit light and short in terms of content, but it's definitely a very fun little game to play when you want to zone out and just kill stuff and have a good time. Developer is also very active in maintaining the game (4 hotfixes/patches within just 2 weeks of release).