Last Epoch - time travel action-RPG

[Perkel]

So I take it If I just want a single player campaign and atmosphere its definite NO NO??

You definitely shouldn't play this for the story, just like most other games in this genre.
Also, take verbose opinions that are in their essence limited to "x sucks and y sucks as well" with a grain of salt.

Some people like me like good campaign in ARPG. Not only does it give context to what you do but also it can provide some memorable moments. Like Duriel fight in Diablo 2, or Solaris/Lunaris fight in POE. In LE there is nothing. Especially with how abrupt game is ending.

It feels like they were running out of budget and they needed to push toward 1.0 as fast as possible cutting corners which is pretty similar story to how Wolcen ended up. The difference between them is that in LE at least they gave proper thought about progression system and loot so public can get something to bite for now when they work on rest of game while in Wolcen aside from top tier combat and skills there was nothing else to leave mark (also developers couldn't do math for shit lol).

 

[Peachcurl]

Writing some more on skills and classes being weirdly too thin.
I started new class right now druid. Druid can be shaman(caster), malee(barbarian), or minion/shapeshifter.

Each of those would be a class on their own in different arpg to give those classes depth they need to feel good. Here on other hand everything is under druid. So instead of getting full tree for Shaman you instead get like 5 skills total. And like I said before you can't even duplicate them so that same skills can be customized to something else.

Sure you can make argument that you can use all of the skills but that goes against fantasy of creating build or some idea for character.

I really hope that uniques expand available skills/build like in Grim Dawn I noticed also relics changing elemental damage type like GD.

This essentially means "I want a large skill tree, which implies making decisions between branches, but I also don't want to be locked out of branches".

Makes no sense. You _never_ have the "full tree".

 

[Peachcurl]

Some people like me like good campaign in ARPG. Not only does it give context to what you do but also it can provide some memorable moments. Like Duriel fight in Diablo 2, or Solaris/Lunaris fight in POE. In LE there is nothing. Especially with how abrupt game is ending.

I'm not going to argue for the story in LE, it's crap. But referencing memorable fights as a evidence of a good story makes no sense to me. For instance, there's barely any story telling involved with the Solaris/Lunaris fight. And if atmospheric fights are what you are looking for, you'll find them in LE as well.

 

[Perkel]

Now when it comes to rating game overall in my opinion at the moment finishing once campaign with one class and trying game with few other:

POE1>>>D2>>D2LOD>>GD>>>>>>D4>>D3>>>>Wolcen>>LastEpoch

Nothing is uber bad. It just doesn't have any ace in its sleave that makes it stand out and its downfalls like campaign take over good aspects it has. Wolcen for all its brokeness has #1 best melee combat feel from all arpgs and you can forgive a lot when you have fun bashing mobs.

I feel though that LE has room to expand especially with its loot and crafting system. Maybe huge rework of their classes could push it close to GD. GD itself didn't start it great place but with patches and expansions it became really good game. D3 also was in horrible place until loot2.0 patch.

 

[ArchAngel]

Got to end game. Played with NingNog Forge Guard. My opinion:

Campaign. Easily worst campaign in big ARPG. It was such a borefest that i started skipping second half.

1. First of "corridors everywhere" design works for maybe first 2-4 hours but then it just gets tired af. And since you know where to go because your have sign on map it never feels like exploration and always feels like a slog you need to go through to point you need.
2. Bosses are not memorable at all. I struggle to even remember them. The only boss that gave me trouble was last one. And I fixed it by increasing by 15% phys reduction... as i had only 30%.
3. Maps are just too large in campaign. It feels like they realized that giving point on map where to go means people would just go there ignoring rest of map so they stretched out map between start and end point.
4. Maps aren't diverse enough. Sure graphics change, but you never fight in tight spaces, you never change your tactics either. It's almost always wide open spaces or wide corridors.
5. Side quests are so painfully boring that there is no need to get them as they provide nothing of value (other than stat boost and relic stuff).
6. It is waaaaay to long for what it tries to do. It took me 11 hours of mostly following main quest and trying to get to end fast.

Honestly campaign is such a slog that I dread to replay it at all. I know from some posters that there are "skips" but those skips are still part of that slog either way.

Combat
Good thing to say here. Attacks feel punchy, enemies respond well etc. If I could make top list of best combat feel in arpg it would be:
wolcen >>Diablo 2>> Diablo4/Last Epoch>>>Diablo 3 >>> POE >>>> Grim Dawn

Progression and loot
System is pretty good. I thought at start it will be a mess like Wolcen but it is tight in several places. Unfortunutely crafting which at start seems fine soon enough became too strong to see any loot as worthwile. Few uniques i found were varied enough to do some builds around them.

Skills.
Honestly they suck. Yeah they do have their trees that somewhat change a bit those skills but each class simply has too little of them. Main class has 6 + 4 with level and specialization gets you another 5. Sound like a lot until you realize that ton of them are not fitting into your build well. Like I wanted to make ice mage and i had like total 5 spells including specialization. It would be good if you could make copy of skill and spec it differently like in Wolcen which uses D3 rune system so you could have 2 same skills just with different specs. The skill skill tree imho is just worse version of Diablo 3 rune system or Wolcen rune system. Another annoying thing is that

Passive skill tree.
It also sucks. It feels like someone saw GD or TitanQuest tree and thought: "Yeah i take some of that too" without putting much thought into it. IT doesn't feel cohesive. Yeah it gives boost but it feels more like a chore than fun game mechanic. They could easily move most of it to skills trees and you wouldn't see difference.

Difficulty.
Easy. Died like 3 times and i wasn't grinding or anything. Mostly due to elemental damage. 2 of those in last boss fight. Now in end game it is mostly the same thing at lvl 60. Hardly any challange.

Overall.
They need to bake more and rethink core idea behind their systems. Wolcen2:LastEpoch is what i think of it but actually less fun than Wolcen1.

So I take it If I just want a single player campaign and atmosphere its definite NO NO??

Definitely a poo poo. If i would want to rate campaign:

D2 >> POE>>>>>>>GD>>>>>>>>D4>>>>>D3>>>>Wolcen>>>>LE

You would think that with time travel they would have something interesting in it but frankly there isn't anything here. Feels more like excuse to just move forward. I think what hurts it the most are quests themselves and how minimap "solves" your exploration.
I feel like they just were shooting darts at the board and decided for time travel because it gives their live service game the most amount of wiggle room for expansions rather than to create good story and competent campaign.

Like I said in my opinion/review. The worst part is that everything is the same. Same corridors design everywhere with quest marker telling you where to go. And it feels like game actively trying to waste your time stretching space between A and B so that you can't finish it too fast.

I think it is good to compare it to something. Take Grim Dawn for example. In GD you have towns, ruins, there are multiple pathways, there are faction zones etc. It all feels great and you mostly don't feel like developers designed those areas to stretch hours. Then there are some areas where devs said fuck it like farmlands but even those have houses with bits of lore there.

In LE there is nothing. Sure you get some main quest differences like collecting pearls on some beach to summon something but that is rare occurance most of the time is just go to B and do somehting.

It hard to take your opinion seriously when you have GD so high and in previous post praised Wolcen which was pretty bad, only slightly better than D3 which is by far worst aRPG I've played.

Also there is enough skills in LE from what I have been playing. And you do know that you are not limited to your advanced mastery class, you can also take other two classes and get access to their first two skills (out of 4). So basically each character has access to 20 skills to mix and match.. which is more than for example D2 or almost any other aRPG (except PoE) because these 20 are more of less designed to be able to combined together in some way.

Also now that I have accessed advanced Mastery skills I can see skill system is more complicated than any other aRPG except PoE.

EDIT: I would say the bigger problem is that you can only have 5 skills which is some D3/D4 shit design.

 

[Perkel]

This essentially means "I want a large skill tree, which implies making decisions between branches, but I also don't want to be locked out of branches".

Makes no sense. You _never_ have the "full tree".

Not tree. I want more skills for default tunes. It just feels like there is too little of skills to choose. For example if mentioned druid was full druid tune caster/summoner you would have 1/3 more skills toward it because it wouldn't feature melee skills and it would feel better imho.

Like I said, for base game it is small. I do expect them to expand list of spells but for now it is just limiting. And no I don't expect POE 100s of skills. I just want decent amount so that I feel i have options.

 

[Perkel]

=So basically each character has access to 20 skills to mix and match..

The issue here is that the classes are not really pure classes but they pack into them like 2-3 different specializations. Which means that skills themselves are divided into those 3. So if you don't want to play melee druid that is like 1/3 of skills gone just like that.

Didn't know about opening other masteries skills. I reached end game but I didn't see any unlock (lvl 60)

 

[GrainWetski]

Got to end game. Played with NingNog Forge Guard. My opinion:

Campaign. Easily worst campaign in big ARPG. It was such a borefest that i started skipping second half.

1. First of "corridors everywhere" design works for maybe first 2-4 hours but then it just gets tired af. And since you know where to go because your have sign on map it never feels like exploration and always feels like a slog you need to go through to point you need.
2. Bosses are not memorable at all. I struggle to even remember them. The only boss that gave me trouble was last one. And I fixed it by increasing by 15% phys reduction... as i had only 30%.
3. Maps are just too large in campaign. It feels like they realized that giving point on map where to go means people would just go there ignoring rest of map so they stretched out map between start and end point.
4. Maps aren't diverse enough. Sure graphics change, but you never fight in tight spaces, you never change your tactics either. It's almost always wide open spaces or wide corridors.
5. Side quests are so painfully boring that there is no need to get them as they provide nothing of value (other than stat boost and relic stuff).
6. It is waaaaay to long for what it tries to do. It took me 11 hours of mostly following main quest and trying to get to end fast.

Honestly campaign is such a slog that I dread to replay it at all. I know from some posters that there are "skips" but those skips are still part of that slog either way.

Combat
Good thing to say here. Attacks feel punchy, enemies respond well etc. If I could make top list of best combat feel in arpg it would be:
wolcen >>Diablo 2>> Diablo4/Last Epoch>>>Diablo 3 >>> POE >>>> Grim Dawn

Progression and loot
System is pretty good. I thought at start it will be a mess like Wolcen but it is tight in several places. Unfortunutely crafting which at start seems fine soon enough became too strong to see any loot as worthwile. Few uniques i found were varied enough to do some builds around them.

Skills.
Honestly they suck. Yeah they do have their trees that somewhat change a bit those skills but each class simply has too little of them. Main class has 6 + 4 with level and specialization gets you another 5. Sound like a lot until you realize that ton of them are not fitting into your build well. Like I wanted to make ice mage and i had like total 5 spells including specialization. It would be good if you could make copy of skill and spec it differently like in Wolcen which uses D3 rune system so you could have 2 same skills just with different specs. The skill skill tree imho is just worse version of Diablo 3 rune system or Wolcen rune system. Another annoying thing is that

Passive skill tree.
It also sucks. It feels like someone saw GD or TitanQuest tree and thought: "Yeah i take some of that too" without putting much thought into it. IT doesn't feel cohesive. Yeah it gives boost but it feels more like a chore than fun game mechanic. They could easily move most of it to skills trees and you wouldn't see difference.

Difficulty.
Easy. Died like 3 times and i wasn't grinding or anything. Mostly due to elemental damage. 2 of those in last boss fight. Now in end game it is mostly the same thing at lvl 60. Hardly any challange.

Overall.
They need to bake more and rethink core idea behind their systems. Wolcen2:LastEpoch is what i think of it but actually less fun than Wolcen1.

What class has only 6 main skills? Primalist has 12 + 14 in the masteries. Mage has 13 + 15. Sentinel 12 + 14. Acolyte 12 + 14. Rogue 10 + 13. You're really trying to make it sound like the game lacks skills and builds. In reality only PoE has more build variety.

For "Ice Mage" alone you have Frozen Orb, Lightning Blast, Static Orb, Snap Freeze, Frost Nova, Frost Claw, Glacier, Ice Barrage, Black Hole, Flame Rush, Frost Wall, Runebolt and then another 12 cold invocations for Runemaster. That's just the damage skills. I'm not sure what game you were playing, but that's 24 not 5.

 

[sebas]

So I take it If I just want a single player campaign and atmosphere its definite NO NO??

The only ARPGs to play for the campaign are D2 and TQ.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Difficulty.
Easy. Died like 3 times and i wasn't grinding or anything. Mostly due to elemental damage. 2 of those in last boss fight. Now in end game it is mostly the same thing at lvl 60. Hardly any challange.

Overall.
They need to bake more and rethink core idea behind their systems. Wolcen2:LastEpoch is what i think of it but actually less fun than Wolcen1.

Good luck, not happening. People have been begging for them to make the game harder for 3 years now and the devs ignore them while the hardcore fans tell them that the game becomes hard after 100 hours of grinding in the end game system. It's pitiful. When I first bought the game a long time ago there was actually some challenge to the campaign and you'd get killed fast and easy if you didn't shore up your defenses properly using the crafting system, but after they reworked the game and got rid of the challenge I've not touched crafting at all given how it's not needed for the campaign anymore.

LE has the worst campaign experience out of all ARPGs, you are right about that. And I don't see it changing.

 

[sebas]

In reality only PoE has more build variety.

POE has the illusion of build variety but it always boils down to a few patch meta skills because it's all about what skill you can dip the most in the tree. You might have 56 cold skills but one will always be optimal. Not to mention you have to all-in in the build. The D3 system is the only one that actually added build variety, happy to see LE stole that.

 

[Eisen]

The one ARPG i was looking for seems to be riddled with problems, guess i'll continue with playing Tchernobog

 

[GloomFrost]

So I take it If I just want a single player campaign and atmosphere its definite NO NO??

The only ARPGs to play for the campaign are D2 and TQ.

Grim Dawn's campaign wasn't half bad.

 

[GrainWetski]

The one ARPG i was looking for seems to be riddled with problems, guess i'll continue with playing Tchernobog

As long as you're not trusting "people" that apparently prefer this

("choice" of more damage or more crit damage, very interesting stuff)

Over this

 

[ArchAngel]

=So basically each character has access to 20 skills to mix and match..

The issue here is that the classes are not really pure classes but they pack into them like 2-3 different specializations. Which means that skills themselves are divided into those 3. So if you don't want to play melee druid that is like 1/3 of skills gone just like that.

Didn't know about opening other masteries skills. I reached end game but I didn't see any unlock (lvl 60)

That is just not true, at least for the Primalist that I am playing. You can be melee caster, melee basher, melee + summoner, melee+ totems, ranged caster, ranged caster + summons, ranged caster + totems and probably other stuff I have not look at yet.
Also all those versions have subversion. Just the werebear druid I am going for can be DoT or Crit. He can bleed or go physical or elemental. He can combine skills to trigger other skills or get summons or spells to autocast. He can even shapeshit automatically from one form into another if you want to. He can also Slow and Bash and Freeze. Even multiple versions of berserk type skills which I am trying to go now (Berserk from Warcry tree + Aspect of Panter from WereBear tree).
It seems these crazy devs tried to put all kinds of PoE stuff into the game without using active+support skill gems systems. This is almost PoE level of options.

Also combat feel is very nice, I am enjoying turning into Werebear, charge into enemies, jump on them and slash them to death while warcrying on them. And before turning into WereBear I can do other stuff. And there are two other forms of shapeshift in addition to WereBear, each with their own additional skills.

 

[Perkel]

=So basically each character has access to 20 skills to mix and match..

The issue here is that the classes are not really pure classes but they pack into them like 2-3 different specializations. Which means that skills themselves are divided into those 3. So if you don't want to play melee druid that is like 1/3 of skills gone just like that.

Didn't know about opening other masteries skills. I reached end game but I didn't see any unlock (lvl 60)

That is just not true, at least for the Primalist that I am playing. You can be melee caster, melee basher, melee + summoner, melee+ totems, ranged caster, ranged caster + summons, ranged caster + totems and probably other stuff I have not look at yet.
Also all those versions have subversion. Just the werebear druid I am going for can be DoT or Crit. He can bleed or go physical or elemental. He can combine skills to trigger other skills or get summons or spells to autocast. He can even shapeshit automatically from one form into another if you want to. He can also Slow and Bash and Freeze. Even multiple versions of berserk type skills which I am trying to go now (Berserk from Warcry tree + Aspect of Panter from WereBear tree).
It seems these crazy devs tried to put all kinds of PoE stuff into the game without using active+support skill gems systems. This is almost PoE level of options.

You literally inversed what i said. I said that If i want to play pure subclass then i have effectively 1/3 of skills you instead said that you can play combined all skills at once and thus use all skills.

That's my take. If you don't like it... well you are allowed to not like my take.

Either way my main gripe with game is that there isn't part of it that makes it stand out from crowd and shite campaign makes it really hard to play with builds themselves.

"the amazing level of skill creativity" is just rune system from D3 + few passives. Even Wolcen I spoke about has it. And in D3 system loot 2.0 those runes are only part of skill as uniques shape those skills more.

 

[Perkel]

The one ARPG i was looking for seems to be riddled with problems, guess i'll continue with playing Tchernobog

As long as you're not trusting "people" that apparently prefer this

("choice" of more damage or more crit damage, very interesting stuff)

Over this

Literally 3/4 of this are just passives with either extra crit or extra damage or extra something else. Skill changing ones aren't that common.

Your shot is from D4 which doesn't use rune system. And D4 uses legendaries as auguments as core to skills so showing tree part when legendary powers change completely skill is just shite opinion.

D3 on other hand uses both rune system and legendaries/sets for its skills. So first you have rune to choose to how skills works and then you augement it with legendary powers which change in major way how it works. Good example of that is call ancients skills and legendary power than makes them permanent instead of skill on cooldown.

I am not a huge fan of either D3 or D4 and I agree LE system at base is better but LE just classes like I said are bundled together into few tunes instead of focusing on one which naturally makes some skills unusable. Meanwhile in D3 if you pick Monk then ALL skills are usable with every other skills as class is seen as single tune rather than few tunes in one. Counting 22 skills with rune system + legendary powers. Monk is melee and plays melee and all skills are made around melee class.

Let's say I want to play with elemental druid in LE. So from primalist I have literally 2 skills. Gathering storm and mealstorm and then there is shaman tree with 4 skills. Aka i have 6 skills to use and one of them is melee skill and one is totem. So pure elementalist is like 4 skills total.
For summoner it looks better around 8 skills around 9 if you include totem.

That's what I am talking about. And that's assuming you like how some those skills work/look in first place. Because you know not everyone will like every skill.

 

[abija]

Good thing to say here. Attacks feel punchy, enemies respond well etc. If I could make top list of best combat feel in arpg it would be:
wolcen >>Diablo 2>> Diablo4/Last Epoch>>>Diablo 3 >>> POE >>>> Grim Dawn

No... on so many levels.

Let's say I want to play with elemental druid in LE. So from primalist I have literally 2 skills. Gathering storm and mealstorm and then there is shaman tree with 4 skills. Aka i have 6 skills to use and one of them is melee skill and one is totem. So pure elementalist is like 4 skills total.
For summoner it looks better around 8 skills around 9 if you include totem.

You forget all the options inside the skills themselves in LE and all the "support" skills from D3. Which is what makes LE's system so versatile since supports can be shared and whatever you want to build has enough "action" skills after that.

You also picked the one hybrid class in the game and complain about pure options comparing with D3 that has only pure classes. Go ahead and compare LE druid with D2 or D4.

My legacy elementalist build from a while that I dropped at first monolith because there was no challenge. I guess it's a bit different than what you had in mind right?

 

[Perkel]

Good thing to say here. Attacks feel punchy, enemies respond well etc. If I could make top list of best combat feel in arpg it would be:
wolcen >>Diablo 2>> Diablo4/Last Epoch>>>Diablo 3 >>> POE >>>> Grim Dawn

No... on so many levels.

Well then give me your list of which has best feeling combat. Let's laugh.

 

[Grunker]

Unfortunutely crafting which at start seems fine soon enough became too strong to see any loot as worthwile

This makes no sense. The loot determines the crafting. You need good drops for great crafts. You can't just craft something from scratch. I agree with quite a few of your points for once (in particular that the campaign is probably the most ass aRPG campaign I've ever played), but this one is almost "did you even play the game?"-tier.

The issue here is that the classes are not really pure classes but they pack into them like 2-3 different specializations. Which means that skills themselves are divided into those 3. So if you don't want to play melee druid that is like 1/3 of skills gone just like that.

This is just patently untrue. Some skills are clearly tuned to some specializations, but quite a few are not.

 

[ArchAngel]

Unfortunutely crafting which at start seems fine soon enough became too strong to see any loot as worthwile

This makes no sense. The loot determines the crafting. You need good drops for great crafts. You can't just craft something from scratch. I agree with quite a few of your points for once (in particular that the campaign is probably the most ass aRPG campaign I've ever played), but this one is almost "did you even play the game?"-tier.

The issue here is that the classes are not really pure classes but they pack into them like 2-3 different specializations. Which means that skills themselves are divided into those 3. So if you don't want to play melee druid that is like 1/3 of skills gone just like that.

This is just patently untrue. Some skills are clearly tuned to some specializations, but quite a few are not.

I am still fairly early in LE (lvl 24) but D3 is far far worst campaign in any aRPG.
LE one is just too standard as gameplay goes. And so far it lacks more open maps that you can find in Diablo 2 and PoE as well as D4. It is just corridors which is what irritated me in both D3 and Wolcen.

 

[abija]

Well then give me your list of which has best feeling combat. Let's laugh.

Combat feeling wise:
D3/D4 (AAA resources, lots of feedback and time to act on it matter) > LE/GD/Torchlight2/PoE (clearly low budget but competent, covered their bases) > D2/TQ (age) > closed beta desync PoE > Wolcen (absolute jank and a waste of almost AAA level assets).

 

[Grunker]

Well then give me your list of which has best feeling combat. Let's laugh.

Combat feeling wise:
D3

 

[Perkel]

You also picked the one hybrid class in the game and complain about pure options comparing with D3 that has only pure classes. Go ahead and compare LE druid with D2 or D4.

But all classes from what i see in LE are hybrid as in they are few different tunes in them rather than being generalist. And that's my point. If your argument is that wolves can bite with freeze and that makes it elementalist skill then yeah i don't agree. Unfortunately crafting which at start seems fine soon enough became too strong to see any loot as worthwhile.

This makes no sense. The loot determines the crafting. You need good drops for great crafts. You can't just craft something from scratch. I agree with quite a few of your points for once (in particular that the campaign is probably the most ass aRPG campaign I've ever played), but this one is almost "did you even play the game?"-tier.

The issue is that what you do is that you gather junk to scour them from affixes and prefixes and none of the loot falls in good shape to begin with to outmatch your crafted gear. So you never have "OMG" moment that something good drops because what is good and what is not is decided by random fucking chance at crafting for your forging potential to hit crit or not use potential.

For my whole playthrough i never used anything from ground because it was always worse than crafted gear I had on me. And to craft something greater than on me i almost never used "good loot" but loot with the most potential and waited for random fucking chance to hit roll right.

The loot itself as in affixes, base types, etc. are good. I like them very much. The issue is that i never get any rush from any drop. Because I know for loot to be usable i need to hit some crits on crafting. So whatever i get some "amazing" chest rolled right i know i have much greater chance to roll medium rolled chest but many of them at hit those crits instead.

No doubt for some people who are into crafting this might be plus to spend most of their time shoveling garbage gear into forge and scouring but that's not my jam.

Uniques are fine, and i like them but they drop rarely and probably there aren't that many of them for base game.

Crafting having inpact on dropped loot isn't exclusive problem of LE all arpgs with crafting have it. D2 runewords literally destroyed loot gathering in D2 until endgame, POE crafting table took away a lot from loot when it was introduced and so on.

 

[Perkel]

Well then give me your list of which has best feeling combat. Let's laugh.

Combat feeling wise:
D3/D4 (AAA resources, lots of feedback and time to act on it matter) > LE/GD/Torchlight2/PoE (clearly low budget but competent, covered their bases) > D2/TQ (age) > closed beta desync PoE > Wolcen (absolute jank and a waste of almost AAA level assets).

You clearly never played Wolcen if you think wolcen combat feel is "janky". Wolcen combat is more AAA than D3/D4, each skill being juicy to use, having proper impact etc. . It is literally only good thing about Wolcen to at least play it once for experience, rest is a fucking mess. They put shitton of work into making sure that each skills is juicy as hell to use.

Also i don't see how you can put GD in same bracket as LE or POE. LE has clearly better combat feel than pretty much anything, way above GD and GD combat feels like wet noodles on wall with FX being paint shop work and animations done by some 5 year old kid. It was Kickstarter game it you can see that.

POE having bad combat feel is something universally agreed on and they even made it worse with "melee" update that took out simple attacks and introduced janky 1-2-3 hit combo animations with awkward animations. That's why people go zoom zoom because the slower it the more you can see how garbage it is in this aspect. POE2 on other hand from what i see looks godly.