The moment you get to the first encampment, they should say something like "Your weapon looks worn. Here, take these and craft a replacement." and give the player a health shard and stat shard depending on class or something and make it an actual quest step to progress. Early, basic introduction and it gets the player looking at the system earlier on.
There is a part in the game where you click on a forge for a quest step and when you click a crafting tutorial pops up. First time anything new happens a tutorial box pops up. Unless that has changed for 1.0
That's a great idea actually! It remids me of Dragon Nest, in the main quest at the very begining, you had a quest with 2~3 steps teaching you how to destroy/upgrade an item! I was too afraid of wasting crafting resources in LE, so i finished the campaign and THEN started to mess with the crafting system.
I absolutely LOVE this game. It's the perfect middleground between POE (which is WAY too much of a pain in the ass for me) and D4. So far I've used a totem Shaman and Minion necro and both have been absolute blast. It's crazy how powerful my minions feel as a necromancer. I only have 1 actual spell and the rest are minion abelites and it feels really good to actually be able to rely on them instead of so many games necros where the minions just feel like meatshields while you have to do all the damage yourself. And the offline mode! Every, single, game, that can be played single player should have an offline mode. I can only play a few hours a week, and depending on the week maybe not all. I'm never going to be on any ladders so I don't care about any of that. I've been playing offline since day 1 so none of the server issues have affected me at all.
Great review. On crucial feature I don't see many people highlighting is the restriction on reselling items you buy on the auction house in the Merchant's Guild. This is critical to keeping out flippers, RMT, bots, and scammers. It really helps to keep the market for the players that are playing the game and not people trying to play micro-economics simulator at the expense of everyone else.
I've only played the mage as both a spellblade and runemaster and I cannot believe how well each spell works and how easy it is to sip coffee read abilities and decide on a skill path. The fact that I don't have to overwhelm myself reading and trying to understand a build guide to play the game how I want to makes it so easy to enjoy
One of the problems with spellblade is the amount of viable builds you can play is pretty limited. And nobody mentions sorcerer because runemaster is what sorcerer was trying to be.
Thats the biggest impact LE has had for me. An ARPG that I myself can theorycraft and make my own build with abilities I find enjoyable to play with whilst being able to clear end game content. I struggle finding enjoyment out of copy pasta a maxxroll build to be able to clear end game content like most other ARPGs on the market.
@matson95 ??? Just dont copy pasta if you dont like it? What other ARPG do you need Copy pasta for to play in endgame? Didnt DarthMicro finish all POE content on some shield guy he made up on his first blind playthru?
@@natel7382it was since Kickstarter a online game with a chat and login. The steam true offline mode, is a 1.0 present for players, who need a game for the "island 🏝️" and is totally new. They had never since Kickstarter a non login client.
having offline mode is just absolutely amazing for me, as my area only gets comcast internet and its really really bad, I even tried getting there 1Gig speed but the internet is really bad in my area. I cant play path of exile because my internet is shit, so having offline makes me enjoy this game so much, I love it last epoch > Path of exile
About crafting: I've gotten road blocked a few times in mono's, gone to my stash and crafted gear that help me best those challenges and make my toon better. What a good system 🎉🎉
Same here. Got wrecked by one of the first bosses, and saw the message: "you were killed by X ability with fire damage". Crafted some fire rez and HP on my gear - problem solved.
I started playing the game on launch day (in offline since the servers were on fire). So I played every quests and side quests once to see the story and the lore. I also did every regular monoliths once for the same reason. I just finished the last of them an hour ago and it took me nearly 80 hours to do this. For 35$ US (cost more to us canadians!), this is an awesome deal and as soon as I can afford it, I am planning to go to their shop and see what is in there. And as I enter empowered monoliths and I go to the arena and dungeons, it means even more time spent in this game. So a big win for me for sure.
I still had like 200 mtx currency from the multiplayer update (i think it was given out as an apology for server issues but cant remember) last year so i held it the whole time and bought a new armor set for free 😮😊
You run left and right, then run in circles and then left and right again :D or You teleport behind the stair and attack safely 1st and 3rd phase, if the build is op, you 1 phase him xd
LostArk got a Raid name Valtan, its not the hardest when it comes to mechanics, its actually the shortest and easiest, but it is the best Raid out there. Its about the execution, its memorable because of the theme and maybe some dialogue or the vibe or just because you can do the mechanics and see whats happening in the screen, unlike some 666m$ game. @@Cenzurat
Only started myself since full launch, it's no where near as complicated as you think, just watch 1 video if you don't have friends to help you and then just ay around with stuff, they are only crafting mats you will get tons, so just mess around with the crafting system and you will pick it up easy.
Considering you're new to the genre I can understand why you feel that way but as someone who's played a lot of these kinds of games let me tell you that LE crafting is basically as easy and intuitive as you're going to get.
Rax is right about builds being the best part of the game. Every build i tried became powerful & fun after running just a few zones with a refined loot filter for the build. Its insanely easy & rewarding to theorize & execute different builds. For example i havent seen anyone playing Lightning Smite Paladin but for me it has been the best build, absoluting melting every map killing enemies and bosses where they stand. I love the build craft in this game
@@ayelmao42069 Yep, you just start a char, test a few skills and read through them. And on the way of leveling you see... ohh i want to go for this with my char, and just build in this direction. After a few levels... ohh new Skill with synergies, i go for this... and BOOM! Damage!
Something I think is very important is adding group play. One of the best parts of d3 was being able to just party search and run different game mechanics with others. You get to see their builds and show off yours as you fly through the content. Would LOVE if they implemented this. You could have a monolith party matchmaking. Dungeon matchmaking. Etc
Your assessment of Casual/New category is spot on as far as my gaming experience is concerned. While I do not have much time to play daily, for that very reason, I want to be able to understand the game mechanics as well as I can, so that my limited time in the game is spent productively and not just mashing buttons. Those "other" developers who don't think that casual players deserve or need explanations, really need to take their business elsewhere.
The speed of going in and out of monos are also great for QoL. Offline mode too. Also just want to highlight how beautiful loot filter and stash tabs are :D
The new obsession with loot filters is one of the strangest things. You have to ask, why does so much loot need to drop if it is going to be filtered away from view anyway? ARPGs keep making this mistake since D3 and POE. Diablo 2 had this perfected already. The right amount of loot drops.
@@seagullphilosopher2173 bad take. As you progress, you’ll want to see upgrades only. Loot filters prevent you from seeing non-upgrades without sorting through them. Why does that sound so complicated to you?
The one issue I encounter often, is when yo upgrade affixed, the tool tips break, and appear massive on screen with broken text. I can only fix it by closing and reopening the game. The other thing on the crafting, if your mouse moves toward your inventory, it just closes the affix menu when you're going to select the one you want. Other than that this game has been so good.
YES the quest tracker has not worked for me- so I wander back and forth through eras- like wait a second- go to here and talk to this guy, I just did that- so I end up clearing all the same paths again- I thought it was just me- Thank YOU!
You're so right about casuals and understanding the game. I've been a gamer all my life, but now I'm pushing 40, and I don't have all the time in the world to play and learn every detail by putting in a lot of hours. But I'm still a hardcore gamer at heart and I will always try to min/max a game, even though I'll never be a blaster like you. It's why I find PoE too much. There are too many systems and things to track, that I give up before I get to the really fun part.
Whoa, I just watched this after buying the game on Steam. I had no idea all future content will be free, expansions included. I'm pumped to play tonight!
How are they gonna pay for their servers then? This is wrong and I hate how people like you think it's okay for developers to not get their fair share for the work they do.
@@Venvaneless - What are you blabbing on about? They're the ones saying they're giving future content out for free. Since I'm enjoying the game, I would most likely have purchased an expansion for it anyways. I also upgraded to the Ultimate edition to kick more money to them, which I think they deserve. Plus, they will most likely make money off selling cosmetics, which I find they are more way generous with than what Blizzard is doing with their way overpriced skins. You might not want to jump the gun next time and just assume something.
IIRC you played LE/TS Deadeye, SRS Hiero, Boneshatter Jugg for Gauntlet on POE by following a guide. I do agree that its easier in LE to make your own build. But in terms of theorycrafting builds, POE still wins. You may not be able to make builds that could blast juiced T16s or cruise through uber bosses yourself, but self concocted builds that could clear maps and all contents just fine is pretty much doable without a guide (see DM arc of surging). In terms of builds and theorycrafting, poe is just way above LE imo. First set of characters for me in poe was a self-concocted Poison Cobra Lash Assassin and ED/C Trickster. The skill tree was not mega optimized (like you would find in build guides) but i could still clear Sirus and all league-specific contents just fine. The theorycrafting in poe is just way too good, that you could spend a whole session in Path of Building. I daresay that the skill tree in Last Epoch is bad-mediocre 'cause it does not change the way you play too much, as its mostly stat increases. While in POE you have keystones such, "you can't miss attacks but you can't crit", "life leech is doubled but can't regen", "Life is 1, immune to chaos damage CI", "Eldritch Battery: Energy shield covers mana instead" and many more. Not trying to be hostile or anything, just surprised you made the score to be the same as poe when i think its pretty clear cut that poe is way better. If its about it being easier to make your own builds, i think it would be in another point for accessability. Or just Last Epoch being way easier that you could clear high end game contents on an objectively shittier builds compared to meta.
The fact that you can spend a whole session in Path of Building is exactly why a lot of players are turned off by the complexity of PoE. It's fun for more hardcore players, and it obviously offers more meaningful choices, but the sheer amount of mechanics and interactions that you have to know to make a build is overwhelming, and not in a good way. Not to mention that the game is unforgiving and doesn't really allow you to test anything as respec points are limited. There is much more to say about a game that is able to simplify theorycrafting so it's able to be enjoyed by a wider array of people, while also making it feel satisfying when you are able to make an efficient build. Also, saying that LE's skill tree is bad-mediocre is a hilariously bad take. They're both good for different reasons. Personally I'd rather kill myself than have to spend more than 30 minutes looking at PoB to determine if my build is any good. I'd rather just build something by reading the tool tips, test it, and make changes along the way :)
@@jaydiism Oops. I meant the passive tree not the skill tree. The individual ability/skill tree itself i dont have much problem with it. Its not shallow or just stat increases as ive said. LE Good. My entire point with the post is that you could clear contents in poe even without using pob while making your own build. At the same time, you could spend more time, actually theorycrafting, into making your build a lot more efficient or make a new one entirely out of a new mechanic you just found. I can't really describe how good the feeling of your first self made COC build or successfully transitioning to CI feels. For new players, if you can't even manage to think a little with the initial passive tree or at least be excited about it, ARPGs is probably not the game for you. You could literally search for the damage your skill does on the tree, and path there along with some defensive or health nodes and youd do just fine. Although respeccing is a clear problem and getting fixed in poe 2. As i said in the post, most of your arguments really is a plus for accessability rather than the actual theorycrafting part about the game. I agree with making builds is simpler and able to be enjoyed by more people is good, but thats not a plus for theorycrafting imo.
@@jaydiism And no. You do not need to know every mechanic on the tree to make a build. Im a right side enjoyer and i dont have a single clue what goes on the left side of the tree. You probably need to learn, THEORYCRAFT with mechanics, if you want to make your build better, either defensively or offensively. The more you know and learn , the BETTER BUILDS and MORE BUILDS you can make. That is theorycrafting.
The gold and red portals in Lost Ark chaos dungeons are gone.. they now have a chance to drop fate embers(from everything, not just boss), which give an rng reward from card xp, card packs, silver, or massive gold.. upwards of 100k gold possible(but rare) which the gold/red portals were like 500gold-3k gold. And you can potentially get multiple fate embers per chaos dungeon.
I am just getting back to Last Epoch, and very excited to see what has changed since I last played it ( I think 3-4 years ago ). I was impressed it had a good start to their endgame even in early access. I have played Path of Exile a couple of times, and it was just too much. If I gamed for a living, I am sure I would want the extra moving parts, but I have a day job, and I am happy if I manage more than 10 gaming hours in a week. Thanks for pointing out that casuals can read. I also think the fact that the classes and masteries are well balanced makes the game more approachable. Creating good builds isn't hard, but making them perfect is challenging, which is nearly ideal. I concur about the "most complete at launch" moniker. I played D3, D4, Wolcen, PoE, Grim Dawn, and Torchlight 2 might be the next best at release.
In terms of base game at launch, LE is probably the best ARPG ever. Now the key thing is to see how they iterate from here. I have very high hopes for this game. Paired with PoE2 and maybe D4 if they get their shit together, ARPG gamers will be in gaming paradise!
I guess you just won't bring up all the missing QoL features like a simple feature that doesn't reset campaign map progress every time you leave the zone...lol and multiplayer being way outta sync.
I fucking Hope so. They had 10 years of poe to steal from and a Community That was desperate for a new „Not complete Garbage arpg“. they just needed to take the best things of poe, d3, d2 mix it together and call it „Last Epoch“ . And That is what they did.
@@nicholasestes4028 I'm sorry but, in terms of QoL, LE is second to none. That being said, quest tracking needs some attention, and they already said they're working on it.
How I'd like to change the process of shattering for affixes is something like; Separate the shattering from the forge. Add a "Crucible" that is still accessible through the forge UI. The "Crucible" interface has an inventory as large as the player inventory or one stash tab. You can then dump all items into the crucible and shatter everything all at once, consuming the appropriate amount of Runes of Shattering in the process. Would pair well with a "Move all items from [inventory]/[current stash tab] to the crucible." button so that you could make a dedicated stash for items you want to shatter between monos. This gets rid of the one-by-one shattering process and turns it into something of its own loot explosion.
I agree completely with what you said about end game randomness. Its something I loved about POE even as a noob, like legion, betrayal, abyss, ect. Thats the kind of thing I want to see in all ARPGs, something that might pop up in a run that'll get you excited. Every ARPG needs a loot goblin to chase down for good stuff
One thing to note, since a lot of my friends got confused: Circle of Fortune is more of SF and not a SSF (not locking you into solo). You still can trade with people you play with, so if you want to have fun with your friends, you don't have to go Merchant's Guild for that. Just pointing that out since many content creators keep calling it SSF while it's clearly not limiting you to the "Solo" part
The QoL is defo the strongest in the genre. The filters, the stash, searching, the OFFLINE mode. All that on RELEASE. And that's coming from a very spoiled gamer hardly impressed by anything. Massive W.
You are way too nice, without pinnacle bosses, the bosses category should get no more than a 3 and that's being generous, also that effects endgame score lowering it to like a 5 at best. It will improve over time but with your current rating, the game is like a 27/10 once all the missing content is added. Wait theory crafting is 9.5... where is pob... I have 2k hours in Pob, that would make for a 9.5. Theorycrafting in lastepoch is not too bad to give them credit a solid 5/10. In comparison D4 bossing is 2, endgame is 0 and theorycrafting is 0
I think cycle challenges with MTX rewards (akin to PoEs) would do wonders for LE's end game and longevity. It's always fun trying to get 40/40 with the PoE seasons (i never have, but i've 36'd a few times lmao), and I think that'd translate well to LE. And I think a quick fix to make sets viable is to just let them also get LP like the uniques. Being able to slam sets would be pretty fun.
Skins, and character graphics are something they didn’t focus on much at all for release. They wanted to make the game good first. They did say that as the game succeeds and they have the funds, they plan to fully face lift character models, item skin models, and etc.
While I haven't played a lot of builds the 4 that I have all felt amazing and different to play. And the thing I love too is the builds come online fast unlike in D4 where a lot of builds need a combo of Uniques to feel good and thats like late game. Like I do a druid almost every time in D4 and I just kinda stop around 80ish cause I don't have a certain unique usually.
with regards to crafting there are 2 points in the early game, that show you a crafting forge and say hey, you should try crafting. its a clickable, glowing questlike thing that you have to walk past - you actually cant miss it (the first one), then the second one is an actual blue quest that says go down here to the forge. and the skill respeccing is very clear, one option removes points and one despecialises the skill entirely, the game makes it very easy to understand the difference, if you can read.
Back in the day when POE had only 4 acts, Malachai was really hard, and also optional. We used to jump to maps to gain more levels before going back and killing him.
I agree with this review for the most part. Not so much on the theorycraft especially if you check out the builds of the week on PoE but thats some pretty twisted stuff going down
How can the campaign be an 8.5? Then D4's campaign would be a 25/10... the campaign (apart from the graphics) is literally the only thing where LE shows that it's "only" an indie game. There's no budget behind this and you can see it in every stage of the campaign, on top of a story that everyone has forgotten 2 minutes after the final boss. Fortunately, this doesn't matter at all once you've completed it (and that's where D4 currently starts to suck) but giving this campaign an 8.5 is very misleading. Heck, this chart even makes it look like LE is better during the campaign than during the endgame and that's just outrageous. I literally started having real fun with the game once I was done with the story and I know a lot of people feel this way.
he did this alot there is no way this is a decent scoring how can the campaign be anything near poes? I can barley count on 2 hands the memorable fights and bosses and characters and moments in poes main campaign I literally couldnt tell you a single boss in last epoch or anything that actually happened that was a anywhere near poes experience. he says the end game is a 8? thats actually insane like truly mind blowing to me then he says the builds for last epoch is higher than poe WHAT? thats actually insane
He should also mention the combat system, art direction and sound where i feel PoE is on another level. Every area is really well done with unique enemies. In LE you get maybe top 3 enemy variations from level 1 to 10. The combat feels very clunky compared to PoE as well where melee hits in PoE actually sends enemies flying and there is actual "weight" to the combat. Considering 99% of what you do in aRPG is actual combat it doesnt matter how good LE is on the other stuff. PoE just feels way better for me anyways.
PoE campaign was terrible what are you all smoking? I love campaigns and tried do hard multiple times to pay attention and get into the campaign but it is so boring, poorly executed I've never come even close to the half way point of that campaign before I'm just clicking through everything. That campaign was trash.
Big help to the crafting system would be to mark the affixes as rare or common. Just need some sort of indication that you should keep certain affixes and others you can trash. Would be great to put that in the loot filter as well.
I've settled for just re coloring desired affixes, and Highlighting + Recolouring higher tiers of desired affixes. It helps friends who are.intomidated by loot filter not make a scuffed hierarchy that ends up hiding loot they might want.
I am having so much fun with it that I bought one of the supporter packs. I bought the game like a year ago so i figured the least i could do was support future development especially since they aren't trying to nickel and dime me.
14 minutes in, very good review so far! As expected from you. One thing I'm missing here as someone who hasnt played this game and was looking for your review, is quick in-game clips of what you are talking about. For example you were talking about slamming exhalted into other items, it would have been nice to see a clip to have a visual of what you are saying at that time.
The concept of finding that perfect Lp3 - Lp4 unique for your build and then combining it with your best exalted to make a one off legendary is absolutely amazing- fuck grinding mats for duriel when I can make my own Ubers in LE
Yea Lagon is when it just stops being a lawnmower dungeon game and you have to start paying attention to resists and where you spent your points etc... I don't even think I did any crafting until I hit that fight and realized if I don't want to get 1 shotted I should probably get some cold / lightning resists. Also my only complaint that is not mentioned is the Gambling. Personally I am a gambler at heart (I live off and on in Vegas) - and I probably spent a few hundred k gold on gambling when I just need something better for the 1 slot or what ever - I have never seen anything good. I mean not even 1 unique. I get the game wants you to craft but maybe since you can't really do much with uniques anyway - toss a few more of those into the random gambler? (Maybe they did and I have the worst luck on the planet). But I freaking love this game so far. Now if someone could make a game that combines the story / lore of BG 3 with the gameplay of this I would be super happy.
Doesn't the game explicitly tell you there are no uniques to be had from it? When you hover over an item in the Gambler, there's a blurb that says "can't be unique/set" IIRC.
If you want to gamba uniques you need to do the soulfire bastion dungeon and talk to the NPC at the end. He's the mega gamba mechanic. The gambler you find in town is only good to get a good item base (good implicits) that you then craft to get decent gear for leveling
@@StormKnightSera Yes that should change at least for uniques. That said - I did not read that blurb because when I approach the gambler I would only be half paying attention and just looking at my own gear. LOL! But to be fair wtf else am I going to spend the gold on when I am only level 40 ish? I could be dropping gold on Shattering runes but I honestly get enough during runs. But yes thanks for pointing that out - I should probably read more huh?
@@TheRealAstro_Id like to see uniques be catagorized by function, and act as loose 'set' items. For example, flag certain uniques as 'Minion', and you get bonuses for wearing 2, 3, or 4 of the same Category... that way you're not restricted by specific ones to wear, and you'd probably have multiple options at multiple gear slots to choose from.
Am I missing anything or would they be balanced by just giving them LP? Would anything TOO broken happen? And if so, you could deal with those specific instances.
If you view sets in LE as a tier below uniques it’s not bad. I view them as something you can use that give you at least some sort of bonus while I am farming for my actual items. If this was the actual intent of set items in LE I’m totally fine with that.
Speaking as a longer term player devs are aware sets are currently weaker then uniques since adding LP on top of their set bonuses woupd make them too far goated over standard uniques. Not sure if the devs have a solution yet but they are looking at set items
Exiled mages are a neat event. I noticed their "drop rate" dropped at launch. Edit: Theorycrafting saved my bladedancer. My buddy and I had a hard time with the Lagon trial, I looked a few things over, did some respecs, and now I have 3 movement skills... and Lagon became quite fun for me. The cooldown management is on par with what I deal with in LOL, so I find myself getting some sick combos down. Shift-dancing strike-cinder strike-smokebomb never stops being fun. (Side question: anyone else see a lot of LOL influence in the rogue skills?) Edit2: 8.5 seems fair.... I feel like we'll need to re-visit this score in Feb 2025. A few tweaks here, some added content there, and it could hit in the low 9s.
18:33 a good thing about the bosses in my opinion is the fact that if you die, they restore their health so you have to beat them in one go, that is what a true boos fight is in any game, I really liked that. When I played POE's campaign bosses doesnt restore health so you can die a million times and eventually beat those bosses just doing cheap damage in every try, wich is very anticlimatic.
Perfect video. For me at least. I hate reviews where the score are dragged down because of a technical issue because it will obviously be fixed. And all the scores in this video is exactly what would rate. Great job.
I recently came across a player (on RUclips) Uncle Jay. He showed in his video a build: the spamming of he Dive-bomb by shadow falcons with the talent to prolong the smoke bomb by hitting of smoke's place, with shadows and shadow daggers. Essentially this is an eternal smoke bomb, shadows, daggers, shadow falcons, etc. I'm not sure exactly, but perhaps these smoke bombs are even superimposed on one another. Very cool assembly, I haven’t seen anything like it on Maxroll (although maybe I just didn’t notice it).
Thanks for the review, Raxx. I have sunk about 15 hours into the game so far, so I cannot say I am familiar with everything you talked about, but one thing I myself feel is the game gets more fun the more you play. I wasn't super into it at first but find myself liking it more and more. Its the opposite of D4, which has an amazing first play through and then falls off
I agree with most of what you said, but I would argue that Last Epoch's endgame and build variety/possibilites arent even in the same universe as path of exile currently.
yeah when half of the class are trash, few skill node/tree not working as intented or just doing another things instead, many skills dont have synergies at all in their trees compared to another meta skill, no way LE build variety are that high, he is on copium
As what you would call a veteran gamer being nearly 40years old, you are spot on (New Zealand for "correct"). I've watched your Vids through multiple ARPG,s... I've been playing RPG's since 'PAGAN" original.. IRL Magic "The Gathering" Cards... Before any half decent speed internet. Way to many hours into WoW, PoE and other game's like of... LE has all the right idea's in place... (sorry if that sounds like I'm disagreeing with you on any level) End game for any game is always going to be a drop off point, i've played LE for a while now prior to Alpha, as long as EHG stays in touch with the community, its a win.. As we are all aware "Bliz" has lost touch on an extraneous level with the community, at the end of the day, those who are OG gamer's have seen it all, LE is pretty much Cracked it... fundamental's are in place, just some fine tuning now.. kudo's to EHG if you happen to see this comment, you have made an OG gamer happy... even though my boys at GGG are from my home land, long storey short.. think how us gamer's think and you'l win.. #D4notBadJustNeedsAHmmmmmmmmm
I agree. Personally I don't have much trouble with the quest interface and it doesn't bother me. I do wish the markers on the map were colored more differently for the storyline quest vs side quests. I often have to open the full map to find out which is which
I couldn't agree with you more. I am somewhat new to ARPGs, I did not start playing until about 3 or 4 years into D3. I have blasted through that, through D4, and now through POE and LE, and I have to agree that in the "modern era" of ARPGS, LE just feels more complete for a game that JUST launched and this is the company's first game. I am very impressed. I have found it easy to pick up, easy to maneuver, and after playing POE, the crafting system in LE just feels good. Going backward from POE to LE, I am not overwhelmed with crafting, and it provides just the right amount of challenge balanced with reward. I am loving LE, and it is definitely going to be something I put a lot of time into. I hope D4 takes note of what the competition is completely capable of, and starts making the correct changes to make the game better so fans have a lot of choices in this market. As it stands, I think POE2 and LE are going to be the frontrunners for quite a while. And that is okay with me. Another great video man!
@@rayasish you had a city you could invest gold/resources in - new buildings you bought for the city would give you stats or modifiers that acted as a form of meta progression. It was a cool idea, not that well executed.
Great review. I think if a comparison is being made between the qualities of PoE vs. LE, players need to remember that LE is fresh out of the bucket. PoE has had years to develop and refine all their gameplay styles and events. This may come across as an obvious point to some people, but when the full scope is taken into consideration, it is truly impressive how much LE has matured given its age and development studio.
PC Gamer gave it a 60 out of 100 for not having enough action. Honestly, the combat feels floaty, not just kinematics but also in terms of character feedback (when hitting something, when getting hit). D4 is much meatier in that regard. But in all honestly, reducing the score to being basically mediocre game for something that is irrelevant to any game of this genre feels high unprofessional. I also feel that it's at least 8 out of 10, despite the temporary server issues.
Some things I think they could improve from my time with the game so far that weren't mentioned here. A Quick display of what other skills are directly affected on the nodes of other skills. Think things like Healing Hands and Smite, where there are quite a few nodes across skill trees that can cause them to be activated with other buttons. Would be nice if they had either some modifier keys to press at skill selection that would highlight various connections to the moused over skill, or small grids of other skills icons separated into categories. At the moment, you basically have to read through all of your available skills trees to find those more direct interactions. A problem that will hopefully be fixed pretty soon I found extremely annoying and also to do with skill trees, I found tooltips to "overlap" quite often. One example is, I played Forgeguard Offline to learn the game, I still don't know what "Furnace" does, it's not in the "G" Guide, and if I press Alt to see the extra details, at least half of it is behind the node tooltip. I also found it can be really hard to tell if a lot of Life/Mana regen are actually working, on Sentinel/Forgeguard I still have no idea if "Life Steal % on Melee" actually applies to Shield Bash, it's listed as a "Melee" tag, but I never see that burst of health, I'd almost say Life Steal counts more like a standard Health Regen boost at this point rather than an immediate return. On the mana side, this past week I've been playing Shaman with Gathering Storm as a ranged skill with the node for getting MP back on hit, but it still feels like my MP is just going down when I spam it despite based on the tooltips, my return should sometimes be double the cost. Lastly is probably a niche problem, but I found on my Shaman running Thorn Totem occasionally "Unspent Points", and not in edge case user error/accident ways like "didn't really click it" or "disconnected while doing skills" I had a point where the Cold Totem that I had been using for a few hours at this point "Unspent Itself" after I picked up the "Ring Mass Drop", only noticed it because the totems weren't icy blue anymore, went back in and I had a skill point and the cold conversion open, felt off in a way that didn't make me feel like it was my mistake. For things touched on in the video. For the more casual, less technically skilled player, I think the numerical difficulty ramp up from Lagon's Temple through Majasa was a bit too much. But especially for those 2 bosses, I felt encouraged to play, and did play, in ways I would deem "not fun" (Did both on Forgeguard, and I'm just 2 areas before Majasa on Shaman). Mechanically I think they are fine, they make sense, I understand what went wrong, but a few skills just were at the point of 1 Shotting me or nothing. At first I would check my sheets, notice oh hey my resists for them weren't quite there, go to town for a minute adjust my idols towards a resists focus get a few more crafting rounds for defenses, made me think of D4 S1 Resists. Come back, nope mechanic is just going to kill me. On Lagon it was the Cold/Physical Spit in Phase 1/3, and on Majasa the Lightning Rocks Upheaval move, and her entire Phases 3 on segments. I think out of those 2 bosses, the only part I felt was fun as a player was Phase 2 of Lagon where you were killing adds and dodging waves. Lagon I've done the Abusing Verticality Strat on both chars (do this wrong with Shield Throw and it blocks your attacks too), and on Majasa I basically just ran in circles for 20m with my Manifest Armor doing the bulk of the work and me just Shield Throw Potshotting when she actually decided to attack it or did some stationary actions. Majasa having effectively 4 Health Bars was also not very fun for what was already more of an endurance fight. Honestly a bit worried about the Majasa fight whenever I do a non-minion build against her. This area of the game is what made me question whether the advice to "Not to follow a build guide, and try to pick what you like your first run through" was sound advice coming out of the community. On New Players and Crafting. Rune of Shattering is the lynchpin here, at the start of the game as a new player, they are too rare and too expensive at the same time. As an overall part of the game over a given character/cycles lifetime I think they are tuned pretty reasonably. For a solid 4-5 Chapters your are trying to choose between "Stash Space for a few dozen items to shatter/swap later" and "a handful of Runes of Shattering", then from around Chapter 6 to postgame, you basically sit on a stash of items with affixes you use and a handful of runes of shattering and waiting to run out of a shard while crafting. Best thing I think they could do here, is have a guaranteed Rune of Shattering pop out of Affix Shrines, with maybe a chance for a few. Overall they cut a nice gemstone, needs a bit more polishing once it gets more time with a general audience as opposed to the more tailor-made audience an actual development beta test brings in. The development team has been putting their responses to feedback far enough out there for anyone looking for it to easily find it, that most reasonable people can avoid spiraling into a delusion of negative assumptions that silence can bring. Hopefully the confidence they put out and the plans they present pan out as well as we are lead to believe.
I think our experiences are very similar, although my campaign as a necromancer was very stupidly easy, I only had to craft for the first time on the storm god boss you mention, get some resistance, and then again on the final boss for some poison resist. I honestly AFK teleported through the entire campaign and my minions killed everything on screen, never an issue, good speed, not like race speed but fast enough to keep flowing. I've had less time to play so only in normal monolith's now, but I am enjoying them, and so far I have no complaints, highly suggest to anyone who like this style of game that it's a must play.
great review. i dont mind the lack of deep endgame as it gives me an opportunity to try a ton of alts without worrying about level capping any given character
I love the game. Currently my favorite ARPG. I actually have a Necro build that has no direct attack ability! All my damage actually comes from minions. All 5 of my abilities summon something, I have never played an ARPG that that is possible with (I have never played POE) and I love it!
I would agree with most of these, One thing they could do is maybe when you get to 2nd town area, is that you get a basic crafting quest, that basically talks you through upgrading a quest item so you understand the VERY basics, because it is once you look at it logically my only thing i would love if you could respec a class, even to the point of having to do a quest something like kill a clone of your current character in a boss fight that allows you to respec because i just not a fan of having to level the same archetype - ive levelled 2 rogues and 2 acolytes - because for me im playing as many classes as i can before season 1 Yes i played CBT but the classes are so diffrerent i want to get feel before i settle on 2 or 3 main classes in seasons.
One QoL addition I want is being able to hover my cursor above any element of the map (minimap, overlayed map and big world map) and to get some info of what it is.
@@peterretep1010 Dunno if the campaign is 8.5, i'd give it a lower rating more like 7 because the gameplay, loot system and so on is so bland. The open world format also makes things very samey, no real memorable zones nor anything. Maybe just hell was cool and the cinematic but that's it. The single best thing about D4 is the graphics, as a 3D artist and game designer im very impressed, looks gorgeous. From the game design part of things, im also very impressed how weak their game design considering their resources. Goes to show that no amount of money makes a designer good, and the bigger the corporate ladder the less passion goes into things.
Spot on. The campaign was actually really fun and well done. And then they did absolutely nothing with it, the only good thing in the game and you run it once and never touch it again lol.
New fan here, Rax. I love your comprehension on all mechanics of this game. Youre truly a connoisseur for these kinds of titles. I appreciate that you can get on and see at anyone's level. This game, for me, is fucking perfect 😅
Most complete game. Super agree. With a few changes to QoL, pinnacle bosses, key ring, more end game and once we hit seasons… this has the potential to be the best ARPG ever.
the one thing i really wish they straight up stole from poe is specialized stash tabs and affinities, being able to ctrl+click almost any item and it go exactly to the tab i want would be a massive QoL
the game really surprised me in a good way, obviously there's room for improvements, including some QoL features that POE already have but overall great game
my first lagon was in 2 player co-op. his paladin just keeps us alive and heals through everything, so I did not have to move very much in the fight and could eat mostly everyt damage. 2nd time we did it for fun and to help someone he did one misstep, died and I, not having learned anything about the fight before (because of the heal) followed him shortly. I will do him solo 100% again before I do a lot of other stuff now ^^
8.5-9.0 is a fair score for the state of the game rn. I’ve leveled up my acolyte to 95, and I’ve just recently blasted my rogue to lvl 40 in 3 hours of gameplay. Love how easy it is to blast through the campaign btw. I used circle of fortune my first character, now going for the easier route (I hope) with the trade guild. Want to make my marksman rogue my main farming character, really loving the playstyle and power it brings to the table. As for now I’m super excited for the future of this game, keep the servers and bugs down, and we will have a great game in our hands!
I died once to Lagon, Going forward that will be a good test for me if I have a handle on my build/gear going into endgame. The enemy density gets pretty tense in the level leading up to him too. It seems like a good check. Fun fight!
This is a great review. What i don't like about some of the others content creators is that they keep comparing this game to a 10 years old game that has more devs and more money.
Eh I just did monoliths from 27 as shaman. I don't agree you must craft during the campaign. I do agree crafting should be more explained and encouraged. I didn't even know about sealing, removal rune(not shattering) or anything else for years until just now with the launch where I even thought uniques were garbage all this time due to my lack of legendary forging knowledge. The only thing I did was shatter certain stats that's it. I would also say I'd like them to have another separate endgame type of a time trials thing like diablo 3 greater rifts. Time Attack is fun. Varied endgames would be great as well as improving endgames to be more impactful than they already are. Last epoch explains more than most games but there's a few more things they need to express properly. Such as damaging ailments being separate from DoTs. Me and my friend got confused on DoT debuffs explaination because we were actually doing ailment builds of frostbite(me) and poison(him). There's also some passive that gives damage to another friend unless she gets hit but she didn't know if enemy floor dots would count towards disabling it. There's also something like for my shaman tempest strike, I couldn't tell if it was actually using my tornado tree passives entirely because it wasn't splitting into two, thankfully training dummy let me test most of it but at least that one I'll chalk it up to fresh rework has some bugs. There's also something like knowing what exactly is distance, I don't know. Such as Shaman's leap has a node for increased damage per meter distance but I can't tell the ranges I usually leap. I just want a full campaign skip with idol/passives given rather than having to interact with any of it again. I don't care about the attribute points. It's appreciated that you can skip most of it to get to monoliths at least. Skipping to economy, I would outright put it above every game just for the fact you can't resell from the market. That alone fixes a lot of economy issues in most games. You also have to interact with the game to continue with the economy, that is also phenominal cause in warframe, at a certain point I just do not have to play the game and can just trade my life away and I know several other games like that. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a merchant but playing the game should aid being said merchant. Trading feels great so far with resonance with friends rather than forced to drop and trade at that exact moment like diablo 3 but not just free trade like a mmorpg. I disagree with saying the BiS is just exalted most of the time just because of legendary forging, in the past I also thought uniques were underpowered but the fact that you can just shove 1-3(4 unrealistic outside of possibly fortune faction) exalted item stats into a legendary and the only thing that may not be matched are implicits is huge. Only times I would not bother trying to shove an exalted into a unique is if currently the unique stats don't outweigh exalted mana regen in the implicits. Yes set items suck most of the time, only one I've used so far is the mage invoker shock rings for my shaman's cold build. Aside from that I would never really use set items with anything unless they were buffed for legendary forging. I would even later replace my shock rings for oceareon if I don't feel I need the set rings ward tbh.
As a casual, this game didn't hook me. Art, design, and a general lack of polish were the biggest factors. Slow loading between areas is also annoying. Uniques aren't cool or powerful by themselves. Crafting removes the excitement of finding a good drop. With all that said, this game is pretty good for its price
Interesting view, I have the opposite. Sound design and graphics went up a lot with 1.0 and feel very good now (except rogue, these blade sounds do nothing for me). Uniques are build defining and can be insanely strong. And you cant craft a super powerful item off a crap base, so you need that near perfect drop, to craft the perfect item.
Hi there ! I don't get what's not working for the quests tracker There's an icon at the top for the era and then another one next to the relevant zone. Go, kill or talk, done, no ?
i think its that there are multiple areas in each era and it doesnt always zoom to the relevant sub zone. also theres a lot of broken connections in the pathing for time travel that isnt immediately obvious. Sometimes tracking/targetting a specific side quest when you have multiple is annoying as well
When you mentioned the tracker I was like "yep, for sure." I was playing my new alt yesterday, and when I reached End of Time the quest tracker gave me the main quests for chapter 3 and chapter 4 simultaneously. Not that I could skip the rest of the Ruined Era; it just told me I could speak to Gaspar about the Imperials. My main didn't seem to have a problem when I first went through the campaign, but maybe it's because I didn't know any better at the time. Still, that's a super minor complaint on my part; the game is amazing.
Campaign to me is at most a 6 and that's because it is saved by the crafting system/gear progression and the respec opportunities. The story is pretty bland, it is waaay too long. They could easily cut down on the running/zones without losing out on anything. A few of the bosses are nice. End game is also 6 at most but that's pretty good for a newly released game. Lots to work on. Again saved by the crafting system. Builds at 9.5 is too generous. I feel a lot of them are very same-y (after testing for years) but again yes, it is a lot for a newly released game. Compared to D4 it is a dream. Otherwise I mostly agree
Personally I feel it's sort of wrong to rate things more highly because the game is new. Things should be rated as they are right now not how you think they will be in the future. Thats why I agree and would have also rated a bunch of things lower
Great review. I love multiple builds/alts up to 25 online chars. Also, I think perhaps you should rate a category as a 10 if it is in your mind so very good. "Perfect" is such a subjective term, and presents its own "bias" (not to assign a perfect score). Anyhow, thanks so much for your review!
Its great to greet a new player on ARPG scene, and LE is a big one. I hope they give game strong support, and I'm agree with raxx that this game is completest of all ARPGs on launch. We got a new way to spend our time(and probably money) and this is the best news for all fans of the genre. Cheers 🎉🎉🎉
LE is already my #2 ARPG despite being undercooked still. And it does some big core stuff better than the #1 already, imagine what it can do in the future. #1 is PoE. PoE has better endgame content and a deeper range of stuff that you can do in the game, but I genuinely think LE has a better skill system, a better crafting system, a better trading system, and it has better overall combat because PoE is plagued with instant "one shots" that you cannot react to and the entire game is balanced around either being at 100% life and having enough defenses or not having enough defenses and immediately getting deleted with no in-between. I agree with your final score, PoE is a 9 and LE is a 8.5, if LE had the 11 years of expansions and refinement that PoE did it'd probably be a 10.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
The moment you get to the first encampment, they should say something like "Your weapon looks worn. Here, take these and craft a replacement." and give the player a health shard and stat shard depending on class or something and make it an actual quest step to progress. Early, basic introduction and it gets the player looking at the system earlier on.
yeah, game is so underdeveloped in that department, everything looks scuffed without any tutorials.
Just making the game a little harder where not everything is the campaign just drops dead when you look at it might have worked to.
There is a part in the game where you click on a forge for a quest step and when you click a crafting tutorial pops up. First time anything new happens a tutorial box pops up. Unless that has changed for 1.0
That's a great idea actually! It remids me of Dragon Nest, in the main quest at the very begining, you had a quest with 2~3 steps teaching you how to destroy/upgrade an item!
I was too afraid of wasting crafting resources in LE, so i finished the campaign and THEN started to mess with the crafting system.
Agreed, they should also do an early game tutorial on showing/using the loot filter system.
I absolutely LOVE this game. It's the perfect middleground between POE (which is WAY too much of a pain in the ass for me) and D4. So far I've used a totem Shaman and Minion necro and both have been absolute blast. It's crazy how powerful my minions feel as a necromancer. I only have 1 actual spell and the rest are minion abelites and it feels really good to actually be able to rely on them instead of so many games necros where the minions just feel like meatshields while you have to do all the damage yourself. And the offline mode! Every, single, game, that can be played single player should have an offline mode. I can only play a few hours a week, and depending on the week maybe not all. I'm never going to be on any ladders so I don't care about any of that. I've been playing offline since day 1 so none of the server issues have affected me at all.
I’ll be playing last epoch 2 for many years like I did w/ Diablo 2. Great game
Great review. On crucial feature I don't see many people highlighting is the restriction on reselling items you buy on the auction house in the Merchant's Guild. This is critical to keeping out flippers, RMT, bots, and scammers. It really helps to keep the market for the players that are playing the game and not people trying to play micro-economics simulator at the expense of everyone else.
Shut up and sell me all your coconuts!!
I've only played the mage as both a spellblade and runemaster and I cannot believe how well each spell works and how easy it is to sip coffee read abilities and decide on a skill path. The fact that I don't have to overwhelm myself reading and trying to understand a build guide to play the game how I want to makes it so easy to enjoy
One of the problems with spellblade is the amount of viable builds you can play is pretty limited. And nobody mentions sorcerer because runemaster is what sorcerer was trying to be.
Thats the biggest impact LE has had for me. An ARPG that I myself can theorycraft and make my own build with abilities I find enjoyable to play with whilst being able to clear end game content. I struggle finding enjoyment out of copy pasta a maxxroll build to be able to clear end game content like most other ARPGs on the market.
I mean if you really want brainlessly simple there is always good ol D4 😊
@matson95 ??? Just dont copy pasta if you dont like it? What other ARPG do you need Copy pasta for to play in endgame? Didnt DarthMicro finish all POE content on some shield guy he made up on his first blind playthru?
Spells in this game don't have a ''crisp'' like in PoE, terrible design.
You forgot the most important QoL consideration that LE has made - Offline Mode!!!
RIGHT even if i only play online gotta appreciate the fact they gave you this choice
This was a godsend
I've heard so many people asking for that offline mode on others ARPG, I'm so glad it's implemented here... from the beginning... it's just amazing!
@@natel7382it was since Kickstarter a online game with a chat and login.
The steam true offline mode, is a 1.0 present for players, who need a game for the "island 🏝️" and is totally new.
They had never since Kickstarter a non login client.
having offline mode is just absolutely amazing for me, as my area only gets comcast internet and its really really bad, I even tried getting there 1Gig speed but the internet is really bad in my area. I cant play path of exile because my internet is shit, so having offline makes me enjoy this game so much, I love it
last epoch > Path of exile
Thanks for all you do for the ARPG community Raxx! It's only up from here, base game is solid :)
Nice profile pic :)
@@jacksonx7251 Lol you as well, a fine color choice! 😆
About crafting: I've gotten road blocked a few times in mono's, gone to my stash and crafted gear that help me best those challenges and make my toon better. What a good system 🎉🎉
Same here. Got wrecked by one of the first bosses, and saw the message: "you were killed by X ability with fire damage". Crafted some fire rez and HP on my gear - problem solved.
I started playing the game on launch day (in offline since the servers were on fire). So I played every quests and side quests once to see the story and the lore. I also did every regular monoliths once for the same reason. I just finished the last of them an hour ago and it took me nearly 80 hours to do this. For 35$ US (cost more to us canadians!), this is an awesome deal and as soon as I can afford it, I am planning to go to their shop and see what is in there.
And as I enter empowered monoliths and I go to the arena and dungeons, it means even more time spent in this game. So a big win for me for sure.
I still had like 200 mtx currency from the multiplayer update (i think it was given out as an apology for server issues but cant remember) last year so i held it the whole time and bought a new armor set for free 😮😊
i will probably go to shop too at season 2 to reward their work
The Lagon fight was fantastic, definitely a highlight of the campaign.
You run left and right, then run in circles and then left and right again :D or
You teleport behind the stair and attack safely 1st and 3rd phase, if the build is op, you 1 phase him xd
LostArk got a Raid name Valtan, its not the hardest when it comes to mechanics, its actually the shortest and easiest, but it is the best Raid out there.
Its about the execution, its memorable because of the theme and maybe some dialogue or the vibe or just because you can do the mechanics and see whats happening in the screen, unlike some 666m$ game.
@@Cenzurat
Orobyss and Julra are also pretty fun in my book
Wanted to punch the screen a few times but its pretty good when you defeat it. Majasa is really good also. I cant think of a bad boss fight actually
@@Cenzurat you can describe any boss fight that way and make it sound bad. Just dodge Malenia and hit her when you have a chance for example.
As someone who is brand new to this genre of game. You are correct, the crafting is intimidating. I have no idea what to do
Only started myself since full launch, it's no where near as complicated as you think, just watch 1 video if you don't have friends to help you and then just ay around with stuff, they are only crafting mats you will get tons, so just mess around with the crafting system and you will pick it up easy.
Considering you're new to the genre I can understand why you feel that way but as someone who's played a lot of these kinds of games let me tell you that LE crafting is basically as easy and intuitive as you're going to get.
Just click buttons, if in doubt add resistance or health
Don't try path of exile crafting hahahha
Just try it. Its very simple.
For a just-launched game, LE is incredibly good. I'm very very excited for its future.
The gameplay is just addicting. I haven't no lifed a game like this since maybe Wrath
Rax is right about builds being the best part of the game. Every build i tried became powerful & fun after running just a few zones with a refined loot filter for the build. Its insanely easy & rewarding to theorize & execute different builds. For example i havent seen anyone playing Lightning Smite Paladin but for me it has been the best build, absoluting melting every map killing enemies and bosses where they stand. I love the build craft in this game
Thats why i laugh at all these content creators making "guides" like LE is the definition of do whatever you want
@@ayelmao42069 Yep, you just start a char, test a few skills and read through them. And on the way of leveling you see... ohh i want to go for this with my char, and just build in this direction. After a few levels... ohh new Skill with synergies, i go for this... and BOOM! Damage!
Something I think is very important is adding group play. One of the best parts of d3 was being able to just party search and run different game mechanics with others. You get to see their builds and show off yours as you fly through the content.
Would LOVE if they implemented this. You could have a monolith party matchmaking. Dungeon matchmaking. Etc
I'm having a lot of fun with Last Epoch it is really a pleasant surprise how good it is.
Your assessment of Casual/New category is spot on as far as my gaming experience is concerned. While I do not have much time to play daily, for that very reason, I want to be able to understand the game mechanics as well as I can, so that my limited time in the game is spent productively and not just mashing buttons. Those "other" developers who don't think that casual players deserve or need explanations, really need to take their business elsewhere.
The speed of going in and out of monos are also great for QoL. Offline mode too.
Also just want to highlight how beautiful loot filter and stash tabs are :D
The new obsession with loot filters is one of the strangest things. You have to ask, why does so much loot need to drop if it is going to be filtered away from view anyway? ARPGs keep making this mistake since D3 and POE. Diablo 2 had this perfected already. The right amount of loot drops.
@@seagullphilosopher2173 bad take. As you progress, you’ll want to see upgrades only. Loot filters prevent you from seeing non-upgrades without sorting through them. Why does that sound so complicated to you?
@@kudbettinkohen1935yep very bad take I can agree with you 👍🏻
The one issue I encounter often, is when yo upgrade affixed, the tool tips break, and appear massive on screen with broken text. I can only fix it by closing and reopening the game. The other thing on the crafting, if your mouse moves toward your inventory, it just closes the affix menu when you're going to select the one you want. Other than that this game has been so good.
YES the quest tracker has not worked for me- so I wander back and forth through eras- like wait a second- go to here and talk to this guy, I just did that- so I end up clearing all the same paths again- I thought it was just me- Thank YOU!
You're so right about casuals and understanding the game. I've been a gamer all my life, but now I'm pushing 40, and I don't have all the time in the world to play and learn every detail by putting in a lot of hours. But I'm still a hardcore gamer at heart and I will always try to min/max a game, even though I'll never be a blaster like you.
It's why I find PoE too much. There are too many systems and things to track, that I give up before I get to the really fun part.
Whoa, I just watched this after buying the game on Steam. I had no idea all future content will be free, expansions included. I'm pumped to play tonight!
How are they gonna pay for their servers then? This is wrong and I hate how people like you think it's okay for developers to not get their fair share for the work they do.
@@Venvaneless - What are you blabbing on about? They're the ones saying they're giving future content out for free. Since I'm enjoying the game, I would most likely have purchased an expansion for it anyways. I also upgraded to the Ultimate edition to kick more money to them, which I think they deserve. Plus, they will most likely make money off selling cosmetics, which I find they are more way generous with than what Blizzard is doing with their way overpriced skins. You might not want to jump the gun next time and just assume something.
IIRC you played LE/TS Deadeye, SRS Hiero, Boneshatter Jugg for Gauntlet on POE by following a guide. I do agree that its easier in LE to make your own build. But in terms of theorycrafting builds, POE still wins. You may not be able to make builds that could blast juiced T16s or cruise through uber bosses yourself, but self concocted builds that could clear maps and all contents just fine is pretty much doable without a guide (see DM arc of surging). In terms of builds and theorycrafting, poe is just way above LE imo. First set of characters for me in poe was a self-concocted Poison Cobra Lash Assassin and ED/C Trickster. The skill tree was not mega optimized (like you would find in build guides) but i could still clear Sirus and all league-specific contents just fine. The theorycrafting in poe is just way too good, that you could spend a whole session in Path of Building.
I daresay that the skill tree in Last Epoch is bad-mediocre 'cause it does not change the way you play too much, as its mostly stat increases. While in POE you have keystones such, "you can't miss attacks but you can't crit", "life leech is doubled but can't regen", "Life is 1, immune to chaos damage CI", "Eldritch Battery: Energy shield covers mana instead" and many more.
Not trying to be hostile or anything, just surprised you made the score to be the same as poe when i think its pretty clear cut that poe is way better. If its about it being easier to make your own builds, i think it would be in another point for accessability. Or just Last Epoch being way easier that you could clear high end game contents on an objectively shittier builds compared to meta.
The fact that you can spend a whole session in Path of Building is exactly why a lot of players are turned off by the complexity of PoE. It's fun for more hardcore players, and it obviously offers more meaningful choices, but the sheer amount of mechanics and interactions that you have to know to make a build is overwhelming, and not in a good way. Not to mention that the game is unforgiving and doesn't really allow you to test anything as respec points are limited.
There is much more to say about a game that is able to simplify theorycrafting so it's able to be enjoyed by a wider array of people, while also making it feel satisfying when you are able to make an efficient build. Also, saying that LE's skill tree is bad-mediocre is a hilariously bad take.
They're both good for different reasons. Personally I'd rather kill myself than have to spend more than 30 minutes looking at PoB to determine if my build is any good. I'd rather just build something by reading the tool tips, test it, and make changes along the way :)
@@jaydiism Oops. I meant the passive tree not the skill tree. The individual ability/skill tree itself i dont have much problem with it. Its not shallow or just stat increases as ive said. LE Good.
My entire point with the post is that you could clear contents in poe even without using pob while making your own build. At the same time, you could spend more time, actually theorycrafting, into making your build a lot more efficient or make a new one entirely out of a new mechanic you just found. I can't really describe how good the feeling of your first self made COC build or successfully transitioning to CI feels.
For new players, if you can't even manage to think a little with the initial passive tree or at least be excited about it, ARPGs is probably not the game for you. You could literally search for the damage your skill does on the tree, and path there along with some defensive or health nodes and youd do just fine. Although respeccing is a clear problem and getting fixed in poe 2.
As i said in the post, most of your arguments really is a plus for accessability rather than the actual theorycrafting part about the game. I agree with making builds is simpler and able to be enjoyed by more people is good, but thats not a plus for theorycrafting imo.
@@jaydiism And no. You do not need to know every mechanic on the tree to make a build. Im a right side enjoyer and i dont have a single clue what goes on the left side of the tree. You probably need to learn, THEORYCRAFT with mechanics, if you want to make your build better, either defensively or offensively.
The more you know and learn , the BETTER BUILDS and MORE BUILDS you can make. That is theorycrafting.
"Talent twig" man. I haven't heard that before. Spit my coffee out in laughter. So damn true
The gold and red portals in Lost Ark chaos dungeons are gone.. they now have a chance to drop fate embers(from everything, not just boss), which give an rng reward from card xp, card packs, silver, or massive gold.. upwards of 100k gold possible(but rare) which the gold/red portals were like 500gold-3k gold.
And you can potentially get multiple fate embers per chaos dungeon.
I am just getting back to Last Epoch, and very excited to see what has changed since I last played it ( I think 3-4 years ago ). I was impressed it had a good start to their endgame even in early access. I have played Path of Exile a couple of times, and it was just too much. If I gamed for a living, I am sure I would want the extra moving parts, but I have a day job, and I am happy if I manage more than 10 gaming hours in a week. Thanks for pointing out that casuals can read. I also think the fact that the classes and masteries are well balanced makes the game more approachable. Creating good builds isn't hard, but making them perfect is challenging, which is nearly ideal. I concur about the "most complete at launch" moniker. I played D3, D4, Wolcen, PoE, Grim Dawn, and Torchlight 2 might be the next best at release.
godly review, Thanks Raxx
In terms of base game at launch, LE is probably the best ARPG ever. Now the key thing is to see how they iterate from here. I have very high hopes for this game. Paired with PoE2 and maybe D4 if they get their shit together, ARPG gamers will be in gaming paradise!
Don’t forget Grim Dawn expansion this year too!
I guess you just won't bring up all the missing QoL features like a simple feature that doesn't reset campaign map progress every time you leave the zone...lol and multiplayer being way outta sync.
I fucking Hope so. They had 10 years of poe to steal from and a Community That was desperate for a new „Not complete Garbage arpg“. they just needed to take the best things of poe, d3, d2 mix it together and call it „Last Epoch“ . And That is what they did.
@@nicholasestes4028 I'm sorry but, in terms of QoL, LE is second to none. That being said, quest tracking needs some attention, and they already said they're working on it.
How I'd like to change the process of shattering for affixes is something like;
Separate the shattering from the forge.
Add a "Crucible" that is still accessible through the forge UI.
The "Crucible" interface has an inventory as large as the player inventory or one stash tab.
You can then dump all items into the crucible and shatter everything all at once, consuming the appropriate amount of Runes of Shattering in the process.
Would pair well with a "Move all items from [inventory]/[current stash tab] to the crucible." button so that you could make a dedicated stash for items you want to shatter between monos.
This gets rid of the one-by-one shattering process and turns it into something of its own loot explosion.
I agree completely with what you said about end game randomness. Its something I loved about POE even as a noob, like legion, betrayal, abyss, ect. Thats the kind of thing I want to see in all ARPGs, something that might pop up in a run that'll get you excited. Every ARPG needs a loot goblin to chase down for good stuff
One thing to note, since a lot of my friends got confused: Circle of Fortune is more of SF and not a SSF (not locking you into solo). You still can trade with people you play with, so if you want to have fun with your friends, you don't have to go Merchant's Guild for that.
Just pointing that out since many content creators keep calling it SSF while it's clearly not limiting you to the "Solo" part
The QoL is defo the strongest in the genre. The filters, the stash, searching, the OFFLINE mode. All that on RELEASE. And that's coming from a very spoiled gamer hardly impressed by anything. Massive W.
You are way too nice, without pinnacle bosses, the bosses category should get no more than a 3 and that's being generous, also that effects endgame score lowering it to like a 5 at best.
It will improve over time but with your current rating, the game is like a 27/10 once all the missing content is added.
Wait theory crafting is 9.5... where is pob... I have 2k hours in Pob, that would make for a 9.5. Theorycrafting in lastepoch is not too bad to give them credit a solid 5/10.
In comparison D4 bossing is 2, endgame is 0 and theorycrafting is 0
Spot on review. Glad you are enjoying it.
Thanks Raxx! I bought this game cuz you recommended. Best game I've played in years. Cheers man!
I think cycle challenges with MTX rewards (akin to PoEs) would do wonders for LE's end game and longevity. It's always fun trying to get 40/40 with the PoE seasons (i never have, but i've 36'd a few times lmao), and I think that'd translate well to LE. And I think a quick fix to make sets viable is to just let them also get LP like the uniques. Being able to slam sets would be pretty fun.
Skins, and character graphics are something they didn’t focus on much at all for release. They wanted to make the game good first. They did say that as the game succeeds and they have the funds, they plan to fully face lift character models, item skin models, and etc.
While I haven't played a lot of builds the 4 that I have all felt amazing and different to play. And the thing I love too is the builds come online fast unlike in D4 where a lot of builds need a combo of Uniques to feel good and thats like late game. Like I do a druid almost every time in D4 and I just kinda stop around 80ish cause I don't have a certain unique usually.
very thorough breakdown and interesting points!
Thank you for this Rax - your reviews are always comprehensive and appreciated!
with regards to crafting there are 2 points in the early game, that show you a crafting forge and say hey, you should try crafting. its a clickable, glowing questlike thing that you have to walk past - you actually cant miss it (the first one), then the second one is an actual blue quest that says go down here to the forge. and the skill respeccing is very clear, one option removes points and one despecialises the skill entirely, the game makes it very easy to understand the difference, if you can read.
Back in the day when POE had only 4 acts, Malachai was really hard, and also optional. We used to jump to maps to gain more levels before going back and killing him.
I agree with this review for the most part. Not so much on the theorycraft especially if you check out the builds of the week on PoE but thats some pretty twisted stuff going down
How can the campaign be an 8.5? Then D4's campaign would be a 25/10... the campaign (apart from the graphics) is literally the only thing where LE shows that it's "only" an indie game. There's no budget behind this and you can see it in every stage of the campaign, on top of a story that everyone has forgotten 2 minutes after the final boss. Fortunately, this doesn't matter at all once you've completed it (and that's where D4 currently starts to suck) but giving this campaign an 8.5 is very misleading. Heck, this chart even makes it look like LE is better during the campaign than during the endgame and that's just outrageous. I literally started having real fun with the game once I was done with the story and I know a lot of people feel this way.
Agree 100%. I mean the game is ok, but this feels more like a paid ad than a review tbh
he did this alot there is no way this is a decent scoring how can the campaign be anything near poes? I can barley count on 2 hands the memorable fights and bosses and characters and moments in poes main campaign I literally couldnt tell you a single boss in last epoch or anything that actually happened that was a anywhere near poes experience. he says the end game is a 8? thats actually insane like truly mind blowing to me then he says the builds for last epoch is higher than poe WHAT? thats actually insane
D4 ls campaign was prettier but I couldn't remember a single thing about it either
He should also mention the combat system, art direction and sound where i feel PoE is on another level. Every area is really well done with unique enemies. In LE you get maybe top 3 enemy variations from level 1 to 10. The combat feels very clunky compared to PoE as well where melee hits in PoE actually sends enemies flying and there is actual "weight" to the combat. Considering 99% of what you do in aRPG is actual combat it doesnt matter how good LE is on the other stuff. PoE just feels way better for me anyways.
PoE campaign was terrible what are you all smoking? I love campaigns and tried do hard multiple times to pay attention and get into the campaign but it is so boring, poorly executed I've never come even close to the half way point of that campaign before I'm just clicking through everything. That campaign was trash.
Big help to the crafting system would be to mark the affixes as rare or common. Just need some sort of indication that you should keep certain affixes and others you can trash. Would be great to put that in the loot filter as well.
I've settled for just re coloring desired affixes, and Highlighting + Recolouring higher tiers of desired affixes. It helps friends who are.intomidated by loot filter not make a scuffed hierarchy that ends up hiding loot they might want.
I am having so much fun with it that I bought one of the supporter packs. I bought the game like a year ago so i figured the least i could do was support future development especially since they aren't trying to nickel and dime me.
14 minutes in, very good review so far! As expected from you.
One thing I'm missing here as someone who hasnt played this game and was looking for your review, is quick in-game clips of what you are talking about.
For example you were talking about slamming exhalted into other items, it would have been nice to see a clip to have a visual of what you are saying at that time.
Totally agree with you
"the talent twig" had me dying with laughter, holy thats so good
Diablo Talent Twig 😂
I just love how intuitive the game is. I'm not following any guides and I've managed to make a build that works quite well.
I think adding a journal to track quest would be a great addition for missions
There is one. Sort of anyways... It's on the world map... You can pin and unpin specific quests... 😊
The concept of finding that perfect Lp3 - Lp4 unique for your build and then combining it with your best exalted to make a one off legendary is absolutely amazing- fuck grinding mats for duriel when I can make my own Ubers in LE
and then the wrong affixes transfer over 😉 Heartbreaking. It is a great system though.
Man I'm in corruption 120+ monos now and I haven't seen a single LP3-4
when do you start seeing them at all? I understand they are rare, but jeez
Yea Lagon is when it just stops being a lawnmower dungeon game and you have to start paying attention to resists and where you spent your points etc... I don't even think I did any crafting until I hit that fight and realized if I don't want to get 1 shotted I should probably get some cold / lightning resists. Also my only complaint that is not mentioned is the Gambling. Personally I am a gambler at heart (I live off and on in Vegas) - and I probably spent a few hundred k gold on gambling when I just need something better for the 1 slot or what ever - I have never seen anything good. I mean not even 1 unique. I get the game wants you to craft but maybe since you can't really do much with uniques anyway - toss a few more of those into the random gambler? (Maybe they did and I have the worst luck on the planet). But I freaking love this game so far. Now if someone could make a game that combines the story / lore of BG 3 with the gameplay of this I would be super happy.
Doesn't the game explicitly tell you there are no uniques to be had from it? When you hover over an item in the Gambler, there's a blurb that says "can't be unique/set" IIRC.
If you want to gamba uniques you need to do the soulfire bastion dungeon and talk to the NPC at the end. He's the mega gamba mechanic.
The gambler you find in town is only good to get a good item base (good implicits) that you then craft to get decent gear for leveling
@@StormKnightSera Yes that should change at least for uniques. That said - I did not read that blurb because when I approach the gambler I would only be half paying attention and just looking at my own gear. LOL! But to be fair wtf else am I going to spend the gold on when I am only level 40 ish? I could be dropping gold on Shattering runes but I honestly get enough during runs. But yes thanks for pointing that out - I should probably read more huh?
"Set Items suck in this game, they need a massive buff" Quite true, as long as they don't treat them like D3 did.
should just remove set items from the game and make more uniques/legendaries
@@TheRealAstro_Id like to see uniques be catagorized by function, and act as loose 'set' items. For example, flag certain uniques as 'Minion', and you get bonuses for wearing 2, 3, or 4 of the same Category... that way you're not restricted by specific ones to wear, and you'd probably have multiple options at multiple gear slots to choose from.
Am I missing anything or would they be balanced by just giving them LP?
Would anything TOO broken happen? And if so, you could deal with those specific instances.
If you view sets in LE as a tier below uniques it’s not bad. I view them as something you can use that give you at least some sort of bonus while I am farming for my actual items. If this was the actual intent of set items in LE I’m totally fine with that.
Speaking as a longer term player devs are aware sets are currently weaker then uniques since adding LP on top of their set bonuses woupd make them too far goated over standard uniques. Not sure if the devs have a solution yet but they are looking at set items
Something to consider adding to these reviews: non-gameplay factors. e.g. graphics and sound, controller support, etc.
Another fair and quality review. Personally, really enjoying it.
Exiled mages are a neat event. I noticed their "drop rate" dropped at launch.
Edit: Theorycrafting saved my bladedancer. My buddy and I had a hard time with the Lagon trial, I looked a few things over, did some respecs, and now I have 3 movement skills... and Lagon became quite fun for me. The cooldown management is on par with what I deal with in LOL, so I find myself getting some sick combos down. Shift-dancing strike-cinder strike-smokebomb never stops being fun. (Side question: anyone else see a lot of LOL influence in the rogue skills?)
Edit2: 8.5 seems fair.... I feel like we'll need to re-visit this score in Feb 2025. A few tweaks here, some added content there, and it could hit in the low 9s.
18:33 a good thing about the bosses in my opinion is the fact that if you die, they restore their health so you have to beat them in one go, that is what a true boos fight is in any game, I really liked that. When I played POE's campaign bosses doesnt restore health so you can die a million times and eventually beat those bosses just doing cheap damage in every try, wich is very anticlimatic.
Perfect video. For me at least. I hate reviews where the score are dragged down because of a technical issue because it will obviously be fixed. And all the scores in this video is exactly what would rate.
Great job.
I recently came across a player (on RUclips) Uncle Jay. He showed in his video a build: the spamming of he Dive-bomb by shadow falcons with the talent to prolong the smoke bomb by hitting of smoke's place, with shadows and shadow daggers. Essentially this is an eternal smoke bomb, shadows, daggers, shadow falcons, etc. I'm not sure exactly, but perhaps these smoke bombs are even superimposed on one another. Very cool assembly, I haven’t seen anything like it on Maxroll (although maybe I just didn’t notice it).
Thanks for the review, Raxx. I have sunk about 15 hours into the game so far, so I cannot say I am familiar with everything you talked about, but one thing I myself feel is the game gets more fun the more you play. I wasn't super into it at first but find myself liking it more and more. Its the opposite of D4, which has an amazing first play through and then falls off
I agree with most of what you said, but I would argue that Last Epoch's endgame and build variety/possibilites arent even in the same universe as path of exile currently.
yeah when half of the class are trash, few skill node/tree not working as intented or just doing another things instead, many skills dont have synergies at all in their trees compared to another meta skill, no way LE build variety are that high, he is on copium
@@Lucia-qc5wqBlizzard funded bot
the most important things to me in an arpg are campaign, theory crafting and builds.
you just convinced me to buy this.
As what you would call a veteran gamer being nearly 40years old, you are spot on (New Zealand for "correct"). I've watched your Vids through multiple ARPG,s... I've been playing RPG's since 'PAGAN" original.. IRL Magic "The Gathering" Cards... Before any half decent speed internet. Way to many hours into WoW, PoE and other game's like of... LE has all the right idea's in place... (sorry if that sounds like I'm disagreeing with you on any level) End game for any game is always going to be a drop off point, i've played LE for a while now prior to Alpha, as long as EHG stays in touch with the community, its a win.. As we are all aware "Bliz" has lost touch on an extraneous level with the community, at the end of the day, those who are OG gamer's have seen it all, LE is pretty much Cracked it... fundamental's are in place, just some fine tuning now.. kudo's to EHG if you happen to see this comment, you have made an OG gamer happy... even though my boys at GGG are from my home land, long storey short.. think how us gamer's think and you'l win.. #D4notBadJustNeedsAHmmmmmmmmm
I agree. Personally I don't have much trouble with the quest interface and it doesn't bother me. I do wish the markers on the map were colored more differently for the storyline quest vs side quests. I often have to open the full map to find out which is which
I couldn't agree with you more. I am somewhat new to ARPGs, I did not start playing until about 3 or 4 years into D3. I have blasted through that, through D4, and now through POE and LE, and I have to agree that in the "modern era" of ARPGS, LE just feels more complete for a game that JUST launched and this is the company's first game. I am very impressed. I have found it easy to pick up, easy to maneuver, and after playing POE, the crafting system in LE just feels good. Going backward from POE to LE, I am not overwhelmed with crafting, and it provides just the right amount of challenge balanced with reward.
I am loving LE, and it is definitely going to be something I put a lot of time into. I hope D4 takes note of what the competition is completely capable of, and starts making the correct changes to make the game better so fans have a lot of choices in this market. As it stands, I think POE2 and LE are going to be the frontrunners for quite a while. And that is okay with me.
Another great video man!
Wolcen the idea of the endgame was better then the actual execution i would love if they could something like that though for LE
What was the endgame idea in Wolcen?
@@rayasish Outside of shitting on their players, copying D3
@@rayasish you had a city you could invest gold/resources in - new buildings you bought for the city would give you stats or modifiers that acted as a form of meta progression. It was a cool idea, not that well executed.
10/10 for not saying Diablo 4 is a better arpg than Last Epoch like Wudijo did. Guy has some kind of mental condition that needs treating.
Great review. I think if a comparison is being made between the qualities of PoE vs. LE, players need to remember that LE is fresh out of the bucket. PoE has had years to develop and refine all their gameplay styles and events. This may come across as an obvious point to some people, but when the full scope is taken into consideration, it is truly impressive how much LE has matured given its age and development studio.
PC Gamer gave it a 60 out of 100 for not having enough action. Honestly, the combat feels floaty, not just kinematics but also in terms of character feedback (when hitting something, when getting hit). D4 is much meatier in that regard. But in all honestly, reducing the score to being basically mediocre game for something that is irrelevant to any game of this genre feels high unprofessional. I also feel that it's at least 8 out of 10, despite the temporary server issues.
Some things I think they could improve from my time with the game so far that weren't mentioned here.
A Quick display of what other skills are directly affected on the nodes of other skills. Think things like Healing Hands and Smite, where there are quite a few nodes across skill trees that can cause them to be activated with other buttons. Would be nice if they had either some modifier keys to press at skill selection that would highlight various connections to the moused over skill, or small grids of other skills icons separated into categories. At the moment, you basically have to read through all of your available skills trees to find those more direct interactions.
A problem that will hopefully be fixed pretty soon I found extremely annoying and also to do with skill trees, I found tooltips to "overlap" quite often. One example is, I played Forgeguard Offline to learn the game, I still don't know what "Furnace" does, it's not in the "G" Guide, and if I press Alt to see the extra details, at least half of it is behind the node tooltip.
I also found it can be really hard to tell if a lot of Life/Mana regen are actually working, on Sentinel/Forgeguard I still have no idea if "Life Steal % on Melee" actually applies to Shield Bash, it's listed as a "Melee" tag, but I never see that burst of health, I'd almost say Life Steal counts more like a standard Health Regen boost at this point rather than an immediate return. On the mana side, this past week I've been playing Shaman with Gathering Storm as a ranged skill with the node for getting MP back on hit, but it still feels like my MP is just going down when I spam it despite based on the tooltips, my return should sometimes be double the cost.
Lastly is probably a niche problem, but I found on my Shaman running Thorn Totem occasionally "Unspent Points", and not in edge case user error/accident ways like "didn't really click it" or "disconnected while doing skills" I had a point where the Cold Totem that I had been using for a few hours at this point "Unspent Itself" after I picked up the "Ring Mass Drop", only noticed it because the totems weren't icy blue anymore, went back in and I had a skill point and the cold conversion open, felt off in a way that didn't make me feel like it was my mistake.
For things touched on in the video.
For the more casual, less technically skilled player, I think the numerical difficulty ramp up from Lagon's Temple through Majasa was a bit too much. But especially for those 2 bosses, I felt encouraged to play, and did play, in ways I would deem "not fun" (Did both on Forgeguard, and I'm just 2 areas before Majasa on Shaman). Mechanically I think they are fine, they make sense, I understand what went wrong, but a few skills just were at the point of 1 Shotting me or nothing. At first I would check my sheets, notice oh hey my resists for them weren't quite there, go to town for a minute adjust my idols towards a resists focus get a few more crafting rounds for defenses, made me think of D4 S1 Resists. Come back, nope mechanic is just going to kill me. On Lagon it was the Cold/Physical Spit in Phase 1/3, and on Majasa the Lightning Rocks Upheaval move, and her entire Phases 3 on segments. I think out of those 2 bosses, the only part I felt was fun as a player was Phase 2 of Lagon where you were killing adds and dodging waves. Lagon I've done the Abusing Verticality Strat on both chars (do this wrong with Shield Throw and it blocks your attacks too), and on Majasa I basically just ran in circles for 20m with my Manifest Armor doing the bulk of the work and me just Shield Throw Potshotting when she actually decided to attack it or did some stationary actions. Majasa having effectively 4 Health Bars was also not very fun for what was already more of an endurance fight. Honestly a bit worried about the Majasa fight whenever I do a non-minion build against her. This area of the game is what made me question whether the advice to "Not to follow a build guide, and try to pick what you like your first run through" was sound advice coming out of the community.
On New Players and Crafting. Rune of Shattering is the lynchpin here, at the start of the game as a new player, they are too rare and too expensive at the same time. As an overall part of the game over a given character/cycles lifetime I think they are tuned pretty reasonably. For a solid 4-5 Chapters your are trying to choose between "Stash Space for a few dozen items to shatter/swap later" and "a handful of Runes of Shattering", then from around Chapter 6 to postgame, you basically sit on a stash of items with affixes you use and a handful of runes of shattering and waiting to run out of a shard while crafting. Best thing I think they could do here, is have a guaranteed Rune of Shattering pop out of Affix Shrines, with maybe a chance for a few.
Overall they cut a nice gemstone, needs a bit more polishing once it gets more time with a general audience as opposed to the more tailor-made audience an actual development beta test brings in. The development team has been putting their responses to feedback far enough out there for anyone looking for it to easily find it, that most reasonable people can avoid spiraling into a delusion of negative assumptions that silence can bring. Hopefully the confidence they put out and the plans they present pan out as well as we are lead to believe.
Great video (as always)!
I think our experiences are very similar, although my campaign as a necromancer was very stupidly easy, I only had to craft for the first time on the storm god boss you mention, get some resistance, and then again on the final boss for some poison resist. I honestly AFK teleported through the entire campaign and my minions killed everything on screen, never an issue, good speed, not like race speed but fast enough to keep flowing.
I've had less time to play so only in normal monolith's now, but I am enjoying them, and so far I have no complaints, highly suggest to anyone who like this style of game that it's a must play.
great review. i dont mind the lack of deep endgame as it gives me an opportunity to try a ton of alts without worrying about level capping any given character
that said i would like the endgame to pan out in upcoming cycles obviously
I love the game. Currently my favorite ARPG. I actually have a Necro build that has no direct attack ability! All my damage actually comes from minions. All 5 of my abilities summon something, I have never played an ARPG that that is possible with (I have never played POE) and I love it!
I would agree with most of these, One thing they could do is maybe when you get to 2nd town area, is that you get a basic crafting quest, that basically talks you through upgrading a quest item so you understand the VERY basics, because it is once you look at it logically my only thing i would love if you could respec a class, even to the point of having to do a quest something like kill a clone of your current character in a boss fight that allows you to respec because i just not a fan of having to level the same archetype - ive levelled 2 rogues and 2 acolytes - because for me im playing as many classes as i can before season 1
Yes i played CBT but the classes are so diffrerent i want to get feel before i settle on 2 or 3 main classes in seasons.
One QoL addition I want is being able to hover my cursor above any element of the map (minimap, overlayed map and big world map) and to get some info of what it is.
Thanks for the review, hopefully more people discover LE and decide to give it a go!
*Diablo 4:*
Campaign: 8.5
Endgame: 1
Casual: 5 (more like for braindead)
Veteran: 0
Seasons: 2
Bosses: 2
Economy: 0
Trading: 0
Theorycrafting: 2
Builds: 2
Hardcore: 4
QoL: 1
Overall: Fuck Blizzard
Agreed. The graphics and campaign was pretty good. 9 for me. But that is it
@@peterretep1010 Dunno if the campaign is 8.5, i'd give it a lower rating more like 7 because the gameplay, loot system and so on is so bland. The open world format also makes things very samey, no real memorable zones nor anything. Maybe just hell was cool and the cinematic but that's it. The single best thing about D4 is the graphics, as a 3D artist and game designer im very impressed, looks gorgeous. From the game design part of things, im also very impressed how weak their game design considering their resources. Goes to show that no amount of money makes a designer good, and the bigger the corporate ladder the less passion goes into things.
Spot on. The campaign was actually really fun and well done. And then they did absolutely nothing with it, the only good thing in the game and you run it once and never touch it again lol.
The trading needs a lot of work, there was some layer bugs, along with you have to be rank 7 before you can buy exalted gear.
New fan here, Rax. I love your comprehension on all mechanics of this game. Youre truly a connoisseur for these kinds of titles. I appreciate that you can get on and see at anyone's level. This game, for me, is fucking perfect 😅
The Chaos Dungeon bonus portals are removed from Lost Ark. There are the random Fate Embers that drop on though! 😊
Most complete game. Super agree. With a few changes to QoL, pinnacle bosses, key ring, more end game and once we hit seasons… this has the potential to be the best ARPG ever.
the one thing i really wish they straight up stole from poe is specialized stash tabs and affinities, being able to ctrl+click almost any item and it go exactly to the tab i want would be a massive QoL
the game really surprised me in a good way, obviously there's room for improvements, including some QoL features that POE already have but overall great game
good shit raxx, I think going forward it'll be a good idea to add an "items" category.
I respect your opinion Rax, I think I'll finally pull the trigger on my purchase. Thanks for the video.
LE is such a good game, it's going to be nice to have another game to play when POE is winding down and vice versa.
my first lagon was in 2 player co-op. his paladin just keeps us alive and heals through everything, so I did not have to move very much in the fight and could eat mostly everyt damage.
2nd time we did it for fun and to help someone he did one misstep, died and I, not having learned anything about the fight before (because of the heal) followed him shortly.
I will do him solo 100% again before I do a lot of other stuff now ^^
As a fellow MS Paint believer, I cant express how warm this video makes me feel.
8.5-9.0 is a fair score for the state of the game rn. I’ve leveled up my acolyte to 95, and I’ve just recently blasted my rogue to lvl 40 in 3 hours of gameplay. Love how easy it is to blast through the campaign btw. I used circle of fortune my first character, now going for the easier route (I hope) with the trade guild. Want to make my marksman rogue my main farming character, really loving the playstyle and power it brings to the table. As for now I’m super excited for the future of this game, keep the servers and bugs down, and we will have a great game in our hands!
I smashed Lagon first try with my hybrid hammer throw paladin, but he almost got me a few times. The Bleeding heart ammy is godlike.
Same I don’t understand why everybody had so much trouble with this fight. It was so easy, when his eye turns red move your ass lol.
I died once to Lagon, Going forward that will be a good test for me if I have a handle on my build/gear going into endgame. The enemy density gets pretty tense in the level leading up to him too. It seems like a good check. Fun fight!
This is a great review. What i don't like about some of the others content creators is that they keep comparing this game to a 10 years old game that has more devs and more money.
Eh I just did monoliths from 27 as shaman. I don't agree you must craft during the campaign. I do agree crafting should be more explained and encouraged. I didn't even know about sealing, removal rune(not shattering) or anything else for years until just now with the launch where I even thought uniques were garbage all this time due to my lack of legendary forging knowledge. The only thing I did was shatter certain stats that's it.
I would also say I'd like them to have another separate endgame type of a time trials thing like diablo 3 greater rifts. Time Attack is fun. Varied endgames would be great as well as improving endgames to be more impactful than they already are.
Last epoch explains more than most games but there's a few more things they need to express properly. Such as damaging ailments being separate from DoTs. Me and my friend got confused on DoT debuffs explaination because we were actually doing ailment builds of frostbite(me) and poison(him). There's also some passive that gives damage to another friend unless she gets hit but she didn't know if enemy floor dots would count towards disabling it. There's also something like for my shaman tempest strike, I couldn't tell if it was actually using my tornado tree passives entirely because it wasn't splitting into two, thankfully training dummy let me test most of it but at least that one I'll chalk it up to fresh rework has some bugs. There's also something like knowing what exactly is distance, I don't know. Such as Shaman's leap has a node for increased damage per meter distance but I can't tell the ranges I usually leap.
I just want a full campaign skip with idol/passives given rather than having to interact with any of it again. I don't care about the attribute points. It's appreciated that you can skip most of it to get to monoliths at least.
Skipping to economy, I would outright put it above every game just for the fact you can't resell from the market. That alone fixes a lot of economy issues in most games. You also have to interact with the game to continue with the economy, that is also phenominal cause in warframe, at a certain point I just do not have to play the game and can just trade my life away and I know several other games like that. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a merchant but playing the game should aid being said merchant.
Trading feels great so far with resonance with friends rather than forced to drop and trade at that exact moment like diablo 3 but not just free trade like a mmorpg.
I disagree with saying the BiS is just exalted most of the time just because of legendary forging, in the past I also thought uniques were underpowered but the fact that you can just shove 1-3(4 unrealistic outside of possibly fortune faction) exalted item stats into a legendary and the only thing that may not be matched are implicits is huge. Only times I would not bother trying to shove an exalted into a unique is if currently the unique stats don't outweigh exalted mana regen in the implicits.
Yes set items suck most of the time, only one I've used so far is the mage invoker shock rings for my shaman's cold build. Aside from that I would never really use set items with anything unless they were buffed for legendary forging. I would even later replace my shock rings for oceareon if I don't feel I need the set rings ward tbh.
As a casual, this game didn't hook me. Art, design, and a general lack of polish were the biggest factors. Slow loading between areas is also annoying. Uniques aren't cool or powerful by themselves. Crafting removes the excitement of finding a good drop. With all that said, this game is pretty good for its price
Interesting view, I have the opposite. Sound design and graphics went up a lot with 1.0 and feel very good now (except rogue, these blade sounds do nothing for me). Uniques are build defining and can be insanely strong. And you cant craft a super powerful item off a crap base, so you need that near perfect drop, to craft the perfect item.
Hi there ! I don't get what's not working for the quests tracker There's an icon at the top for the era and then another one next to the relevant zone. Go, kill or talk, done, no ?
i think its that there are multiple areas in each era and it doesnt always zoom to the relevant sub zone. also theres a lot of broken connections in the pathing for time travel that isnt immediately obvious. Sometimes tracking/targetting a specific side quest when you have multiple is annoying as well
The jump on zone doesn't work everytime in the first couple days, I don't have any issue after the weekend, maybe this is now fixed
When you mentioned the tracker I was like "yep, for sure." I was playing my new alt yesterday, and when I reached End of Time the quest tracker gave me the main quests for chapter 3 and chapter 4 simultaneously. Not that I could skip the rest of the Ruined Era; it just told me I could speak to Gaspar about the Imperials. My main didn't seem to have a problem when I first went through the campaign, but maybe it's because I didn't know any better at the time.
Still, that's a super minor complaint on my part; the game is amazing.
Campaign to me is at most a 6 and that's because it is saved by the crafting system/gear progression and the respec opportunities. The story is pretty bland, it is waaay too long. They could easily cut down on the running/zones without losing out on anything. A few of the bosses are nice. End game is also 6 at most but that's pretty good for a newly released game. Lots to work on. Again saved by the crafting system. Builds at 9.5 is too generous. I feel a lot of them are very same-y (after testing for years) but again yes, it is a lot for a newly released game. Compared to D4 it is a dream. Otherwise I mostly agree
Personally I feel it's sort of wrong to rate things more highly because the game is new. Things should be rated as they are right now not how you think they will be in the future. Thats why I agree and would have also rated a bunch of things lower
Great review. I love multiple builds/alts up to 25 online chars. Also, I think perhaps you should rate a category as a 10 if it is in your mind so very good. "Perfect" is such a subjective term, and presents its own "bias" (not to assign a perfect score). Anyhow, thanks so much for your review!
What level should I start crafting? I wanted to save my materials for when I get good gear instead of wasting it on lower level weapons
Its great to greet a new player on ARPG scene, and LE is a big one. I hope they give game strong support, and I'm agree with raxx that this game is completest of all ARPGs on launch. We got a new way to spend our time(and probably money) and this is the best news for all fans of the genre. Cheers 🎉🎉🎉
LE is already my #2 ARPG despite being undercooked still. And it does some big core stuff better than the #1 already, imagine what it can do in the future.
#1 is PoE. PoE has better endgame content and a deeper range of stuff that you can do in the game, but I genuinely think LE has a better skill system, a better crafting system, a better trading system, and it has better overall combat because PoE is plagued with instant "one shots" that you cannot react to and the entire game is balanced around either being at 100% life and having enough defenses or not having enough defenses and immediately getting deleted with no in-between.
I agree with your final score, PoE is a 9 and LE is a 8.5, if LE had the 11 years of expansions and refinement that PoE did it'd probably be a 10.